Page 173 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘I thought you’d still be over at the Masons’, at the funeral,’ his dad said, reaching the final step.

Billy sniffed. ‘Oh, I’m going back. But there’s something important I have to do first.’

Dad narrowed his eyes, the ghost of something new behind them.

‘Why didyouleave the funeral early, Dad, after the church? Don’t think people will notice?’

Dad swallowed; more sure, or less?

‘I don’t need you to talk,’ Billy said. ‘Not really. Stop me, if I go wrong anywhere.’

Billy didn’t feel brave, but he did when he thought of Jet, her dangerous little smile, used her words instead of his own.

‘Luke Mason is your son. You –’

‘– I don’t know what you’re talking about, Billy. Look, this has been a hard day for you. Why don’t we –’

‘– I said I don’t need you to talk.’ Billy didn’t raise his voice, didn’t need to. ‘I know, Dad. While Jet was dying in my arms, Luke came here, to you. Because you’re his father. You and Dianne Mason lived right across the street fromeach other and were having an affair, and it didn’t stop when Luke was born. You kept going. Right up until the day that Emily Mason died. Want to know how I know that part?’ Billy didn’t pause. ‘Because Mom suspected it. Except she thought it was something else. I’ve been coming here, reading her work diaries. She’d make little notes in them, Dad. Lists. Observations. Nothing too bad, nothing you’d understand if you just read them, if you didn’t know what she was thinking.’

‘Billy, I –’

‘– Times and dates she saw you leaving the Masons’ house, when you were supposed to be working late. She didn’t pick up on it at all, not until 2008 – that’s when she started to notice. But here’s the thing. I don’t think Mom thought you were going over there to see Dianne. She thought it was something else. She thought you were going over there to see Emily. A sixteen-year-old girl.’

Dad stepped back, eyes stretching, too much white around them.

‘Yeah.’ Billy sniffed. ‘That’s what Mom was scared of. And then we get to that day, the day Emily Mason drowned.He was already wet. Before.That’s what Mom wrote. We thought she was talking about Luke, but she was actually talking about you. Mom couldn’t be sure, but she was scared that it was reallyyou– that you’d killed Emily, then made it look like an accident. She got that wrong, but that’s what she thought. She stayed, but she must have been terrified of you. And then, seven years later, Jet goes to her, asks Mom to change her grade on a paper. She talks about Emily, uses that to try to make Mom feel guilty, that you were supposed to go check on Emily and Luke. Jet didn’t know why it upset Mom so much, but I do now. Whatever Jet said, it confirmed something in Mom’s head, what she was already scared of.That you’d killed Emily, that it was your fault. That’s why she packed her bags and left that night, Dad, never looked back.’ Billy swallowed. ‘It wasn’t about me, it’s not because she couldn’t love me. It was because of you.’

Something healed when he said it, a patch across that hole he’d been carrying around in his heart.

Dad backed up a little more, heels hitting the wooden step.

‘But Mom didn’t get it all wrong.’ Billy kept going. Had to keep going. For Jet. ‘You were wet already when you came back to the house that day, before we all found Emily. Because youdidgo check on Emily and Luke, just like Dianne Mason asked you to. And that’s when you saw what Luke had done. Your son, and he’d killed the daughter of the woman you love. Maybe you thought you were doing the right thing, that Luke was just an angry kid, that he didn’t really mean it, I don’t know. You made it look like Emily drowned by accident. Pulled her to the bottom of the pool, wrapped her hair through that drain. Then you brought Luke over here to give him an alibi. Made us play soccer. Threw that ball into the bushes so you could fabricate a reason Luke had those scratches all up his arms, made a big deal out of it, so me and Mom thought the same. He had the scratches before, Dad. I remembered. And then you sent me and Mom over to the Masons’ to find Emily’s body. You did that. You did all of that.’

Not a ghost behind Dad’s eyes anymore, but a sheen of tears. He blinked them back.

‘And Dianne blamed you for Emily’s death. She blamed other people too, but she blamed you, Dad. Because you didn’t go check on her kids when she’d asked you to. Except you had, you could just never tell her. That’s when your relationship ended. It must have been going on for fourteen years, maybe longer, but it ended when Emily died. I know,because Mom stopped making notes about you working late in her diaries. She thought it was Emily, and it stopped when she died. I guess she was right in some way.’

‘Billy,’ Dad said, just that, but Billy’s name sounded strange, out of shape in his mouth. No one said his name quite like Jet had; no one ever would.

‘That must have made you feel angry, that the woman you loved stopped loving you, even though you did what she’d asked, that you were just trying to protect her from the truth about Luke. Did you think that was unfair?’

One tear, catching in his dad’s stubble, soaking in.

‘But you keep in touch with your son, with Luke, as he grows up. You look out for him. Play golf with him, twice a week sometimes. You’ve never asked me to play golf.’ Billy sniffed. ‘He doesn’t actually know, all this time, that you’re his dad; he just thinks you’re being nice. You give him advice about the company. I don’t know, maybe it was your idea, when Luke told you the company was going to go under – maybe you gave him ideas of how he could save some money, turn things around. Luke must have told you about his big project on North Street, his chance to prove himself. How the foundations were going in soon, and he must have been nervous to get it right. But why did you care so much about Luke getting the company? Was it about Scott Mason – was it about him? The man you thought had taken everything from you – the woman you love, your son, that big house over there that makes ours look so small. Did you want to take his company from him as some kind of revenge? Did that mean you’d won somehow, if Luke chose you, if Luke was yours and the company was too?’

He didn’t wait for his dad to answer, didn’t need him to, didn’t want to hear his denials or his excuses.

‘And now we come to Jet,’ Billy said, trying to hold hisvoice straight. He couldn’t. It cracked, right down the middle. ‘To Halloween. The night you killed her.’

Dad shook his head.

‘Stop!’ Billy said, a flash of rage, hand itching at his side. ‘Don’t do that, do not do that, Dad. I know.’ He swallowed it back, the fire, had to move through it. For Jet. ‘Jet told me something Gerry Clay said to you both that night. That he’d voted for you for chief of police. You didn’t know that before – you couldn’t have. You probably assumed both Dianne and David Dale had voted for you, that you’d lost the rest of them to Lou Jankowski. So when Gerry Clay told you he’d voted for you, you must have realized what that meant – that Dianne Mason had voted against you.’ He searched his dad’s flickering eyes, knew he was right. ‘Did that feel like another thing that had been stolen from you? You’d wanted that your whole life, to be chief of police, and Dianne, the woman you loved, she didn’t want to have to spend any time with you, so she gives it to a stranger over you.’

Billy glanced down at the phone on the side table, face down so Dad couldn’t see.

‘You were already angry. But that wasn’t even what tipped you over the edge, was it? Maybe everything could have been OK if it was just that. And then the fight happens, Andrew Smith shoves me and you come over to break it up. That’s when one of the red wig hairs transfers to you, Dad. Then, or when you’re escorting Andrew home to his apartment, right next door to mine. And at some point, when you’re walking him back, or once you’ve got him inside, Andrew Smith tells you. He thinks it’s funny. That Luke Mason isn’t going to inherit Mason Construction, because Scott is planning to sell it to someone else. And, what’s even worse, he’s going to sell it to Nell Jankowski, the wife of our new chief. He stole chief of police from you, and now he was going tosteal the company too, your son’s company. That’s how you saw it, wasn’t it? And you realized that Jet was the only person standing in the way. You had time to think it through – it wasn’t just the anger of finding out, a spur-of-the-moment thing. You planned it.’

Billy shifted, getting there now, cold metal digging in against his flesh, tucked beneath his shirt.

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