Page 84 of The Couple's Secret
Zane was still standing on the opposite side of the cabinet from his brother, pale and stunned, hands slack at his sides. Gretchen leaned toward him, getting into his personal space. “Zane?” she asked. “Did Jackson ever share these suspicions with you?”
He flinched as more rain hit his forehead. “No, no. He never said anything. I don’t understand. Jacks? Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Jackson shook his head and muscled the cabinet off to the side and into the bay on his own. Climbing back into the truck bed, he said, “What would be the point, Zane? You were just a kid still. I was an adult. I wasn’t putting that kind of shit on you.”
Zane watched as he stripped off his utility gloves and unstrapped a dolly from the back of the truck bed. “You weren’t putting that kind of shit on me, but you left me in the house with a goddamn murderer? Cora? Jesus, you left Riley with him?”
Jackson wrenched the dolly from its tethers. It clanged against the glass of the cab and then the metal wheel cover. “Leave my wife out of this.”
“I can’t,” Zane said, voice high. “I loved her. I was in love?—”
“Shut up!” Jackson shouted at him.
“You left her there, unprotected!”
“I had no proof!” Jackson roared.
“You could have told me. You should have told me.”
A dump truck approached. It was filled with trash, probably headed toward the compactors. The driver stopped when he saw them gathered there. Jackson glared at him and then shook his head. Apparently, that was all the signal the guy needed to throw the truck in reverse. The back-up alarm shrieked. As soon as it stopped and the truck began driving away, Jackson pointed at Zane.
“You loved Dad. Worshiped him. Do you honestly think if I had told you, ‘Hey, I think our dad killed both of our moms,’ that you would have reacted with anything but disbelief and horror? You were a kid, Zane. You would have hated me for thinking it and gone running straight to him to tattle on me.”
“No,” Zane choked.
Jackson laughed bitterly. Abandoning the dolly, he gripped the Coke machine on both sides and tried to shimmy it toward the center of the truck bed. His forearms, now slick with rain, strained with the effort. “You know,” he said over his shoulder. “I hated you for a long time. I should have been happy for you that you never had to bear the burden of that knowledge. You didn’t have to live with it. To look at the man you loved and admired your entire life, who gave you everything, and realize that every single thing you thought you knew about him was a lie.”
“Jacks,” Zane said but his brother didn’t even look at him.
The rain started coming down harder. Jackson continued to struggle with the Coke machine, rocking it from side to side, moving it in small increments. “You never had to live with the fact that Dad was a piece of shit. Maybe he didn’t hit women like Dalton did but in his own way, he was abusive. Sneaky, manipulative, ruthless. You didn’t see that side of him. It was almost worse because you never knew what he’d do or what would set him off. You didn’t have to smile at him and act like a loving son knowing the entire time that he had taken the one person who had truly loved you.”
Josie felt a prickle along the nape of her neck that had nothing to do with the rain sluicing down into her shirt. It was that familiar goading of her subconscious, teasing her, daring her to put the pieces of the puzzle together when she still couldn’t work out the larger picture.
“You should have told me,” Zane repeated.
“Drop it, Zane,” Jackson said flatly. “It doesn’t matter now anyway.”
Josie watched Zane swallow, his throat working. Water rolled down his forehead and dripped from his battered nose. His pallor was starting to look unnatural.
“I saw Hollis’s insulin pens in the trash the day my mom died,” he said quietly. “In our kitchen.”
Forty-Six
Jackson froze, wet hands still gripping the sides of the Coke machine. This time, he looked directly at Zane. A flurry of emotions passed over his face. Sadness, defeat, frustration, love, and then pity. He shook his head slowly. “Dad was sloppy. Ironic, isn’t it? How careless he was and he still never got caught? It doesn’t matter now, Zane. Hasn’t mattered for seven years.”
Zane stepped forward until his stomach brushed against the tailgate. His sandy hair was soaked through. “Was he going to kill Cora?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Well, what the hell were you planning to do with all of that information? All your suspicions?” Zane asked angrily. “There were three of us living with him and you knew—you knew for… for years! You said you were twenty when you started to remember. That means you left us in that house with him for three years. Did you ever plan to do anything?”
Jackson turned his back to them, resting his head against the face of the Coke machine. He didn’t answer.
“Did you ever confront your father?” Josie asked.
The puzzle pieces were shuffling around in her mind. Common denominator. Motive. Expanding their definition of a criminal organization. Police corruption. Someone always knew something.
“Jackson,” she said. “Did you ever confront Tobias?”
