“I’m fine the way I am.” He folded his arms as he leaned against the wall, waiting to see what his stepfather would hit him with this time.
“Ned called me this morning,” John said.
“Why would Ned call you?” Cain hated the sullen note that crept into his voice.
“He thought I should have a word with you before you spoke to anyone else.”
“Spoke to anyone else about what?”
“About last night.”
“I don’t see how Amy’s murder involves you.”
“It does.”
“Because…”
“Because I cared about her, too, damn it! She was like a daughter to me even before she married you.”
Amy did anything she could to worm her way into his family’s affections, to gain more ground in her attempt to possess him. Cain remembered her stopping by to clean John’s house, bake him cookies, drop off some movies she thought he’d like. Cain had ignored it all, but John had reveled in her devotion and even suggested to Cain that he was foolish to “let her go.”
Actually, she used to do all those things. It was hard to grasp that she was really gone.
“Beyond that, Ned believes, and I tend to agree with him,” John was saying, “that there’s got to be a connection between what’s going on at your place these days and what happened twelve years ago.”
What’s going on at your place… Cain couldn’t ignore the blame that tinged those words. “I agree, but I’m not that link,” Cain said.
“Sometimes people make mistakes.”
“Murder is more than a mistake.”
John ignored his response. “It might feel as if there’s no way out, but—”
“Just stop.”
“If you’d listen to me and quit being difficult…”
“You think I killed Amy. How am I supposed to react?”
John’s face flushed. This interview was gearing up to be the same power struggle they’d so often had in the past.
But then John closed his eyes and seemed to summon some patience. “I want you to know something.”
Cain didn’t bother asking what. It was coming whether he wanted to hear it or not.
“I want you to understand, truly understand, how hard it is to live each day without Jason. I miss him so much there are mornings when—” his eyes filled with tears “—mornings when I can hardly get out of bed.”
“I miss him, too,” Cain said, but he knew those words would sound insincere. John felt only his own pain; he’d never believe that Cain was capable of deeper emotion.
“It’s not the same.”
“Why not? Because I can’t love as well as you do?”
“Quit putting words in my mouth!”
“I’m merely clarifying what you really said.”
“All I mean is that it’s difficult not knowing the identity of the man who killed my son, not having any closure, any sense of justice,” he snapped. “I’m asking you to help me for once, damn it!”
How could he help? There was nothing Cain could do to assuage the pain John felt, nothing anyone could do. Cain wanted to know the identity of the man who’d killed Jason, too. Whoever it was had taken the only family member who’d loved him—besides Marshall, who’d been dealing with the onset of Alzheimer’s at the time. “You think I did it,” he said flatly.
John swallowed. “I’m beginning to wonder….”
“No, you’ve decided. That’s why you’re here. You believe Ned.”
“Did you, Cain? Did you kill my son?”
The accusation brought a flood of the old anger and frustration. “No!” he said, but he knew John wouldn’t believe him.
“That’s it?”
“What more can I say?”
“I know things have never been smooth between us, Cain. I know you don’t have a lot of respect for me. But I want you to understand that I did my best by you. When your mom got cancer, I was as devastated as you were—”
Cain raised a hand. “Stop! Don’t tell me how broken up you were by my mother’s last years. Not when I found that love letter you wrote to my high school English teacher barely two weeks after my mother’s first chemo treatment. Not when I spotted you at the school, hoping to talk to your new love interest while my mother was wasting away.”
His stepfather set his jaw. “I was reeling. I couldn’t cope. Don’t you understand that? I had children who still needed to be raised. I didn’t know what I was going to do without her.”
“So you were busy lining up her replacement?”
John shoved away from the desk and stood. “You little prick. You enjoy making me look bad, don’t you?”
“Is that all you care about, John? How you look to other people?”
“I cared about your mother, too!”
Cared? He couldn’t even say he loved her. Because he hadn’t. Not in the end. Or, if he had, he’d loved himself more. But that came as no surprise. “Then, where were you?” Cain asked. “Where were you when she needed you?”
It was Cain who’d sat with her when the pain grew too great. Cain who’d tried to make her comfortable and dealt with the hospice care workers. Cain who’d refused to give up hope and hung on as long as possible. His stepbrothers and stepfather had acted as if nothing was wrong. They’d always had one excuse or another for being elsewhere. Even Jason and Marshall. Jason was too busy with school. And Marshall was still coping with Mildred’s death; he was never the same afterward.
“Maybe I couldn’t stand to watch it!”
Cain wished he could believe that. But it was an excuse. Eventually, his English teacher had admitted to him that John had been pursuing her for months. After learning that, Cain had spent an afternoon in her bed as a silent form of revenge. And she’d wanted him to come back. But by then the whole situation had turned Cain’s stomach and he’d refused every request to “help with the yard work after school.”
Karen Stevens had moved a few years after he graduated but she’d returned to Whiterock about six months ago. Now she was teaching at the high school again—and dating John. So John was finally getting what he wanted.
Distantly, Cain wondered what his stepfather would say if he found out Cain had slept with Karen. For one reckless moment, Cain was tempted to throw it in his face, to strike back. But he knew that in the end, he’d only feel worse, because he was ashamed of it and because it would hurt Karen. “If you expect my sympathy, you’re not going to get it,” he said.