Lemon Tart

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Drawing a deep breath she walked to the table and pulled out the only other chair in the room. Jack didn’t look up at her. She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. She was aware of the mirror behind her but tried not to think about Cunningham standing there listening. Watching. The next few minutes were about Jack, and what he said he’d done.

  “Jack,” she said. The whisper sounded loud in the barren room.

  He took a breath and finally lifted his head. The tears she’d been holding back filled her eyes at the look of hopeless sorrow on his face. On impulse she reached across the table and took his hands—needing to reach out to him any way she could. He wrapped his large fingers around her smaller ones and held on tight. It made her cry even harder. Maybe this was a bad idea, she thought as a sob shook her chest. And yet she tried to push through the emotion and get down to the task at hand—proving her brother’s innocence.

  “I’m so sorry, Sadie,” he said, tears dripping down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

  Sadie didn’t know what to say to that so she remained silent.

  Jack continued, “I don’t know how it happened . . . everything just got so crazy.”

  “Jack,” Sadie said again after several seconds of silence. Jack let go of her hands and wiped awkwardly at his eyes with his cuffed hands, but the tears continued to fall. It just didn’t make sense and the more she looked at him the less sense it made. She knew this man, he was her brother—her protector. With their parents gone, and their sister living several states away for the last twenty-five years, he was the person on this earth she knew longer and better than anyone else. She couldn’t have misjudged him so much. Looking at him, broken and crying, she couldn’t accept that he’d killed a woman. It just couldn’t be true.

  “Why are you taking the fall for this?” There—she’d said it! She’d vocalized what had brought her in this room.

  Jack’s head popped up and his eyes went wide. “What are you talking about?” he asked, an edge of panic in his voice.

  “I know about the bank account and what Ron did—and I know he’s your friend. But, Jack, you can’t throw your life away for him. That isn’t justice for anyone. You have no reason to do this.”

  Jack let out a breath and looked back at the table. “All Ron did was try to help me—that’s all he’s ever done for me. I did this. I did all of it.”

  “I called Larue,” Sadie said. “She saw you Monday night in the bar—though you know better than to hang out in places like that.” She paused and told herself not to get distracted with lectures that didn’t matter right now. “She said it was after midnight when she left you and the other people there, but you were at breakfast the next morning. Anne was killed in the early morning—you couldn’t have made the two-hour drive to Garrison, killed Anne, and gotten back to Denver in time.”

  Jack was silent, but he didn’t give in. “She’s wrong,” Jack said, squaring his shoulders—an action Sadie found odd. Why take a defensive stance with her? “There were a lot of people there. She was mistaken—probably drunk. I got back just in time for the breakfast.”

  “And laughed and joked about life insurance fraud in your opening class? You wouldn’t do that after just killing someone. Besides,” she paused and took a breath, “Ron is Trevor’s father, not you—you have no motive.” It was her last holdout, but it sounded jagged and vaporous once she said it out loud.

  Jack shook his head. “No. I’m Trevor’s . . . father,” he said strongly, though his shoulders slumped again. “Ron set up the account for me—I couldn’t have it showing up on a credit report. What if Carrie saw it?” He looked Sadie in the eyes, hard and deep and she couldn’t breathe for fear of what she’d hear next. The silence stretched like a rubber band.

  “Anne was hired as a receptionist at the Boston office three years ago,” Jack said, looking into the mirror behind Sadie’s shoulder, as if he were talking to the detectives back there rather than talking to her. “I met her when I went to the spring conference that year.” He let out a breath and Sadie almost felt as if she were intruding on his memory, one that obviously brought him both guilt and reluctant pleasure to relive. “She was only twenty-two years old, and yet she seemed so mature, so grown up. Carrie and I . . . well, you know better than anyone how our relationship was, how it’s always been. The older girls had moved out—something I had always thought would precede a repair in our relationship. It didn’t. Things were as bad as ever and Carrie was holding on to Trina as if she was the only joy Carrie had left in her life. I was just so unhappy.” He stopped.

  “You had an affair with Anne?” Sadie asked, desperately needing to hear him say it. Her brain was still processing slowly, throwing out excuses and justifications like birdseed. She wanted so badly to have another explanation to all this.

  “Oh, please, Sadie,” he said, frustration lacing his tone. “Don’t judge me. We can’t all be saints.”

  Sadie pulled back, but bit her tongue. This discussion wasn’t about her and she wasn’t going to let him change the subject.

  Jack lifted his hands to his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This isn’t your fault.”

  They both went silent again; Sadie couldn’t think of a single word to say. Jack was Trevor’s father? The idea nauseated her.

  Jack finally let out a breath and continued. “It was months after I met her before I . . . we . . . then the guilt nearly ate me alive.” He took his hands down and Sadie studied his face, disheartened to see the honesty in the lines around his eyes. He was telling her the truth. “I didn’t know what to do with a young, beautiful woman pursuing me, listening to me, admiring me. It was more than I could handle.”

  She swallowed and nodded for him to continue while praying for help in knowing what to say, what questions to ask. She wished she’d just given her statement and gone home.

  “I love Carrie,” he said with resolution. “For better and for worse—I love her. She’s my wife.” His voice cracked. “She bore me three wonderful daughters and she was always true to me, always took care of our home, always took care of the girls. Many men would love to have a wife such as her.”

  Sadie kept her thoughts to herself. Yes, Carrie had her strengths, but she had her faults as well—faults that came out most often with her husband. Though it disgusted and disappointed Sadie to no end that Jack—gallant and devoted Jack—had strayed. Carrie was not generous in her affection or affirmations toward her husband. That part wasn’t Jack’s fault.

  He continued. “And I broke our vows, I put asunder the covenants I’d made to her and to God. After just a few weeks of clandestine weekend trips with Anne, I put an end to it.”

  Sadie licked her lips and found her voice. “Did Carrie find out? Is that why you broke it off?”

  “No,” Jack said with a shake of his head. “I was very . . . discreet. And the affair was short-lived. But I felt awful. I thought I would get over her fast, and Carrie and I would carry on as if nothing had happened.”

  “But Anne was pregnant,” Sadie inserted.

  Jack nodded and his face, already slack, fell even more. “I managed to avoid Boston for six months. I wouldn’t take her calls; I blocked her e-mail. When I finally went to Boston, her condition was obvious. She pulled me aside and told me to leave Carrie, to be a dad to this baby. I couldn’t believe she expected me to disregard my entire life so easily, but she did. She’d been waiting for me to come to her—she’d been waiting all those months to say those things to me in person. And then, when I explained I couldn’t do what she wanted—wouldn’t do it—she threatened to call Carrie herself.” He took a breath. “I couldn’t let her do that, so I offered her money. I cashed in a portion of my retirement. Twelve thousand went directly to Anne and the other eight was specifically for the baby’s college later on. Then I agreed to pay her $500 a month in child support—Ron set up the accounts.”

  “Ron,” Sadie breathed, not realizing she’d spoken out loud until the word escaped her lips. Her mind accept
ed the fact that Trevor wasn’t his son but she wasn’t sure how to go back to unsuspecting him of the murder—and yet Jack still had more talking to do.

  “He was divorced,” Jack continued, seeming as if he was now in a hurry to divulge the secrets he’d worked so hard to protect. “Ron didn’t have a wife who would be suspicious about an extra bank account or two. It made sense to have him as the middleman, keeping Anne and me from having to deal with each other, and he was willing to do it—he’s the executor for the college fund and a cosigner on Anne’s account. I didn’t want her to have access to all the money.” He looked up and met Sadie’s eyes. “Don’t hold this against him, Sadie, he was only trying to help a friend. It was all set up before he even met you. I guess, once it got started, it just seemed like it wasn’t such a big deal. I felt like we’d fixed everything. Anne would stay in Boston, I would help financially, but I wouldn’t have to watch my family torn apart because of what I’d done.”

  Sadie tried, really tried, to give Ron the credit Jack wanted her to give him, but it wasn’t working. “Ron went to see her that night, Jack. He was in her house. Setting up those accounts wasn’t all he did. He’s part of this deception—that speaks of his character in big loud words—and now Anne’s dead.” She didn’t have to say that it spoke to Jack’s character even louder.

  “Sadie,” Jack sighed. “You’re a good person. It’s no wonder that this doesn’t make sense to you. I even told Ron that—”

  “Why do you keep saying that? That I’m a saint, that I’m a good person. Do you think because I choose to see the good in the world, the good in people, that I can’t understand this?”

  Jack’s eyes softened, showing his love for her and how much he hated telling her this. His sympathy only made her more upset. He should have told her everything a long time ago. She’d have helped him fix it. She’d have talked to Carrie, talked to the pastor of their church, even talked to Anne. Why hadn’t he asked for her help instead of treating her as if she were too delicate for reality?

  He continued, “I think . . . you have a good heart. It’s not in your nature to be deceiving and selfish. I think it’s very hard for you to understand what motivated me, or Ron for that matter.”

  “That’s lovely, Jack,” Sadie said, sitting back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest. “Does it make you feel like some kind of intellectual to talk down to me? I understand loneliness,” she said. “Better than you do. And I understand hopelessness, and wanting more than you have. I can see what drove you to be with Anne—not that I in any way approve or justify it—but I also know the difference between right and wrong. And so do you.”

  Sadie paused, took a breath and reminded herself, again, that this wasn’t about her. She could not afford to get sidetracked. “So, you said you had it all figured out. What went wrong?”

  “It got complicated, but that wasn’t Ron’s fault.” He paused and then spoke again. “After Trevor was born, Anne sent me pictures of him. A son.” Tears filled his eyes again. Jack had always wanted a son.

  Sure, he’d never said so out loud, but with each of Carrie’s pregnancies he seemed to be holding his breath. He loved his girls, and would have doted on them if Carrie hadn’t gone overboard and left so little parenting for him to participate in. Instead, he’d become very close to Sadie’s son, Shawn. Jack was the one who did scouting with Shawn, talked to him about the birds and the bees, showed him how to sack a quarterback, and took Shawn to his cabin for hunting weekends. The love for that cabin was something only those two could appreciate—another thing that bonded them together—and Sadie had often pondered on what a blessing Shawn was in Jack’s life. In many ways Jack was closer to Shawn than he was to his own daughters. And Anne gave Jack a son of his own. How terribly, horribly ironic.

  “I tried to stay away,” he said, “to pretend it hadn’t happened, but the next time I went to Boston I called her. And the next, and the next. I made it clear to Anne that our relationship was over, but I wanted to see Trevor. I was able to see him every few months, watch him grow. Finally, when Trevor was fourteen months old I realized he was getting old enough to remember me between visits. My staying in his life would make things harder for everyone. It broke my heart to do what I had to do, Sadie, it was awful, but I paid Anne more money based on her promise to leave me alone. Dad died a few weeks later and I told Carrie I only got half the inheritance he really left for me, the other half went to Anne to pretend I had never been a part of her life. That Trevor was not my child.”

  Jack let out a breath and wouldn’t meet Sadie’s eyes. She had the feeling that he didn’t want to talk anymore. She wasn’t about to let that happen. “You’re lucky I never talked to Carrie about the inheritance,” Sadie said. As executor of their dad’s will, Sadie knew Jack had received almost eighty thousand dollars—same as she did. “I could have clued her in without knowing it.”

  Jack nodded and gave her a repentant look. “I’d managed your investments long enough to know you weren’t one to talk about money.”

  Well, that was true. She’d always felt that finances were a personal matter, which was why so few people knew that she was so well off. “But Anne came to Garrison anyway,” Sadie said, getting back to the topic at hand. “Why did she do that?” But Sadie had read the book. She knew exactly why Anne had come to Garrison.

  Jack shrugged and wiped at his eyes again. “I hadn’t spoken with her for months, not since sending her the money. Then I came home from work one day and Carrie starts telling me about this woman who had just rented the Tilly house. That night I take the garbage to the curb, and who should meet me with Trevor in her arms? She said that Trevor needed a father and if I refused to go to her, she’d come to me.” He paused. “I begged her to leave, I offered her more money. She didn’t want it.”

  An instant picture entered Sadie’s mind. It was May, she was helping Anne plant some tomatoes in the backyard. The ground was warming up and Anne was excited about growing something all her own. The day was warm, with a breeze that kept blowing their hair around their faces. Trevor was kicking a ball—sometimes directly at them—but mostly against the back of the house, then running after it. Sadie had teased Anne about using her fresh tomatoes to lure in a good man come fall, when the harvest would be on. Anne had smiled to herself and tucked a strand of highlighted hair behind her ear.

  “I’m just waiting for Mr. Right, Sadie. He’ll come around.”

  Mr. Right—Mr. Jack Wright to be exact. Anne was waiting for him—waiting for him to come to her. In the meantime she was taking seriously her education on how to care for a home and family the way Jack would want—with Sadie as the teacher. It wasn’t the book, not exactly, but it was close enough.

  Even now Sadie could see Anne’s face from that day, see the smile Sadie had interpreted as longing and dreamy, rather than secretive and contemplative. She had to shake her head to get rid of the vision, afraid that her feelings of betrayal would overshadow the sense she needed to understand what Jack was telling her.

  “And then you left Carrie a few weeks after Anne moved in. Had she found out?” Sadie asked, bringing herself back to the present.

  “No,” Jack said, a little too fast. “She didn’t know until I confessed everything last night. But back then, once Anne had moved in, I knew it was only a matter of time. I’d run out of cards to play and fate was catching up with me. So I left—I left both of them. I couldn’t bear seeing Anne, seeing Trevor—seeing what I’d done. I hoped that if I left, Anne would leave too.”

  Sadie watched his face. He wasn’t looking her in the eye anymore. Instead he had a distant look on his face while his eyes were blankly fixed on the tabletop. “But then you changed your mind and came back to kill Anne months later?” Sadie asked. Up to this point she believed him. Not that the story wasn’t utterly fantastic, but the emotions that played across his face weren’t feigned. He meant what he said. But there was no way he killed Anne. He wouldn’t work so hard to take care of her
and Trevor and then murder her. It was ludicrous. “And what about Trevor? What did you do with him?”

  Jack was silent for a long time. Sadie was patient. He skirted the question. “Anne called some old coworkers in Boston and got a job at the office here in Garrison. I saw her when she came in for her interview on Friday. She actually came into my office and gave me a key to her place. She said I’d be wanting to come see her soon and she was trying to make it easy for me. She was invading my life—stalking me. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “And Trevor? Where is he?”

  “He’s . . . safe.”

  “He’s alive?”

  Jack’s head snapped up. “Of course he’s alive.”

  Sadie shrugged as if they weren’t discussing the life of a two-year-old boy. “Well, you’d kill his mother, why not assume you’d kill him too? Destroying the evidence, so to speak.”

  “He’s my son,” Jack said in short, clipped words, looking horrified. “I would never hurt him.”

  “And killing his mother isn’t hurting him? Where is he?”

  Jack looked back down at his hands. “The police will find him soon,” he said.

  The cryptic response took her by surprise. What did that mean? “Tell me where he is and I’ll go get him.”

  “No.” It was a solid no, a “there is no way in heck I’ll ever tell you” kind of no.

  “So let me get this straight,” Sadie said, wiggling forward in her seat and putting her arms on the table, shortening the distance between them. His story was beginning to unravel. “You won’t risk telling your wife about your infidelity and illegitimate child, but you’ll kill the mother of your only son?”