In Close (Bulletproof #3)(32)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Mom was having an affair with Joe.”

Claire curved her fingernails into her palms. “No.”

“Yes!”

“What makes you so sure?”

“That’s why she freaked out. She considered him her man, her guilty pleasure, and was afraid he’d been messing around with both of us. So the confrontation at his place involved as much accusation as anything else. That’s why he showed her the tape. So he could blame it all on me.”

Claire grappled to understand how such a situation might have played out. “She thought he acted on your…overtures?”

“Worse. He exposed himself to me first.”

Remembering how charitable she’d been feeling toward Joe at the bar, Claire stepped back. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No. We’d been flirting for weeks. A thirteen-year-old girl doesn’t do something that bold out of the blue, without some expectation that it’ll be welcomed.”

That made sense, but… “Mom wouldn’t believe it?”

“Of course not. Not after that tape.”

Claire shook her head. “I can’t believe what you’re saying, either.”

Leanne’s jaw dropped. “What part of it?”

“All of it. That he came on to you. That you and he had a relationship. That Mom was jealous instead of hurt and sickened by what you’d done.”

“You don’t trust me? Just because I didn’t want to tell you I masturbated on video for a man I thought I loved?”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Claire pressed cold hands to her hot face. “I’m saying you’ve been keeping secrets about that day for a long time. How do I know even this is the full truth?”

“Because I don’t have anything to hide anymore! I’ve told you the worst of it!”

But she wasn’t as embarrassed as she should’ve been. She was almost…defiant or…or proud in some perverse way. As if she thought it was some kind of feather in her cap that she could interest a married man at such a young age—or compete with her own mother. “You’re reacting to the rumors, that’s all. Maybe you’re projecting. It’s easy to tell yourself you have no reason to feel bad for what you’ve done when someone else has misbehaved, too.”

At that, Leanne started to laugh. “I saw the way they were together that day, the way his eyes followed her around the room, the way he tried to touch her. It wasn’t how you’d expect an acquaintance to behave.”

“She was probably heartbroken to think her young daughter would make a  p**n ographic video, and he was trying to comfort her.”

Leanne threw up her hands. “This is a waste of time. You see Mom through rose-colored glasses and no amount of reality will change your mind.”

“Where is the video?” Maybe there was something on that, something Leanne had said or done to preface her actions that would clarify the situation. It wasn’t what Claire wanted to view and yet she couldn’t judge what Leanne was thinking back then without seeing at least the beginning.

“Mom destroyed it. She ripped out the tape, then set fire to it in our fireplace.”

Claire was down to twenty minutes before her first haircut showed up, but she couldn’t pull herself away. “Why are you telling me now?”

“Because you need to understand that Mom left. Remember when they searched the house and discovered a suitcase was missing? Where do you suppose it went?”

Who could say? Claire had always feared it’d been used to dispose of her mother’s body. Alana hadn’t taken a damn thing. She hadn’t even packed. None of her clothes were missing, none of her toiletries. And her car had been sitting in the drive, the engine cold. “If she’d been carrying a suitcase, someone would’ve noticed her walking down the street. A woman toting luggage isn’t a sight you see every day, especially in a community as small as this one.”

“She could’ve had a friend pick her up at the house.”

“What friend, Leanne? If she was having an affair with Joe, why would she leave with someone else?”

“Because he wouldn’t sacrifice his marriage for their love—or whatever it was. Mom was as upset about that as she was about the video.”

The person Leanne described wasn’t the person Claire had known as her mother. “So how would she have met this other…friend?”

“Maybe it was an old boyfriend, a high school sweetheart from California.”

Where she was born and raised until her parents moved to Pineview her senior year to enjoy their retirement. “And how would they have kept in touch, become close enough to decide they’d run away together?”

“By email. How else?”

Claire shook her head. “No, not by email. The police checked our computer. Mom had written to some old friends, but there was nothing questionable in that correspondence.”

“Our sheriff’s department isn’t the most sophisticated in the world, in case you haven’t noticed. And that was fourteen years ago, before forensic science was as advanced as it is today. Who knows what they might’ve missed?”

“Still, she would’ve mentioned someone, and she didn’t.”

“We were kids! Do you think she’d tell us?”

Was that what she thought? Human beings were complex, often reacting differently depending on circumstances. And Claire was only sixteen at the time, caught up in all the typical teenage drama. Was it feasible that her mother had been far less happy than she’d assumed? Had Alana grown disenchanted with her marriage and begun to cast around for something more fulfilling? Did she get involved with Joe Kenyon and then realize, when everything came to a head because of Leanne’s shocking video, that she had no hope for happiness there, either? Had she kept in touch with someone from her past and thrown away everything she’d established in Montana to return to California?

Claire knew Alana had missed her home state. She’d liked to visit there, especially after her parents, tired of the cold winters, moved back, but…

“Dad would’ve known if there was someone else,” she said. “And he would’ve told the police. He never accused her. It was other people, with no proof. Some of them didn’t even know her well.”

“Maybe he didn’t reveal everything he could because he didn’t want to hurt us by tarnishing her memory.”

The way Leanne was doing now. “That would hardly help bring her back.”