“Hey, baby girl. Grandma said you were in here. What are you doing?”
She held up her camera. “Decorating on a budget.”
He nodded. “He’s going to stay in the house with you, isn’t he?”
There was no question of who “he” was or how her father felt about it. Piper nodded. “Yes.”
Her father sighed. “If it doesn’t work out, there’s always a place for you at home. Just so you know.”
“I know.” She did. “I’m sorry that you don’t feel good about this. I never wanted to disappoint you.”
“Oh, baby, you could never disappoint me.” He held open his arms. “Come here.”
She did, because she was going to cry and she wanted to feel his big, strong hug surrounding her.
“I just want you to be happy. I don’t want you hurt.”
“He’s not going to hurt me,” she said into his chest, words muffled.
“You’re special to me. You know that.”
She nodded, but then she looked up and told him honestly, “I don’t want to be special. I don’t want to be the girl who got dumped in your driveway so you can never be hard on me. I want you to treat me like you do the boys, and I want to make my own mistakes and fall on my butt and have you tell me I’m being stupid.”
His jaw worked. “Alright, you’re being stupid.”
Piper gave a watery laugh, stepping back away from him. “I didn’t mean right now, not about this.”
“As far as I can figure, this is the first dumb thing you’ve ever done besides letting Cameron talk you into going to the honky-tonk when you were eighteen. So maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s time for me to let go and let you fall in love with a man you just met.” He studied her for a second, then threw his hands up. “Love is maybe the stupidest thing any of us ever do and it almost never makes sense. So who am I to say who you should be with? Would anyone have thought it would work out between me and Amanda? They were probably placing bets on how soon we’d wind up divorced, her hightailing back to Chicago, yet here we are.”
“Here we are,” Piper repeated softly, feeling the weight of his disapproval lifting off her shoulders. She cried a little harder, just knowing that she could love both the two most important men in her life. Because she did love Brady, whether the words had been spoken out loud or not. “And I’m the luckiest girl in the world to have a father who loves me like you do.”
Now her father looked like he was working up a tear, only he pretended it wasn’t there and said gruffly, “Come on, there’s pie at home. Grandma and Grandpa are coming over for dinner.”
If there was one thing Tuckers agreed on, it was that pie solved everything. Or maybe that pie went with everything, including the bittersweet.
“Sounds perfect.”
* * *
BRADY STARED AT THE MOUNTAIN OF MOVING BOXES around him and rolled his shoulders. Every muscle from head to toe ached. Even his tongue ached. It was nothing but affirming that he was making the right decision to get out of town because none of his so-called friends had been willing to help him pack his stuff up and get it on the van. He had suddenly realized that what he had was a bunch of superficial relationships and nothing more. Not that he was blaming other people. Those were the friendships he had cultivated, keeping people at arm’s length, never sharing much more than a drink or two after work.
For years, he had drawn it that way, but now it wasn’t enough. It was black-and-white when he wanted color.
It made him all the more eager to get back to Cuttersville and Gran and his stepmom and Shelby and Piper. Most of all Piper.
Fortunately he didn’t have that much stuff. He’d sold his couches and bed to a former coworker. So that was that.
He was going to sleep on the couch, then head out in the morning, so he was lounging on it with the file from Bree. This was the first opportunity he’d had to read it.
Rachel’s death certificate was in the file. Intemperence was the official cause of death. Brady had had to look the word up on his phone and found out it meant “excessive consumption.” So she had overdosed, in other words. Intemperence was a much nicer way to say she was a smack addict.
Flipping through the pages, he saw daily schedules for her, dosing charts, the bill her parents were sent for seven dollars and eighteen cents. When he came across a report written by a Dr. Cyrus Drummond, he thought he might have found something.
“I do not believe that Miss Strauss’s insanity was caused by dissipation and menstrual derangement as was originally concluded. After extensive conversations with the patient, my conclusion is that she is wholly sane. Her current state of confusion can be attributed to grief and dependence on laudanum and chloroform. It is my opinion that Miss Strauss is just as much a victim as her dead fiancé.”
Brady sat up, intrigued, chewing his fingernail as he read. “So what happened, Dr. Drummond? The dude didn’t whack himself.”
“The story that she tells is one of deception, manipulation, and violence, but none of it perpetuated by her. It was her understanding that her maid was of a duplicitous nature and was well acquainted with the male form. Miss Strauss had actually informed her earlier in the evening that she was being dismissed, as her conduct had been shy of appropriate. Then she went upstairs to fetch her bonnet at the last moment, and as she was returning down the stairs, she heard her fiancé spurning the advances of the maid. Though this distressed her, nothing could prepare her for the sight of coming around the corner and seeing her fiancé being bludgeoned with a candlestick. Miss Strauss was aghast, in shock, and as the maid repeatedly struck him, Miss Strauss rushed forward to assist and was herself hit upon the head. She sat stunned, whoozy, as the maid put the candlestick in her hand and began to scream, thus turning herself to victim. By the time help arrived a few moments later, Miss Strauss’s mind had snapped and she was not able to coherently tell her story to a doubting witness and, later, the coroner. The maid, who was at once hateful and manipulative, successfully maneuvered herself into position as the district attorney’s wife, and Miss Strauss’s fate was sealed. I have repeatedly suggested to the board of directors here at the asylum that Miss Strauss be released to no avail.”
That was interesting. The doctor in charge of her treatment thought Rachel was innocent.
The story sounded believable enough to him.
Did it matter? Brady wasn’t sure.