Divine Evil

music, the priest's clothes. The whole ritual.” She stopped abruptly, uncomfortable with her own choice of words. “Later, I suppose I figured that he'd just gotten a little older, put some distance between himself and all the things he'd rebelled against in his upbringing. He'd probably missed the security and the familiarity. He'd have been about the age I am now,” she murmured. “Nearly thirty and starting to wonder what the rest of his life would be like. He was worried about Blair and me, too. The fact that we'd had no religious training. He felt as though he'd overcompensated for his parents by going as far in the opposite direction as possible.”
    “Did he say that?”
    “Yes, actually, I remember him saying almost exactly that to my mother. Dad was what my mother called a fretter. Always worrying whether he'd done the right thing or, if he had, whether he'd done it well enough. He tried so hard not to stuff the church down our throats. He wasn't a fanatic, Cam. He was just a man struggling to do his best.”
    “When did he start drinking, Clare?”
    “I don't really know.” Her fingers began to twist together on her lap. “It wasn't a sudden thing, more of a progressive one. None of us really noticed at first. I remember him having a whiskey and soda after dinner. Then maybe he'd have two. Then he stopped bothering with the soda.”
    The misery in her voice had him reaching over to still her hands. “Clare, I've been down that road. I'm the last one who would condemn him.”
    “I feel disloyal. Can't you understand? I feel like I'm betraying him by talking about his flaws and mistakes.”
    “He was a whole person. Whole people have flaws.Don't you think he'd have wanted you to recognize them and love him anyway?”
    “You sound like my shrink.” She rose and walked to the window. “I was thirteen the first time I saw him really drunk. I'd come home from school. Blair had band practice, and my mother was at a meeting. Emmitsboro Boosters or something. Dad was at the kitchen table, crying into a bottle of whiskey. It scared me to see him that way, reeking and sobbing, his eyes all red. He kept telling me how sorry he was. His words were all slurred together, and he tried to stand up. He fell. He just lay there on the kitchen floor, crying and trying to apologize.” She brushed impatiently at a tear. “‘I'm sorry, baby. I'm so sorry. I don't know what to do. I can't do anything. I can't change it. I can't go back and change it.’”
    “Change what?”
    “His drinking, I suppose. He couldn't control it. He didn't think he could change it. He told me he'd never wanted me to see him that way. He was really frantic about that. He'd never wanted me to see, wanted me to know.”
    “Wouldn't that have been around the time he was making the deal for the shopping center?”
    “Yes. And the closer all that came to being a reality, the more he drank. My father was a very uncomfortable criminal. His ambitions might have gotten out of line, but his conscience made him pay.”
    “I want you to try to think. Did he go out at night with any regularity? Did he go out with someone or a particular group?”
    Sighing, she turned back. “He belonged to all kinds of groups, Cam. The Jaycees, the Optimist Club, the Knights of Columbus. He was out quite a bit for meetings, dinners, to show houses after hours. I used to ask togo with him, but he would tuck me into bed and tell me I had to wait until I grew up, then he would make me his partner. One night I snuck into his car—” She broke off, eyes panicked, cheeks paling.
    “You snuck into his car?” Cam prompted.
    “No, no, I didn't. I only dreamed I did. You can keep the books if you think they'll help. I need to get back.”
    He took her arm before she could bolt for the door. “What did you dream, Clare?”
    “For Christ's sake, Cam, my dreams are certainly my business.”
    She had the same look on her face, precisely the same look, as when he had pulled her out of the nightmare. “Where did he go that night?”
    “I don't know. I was dreaming.”
    “Where did you dream he went?”
    She went limp, seemed to fold into herself when he eased her into the chair again. “I don't know. It was a dream. I was only about five or six.”
    “But you remember the dream. You still have the dream.”
    She stared at the books on Cam's desk. “Sometimes.”
    “Tell me what you remember.”
    “It didn't happen. I woke up in my own bed.”
    “Before you