The Departed

lying.
    She smiled at him.
    As Joshua passed by them, Taylor made himself look at the man. “What’s going to happen with your son?”
    “I don’t know.” The other man looked ten years older—no, twenty years older—in that moment. “I just don’t know. I gave the journal to the police. I had to.”
    Both Dez and Taylor stared.
    Joshua’s humorless laugh rang hollowly through the foyer. “What else could I do? He killed another boy—Tristan Haler—earlier this summer. I read it, in black and white. After I read it, I went to the bathroom and puked my guts up. I turned it in to the cops—I fucking had to, because that boy’s family deserves to know the truth. Then I went back and stared at him, hating myself because part of me still loves him. He’s a monster. He’s my son. And I love him. But I can’t ignore what he did.”
    He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “I just don’t know what will happen. He may go to jail and I’ll tell him that he needs to at least try to work out a plea agreement. But he needs rehab, he needs counseling, and he looks at me with hatred in his eyes. I don’t even know if he’ll let me help him.”
    “I’m sorry,” Dez said quietly.
    He shot her an unreadable look, then shifted his gaze away, not responding.
    Taylor pressed his lips to her brow and then eased back. There was little indecision as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He handed it to her and said, “I need the card for Greg Moeller.”
    She cocked a brow, then shrugged. As she rifled through his wallet, he kept his gaze focused on her hands. Not on Moore, not on the pages he held—for once, Taylor was perfectly happy in not knowing every last detail. Once she had the card out, she gave it to him.
    He in turn gave it to Moore. “I’m calling my lawyer. He handles the financial affairs for my family estate—I’m going to set up a fund for the kid’s health care costs— only the health care costs.”
    Joshua shook his head. “No.”
    “Yes.” Taylor glanced at Dez and then back at Moore. “Your son brought this on himself. You and I both know it. People may damn well try to spin it otherwise and I’ll deal with that when it happens. But…if I’d exercised more caution, perhaps he wouldn’t have been hurt.”
    “ Perhaps ?” Joshua stared at him.
    “Perhaps.” Taylor kept his voice cool. “I don’t know. He took off running, and he didn’t have to. We both know that. Something else we both know—if he’d gotten out of the house that night, it’s very likely he would have hurt people. He got too much pleasure from doing it. I can live with what happened to him, knowing nobody else was hurt that night. But you’re going to have your hands full, just helping your wife get through what she’s going through. You don’t need the burden of figuring out how to care for his health needs—and they’ll be many.”
    Joshua gripped the card. “So this is…what, a way to mitigate your guilt?”
    “No. It is exactly what I said it is.” He turned back to Dez and wished Joshua Moore were ten thousand miles away.
    So he could break.

CHAPTER TWENTY–THREE
    THEY slept in a guest bedroom.
    In the morning, Dez planned on asking Taylor if they could go back to the cottage. She didn’t figure it would take much to talk him into it. She also hoped they wouldn’t have to stay for long. They had to see to Anna, but after that…
    She missed home.
    She missed her home.
    She was kind of hoping she could maybe talk him into making it his home, too. His house would be too chaotic for her. There would be too many imprints from others and she couldn’t handle it.
    For now, though, they were together in the silent emptiness of a graceful, sad manor with a heartbreaking past and Dez lay curled against the chest of the man she loved.
    With the heat of his body pressed to hers, she didn’t notice the change in temperature right away.
    And there wasn’t that desolation, either.
    But something about the currents in the air when she finally opened her eyes made her realize…she wasn’t alone and Anna had been in there for more than a couple of minutes.
    She was sitting on a chair, swinging her legs back and forth, something any child would do.
    And she was smiling.
    It wasn’t precisely a child’s smile, although there was naïve innocence to it as she stared at Dez. “You’re in bed with my brother.”
    Dez winced. This was a first. She’d never had