Killer's Cousin by Nancy Werlin Read Free Book Online Page A

Then, finally, he sat down. “This wasn’t what I meant to talk about.” He waved at the other chair. “Could you sit down, please? I can’t talk with you looming over me.”
    I sat.
    â€œI didn’t think your being here would matter much,” Vic said at last. “I just wanted to do something for Eileen. But it has made a difference …”
    â€œI’m sorry—” I began, but Vic waved me into silence.
    He wasn’t looking at me. “I guess you know that Julia and I … we don’t really see much of each other these days. We’ve sort of fallen into … I don’t think it’s so unusual. A lot of people—a lot of couples—when you’ve been married a long time …”
    Vic paused again, then finally went on, his face still averted. “I kind of stopped noticing how we lived. But then you moved in. Just your being here has changed things. Even if you left—it’s too late. We can’t go back now. We can’t … we can’t be comfortable again.”
    â€œYou want me to move out,” I said flatly.
    Vic looked shocked. “No! No, I was just saying … I realize that you think you’re the problem here, David, but it’s not you. It’s Kathy. It was always Kathy.”
    â€œOh,” I said. I felt acutely uncomfortable.
    Vic rubbed at his face. He said to his hands, “Julia thought we should have been stricter … Especially after Kathy dropped out of college. But I said let her live her own life.” He shrugged. “Julia thinks it was my fault, what happened. She says I always under-minedher. I never showed a united front.” He lapsed into silence.
    â€œOh,” I said again.
    â€œSo, does Eileen know?” Vic asked abruptly. “About Julia and me? About … about how we live?”
    I felt like a snitch. “Yeah.”
    â€œMaybe I’m glad,” Vic said softly. He got up, his movements suddenly decisive. “You invite your parents for Thanksgiving, David. You do that. It’ll be good to see them, good to talk. I’ll tell Julia—” He met my eyes and smiled briefly, unhappily. “I’ll tell her myself.”
    Happy Thanksgiving
, I thought sourly. I said, “Okay.”
    Vic dropped his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll talk to Julia myself,” he repeated, as if he needed to promise. “We have to move forward. We have to stop having Lily talk for us.”
    I nodded. I got up to accompany him to the door. “That’s probably best for Lily, too,” I said hesitantly.
    Vic stopped midtread and frowned at me, puzzled. “Best for Lily? What do you mean?”
    I blinked, equally confused. “Just—I just meant that it must be uncomfortable for her, being in the middle.”
    Vic looked surprised. “We love Lily,” he said. “It’s the one thing Julia and I agree on. Lily knows that. She knows she doesn’t have anything to do with our fight.”
    For one very long moment my mind went completely blank. I was no authority on psychology, but …
    Vic was still looking at me. “Don’t you think Lily knows she’s loved?”
    â€œOf course,” I said. “I’m sure she does.”
    â€œThat’s all that matters,” Vic said, satisfied. He went on downstairs. I followed and closed the door behind him.
    A wisp of a Beatles song floated past my inner ear:
All you need is love
.
    Ha. In the middle of a frightful marriage, Vic still believed it. Naiveté? Strength? Stupidity? It didn’t matter why. He did.
    From my distance, I envied him his belief, even though I knew with my whole soul that he was wrong.
    Dead wrong.

CHAPTER 9
    A lthough Frank Delgado was in only one of my classes, it didn’t take me long to confirm that he was exactly the outcast he appeared to be. He sat alone in the cafeteria, walked alone through the halls. He even