For the rest of Sunday, I kept waiting for some explanation that made Laura’s phone call less damning.
None came.
Maybe she called Derek for an unrelated reason.
Maybe she had known him socially through Brent’s dealerships.
Maybe she needed help with something ordinary at midnight on the same night someone using a truck associated with him drove behind my garage and stole evidence connected to a crash she desperately wanted hidden.
The mind is remarkably creative when the alternative is accepting that someone you once trusted has crossed a line you cannot uncross.
Denise came by after lunch.
I told her what Ramirez had found.
She did not offer me any comforting possibility.
“What do you know about Derek?”
“Mechanic. Then foreman. Eventually went to Harlow.”
“Relationship with Laura?”
“None that I knew.”
“Relationship with Brent?”
“Very close professionally.”
“Would he commit burglary for him?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“That isn’t the same answer.”
“No.”
I remembered Derek at the dealership.
He had been twelve years older than me, divorced twice, always behind on money. Excellent technician. Terrible gambler.
Once he sold half his tool collection to cover debts, then borrowed company equipment until payday.
When Harlow Automotive hired him, everyone said Brent had rescued him.
People rarely forget who rescued them.
“What’s your concern?” I asked.
Denise looked toward the living room.
The boys were building a road for toy cars using books and couch cushions.
“My concern is that we’re treating Brent as the center of everything because he’s the obvious villain in your history.”
“He drove the car.”
“Apparently.”
“He was drinking.”
“According to Rick.”
“He covered up the crash.”
“Probably.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying Laura may not simply be someone Brent manipulated.”
The words irritated me because some part of me had still been thinking exactly that.
Laura lied because Brent pressured her.
Laura threatened me because she was afraid of him.
Laura tried to flee because she panicked.
Every version left a small piece of the woman I had married intact.
Denise saw it.
“You loved her,” she said.
“Past tense.”
“Past tense doesn’t erase eleven years.”
“I know what she’s done.”
“Do you?”
I looked away.
The boys crashed two toy cars together and Noah supplied an explosion sound far larger than the impact deserved.
Denise lowered her voice.
“Craig, your responsibility is not to decide which version of Laura hurts less.”
I knew that.
Still, hearing it made something sink inside me.
Monday morning I brought Rick and Noah to the garage before school.
Not because I wanted them there.
Because Rick asked.
The broken window had been replaced temporarily with plexiglass.
Marcus had swept again.
The office still looked wrong.
Someone had entered a place the boys associated with me and torn through it.
Rick stood in the doorway.
“Did they break stuff?”
“Mostly papers.”
“Because of the crash?”
I crouched beside him.
“Police are figuring that out.”
“Was it Brent?”
“I don’t know.”
He studied my face.
“Mom knows Derek.”
My spine stiffened.
“What?”
“Derek comes to the house.”
I kept my voice neutral.
“For work?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do they talk about?”
Rick shrugged.
“Cars. Stuff.”
“When was he there last?”
“After the accident.”
Marcus had been walking past us.
He stopped.
I asked Rick carefully, “Do you remember why?”
“He looked at the Mercedes.”
“Was Brent there?”
“No.”
“Who was?”
“Mom.”
I glanced at Marcus.
His expression changed.
“What did Derek do?”
“He opened the front and looked under it. Mom kept saying, ‘Can you fix it here?’”
“And what did he say?”
Rick thought.
“He said it needed too much.”
“Anything else?”
“He said Brent was going to be mad.”
I felt cold again.
“When did Brent come home?”
“Later.”
“What happened?”
“Mom and Brent yelled.”
“About the car?”
“Yes.”
“What did they say?”
Rick lowered his voice although nobody else was near.
“Brent said Mom should’ve waited.”
Everything stopped.
I looked directly at him.
“Waited for what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Rick, who was driving?”
He blinked.
“Brent.”
The answer came instantly.
No uncertainty.
I let out a breath.
“Okay.”
But something in the phrasing would not leave me.
Brent said Mom should’ve waited.
Waited for what?
We dropped the boys at school.
At nine fifteen, Detective Ramirez arrived.
She already knew about Rick seeing Derek at the lake house because the child interviewer had noted it.
“What do you think Brent meant by ‘waited’?” I asked.
“We don’t know.”
“Could Laura have moved the car?”
“Yes.”
“Could she have called Derek before Brent knew?”
“Yes.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“Then she was organizing the cover-up.”
“That’s one possibility.”
“Is she being charged?”
“Not yet.”
“When?”
“When we have enough.”
The answer frustrated me.
Ramirez saw that too.
“If I charge too soon and the prosecutor can’t hold it, I help nobody.”
“So Laura gets supervised visits and goes home.”
“For now.”
“And Brent?”
“His attorney advised him not to answer questions.”
“Of course.”
“Which is his right.”
“I know.”
She hesitated.
“We have something else.”
Whenever Ramirez said that, my body prepared for impact.
“Mr. Delgado remembered more about the night.”
The owner of the silver Accord had stepped onto his porch after hearing the crash.
At first he saw only the rear of the Mercedes reversing.
But a second person had gotten out briefly.
“A passenger?” I asked.
“He believed so.”
“Laura?”
“He couldn’t identify the person.”
“Man or woman?”
“He thinks woman.”
I pictured the crash.
Brent behind the wheel.
Laura beside him.
Rick and Noah in back.
The Mercedes striking the mailbox and Accord.
Laura getting out.
Why?
“To look at the damage?”
“Possibly.”
“Check Noah?”
“Possibly.”
“Then she got back in?”
“Yes.”
“And they left.”
“Yes.”
Ramirez opened her notebook.
“Delgado also remembers her bending near the parked Accord.”
“What was she doing?”
“We don’t know.”
That afternoon, police searched the lake property under warrant.
I did not hear about it from Ramirez.
Laura called me.
I answered because the custody order allowed communication concerning the boys.
She was crying.
Not controlled crying.
The messy, breathless kind I remembered from funerals and the night Rick was hospitalized with pneumonia as a baby.
“Please make them stop.”
My first instinct was still to comfort her.
That disgusted me.
“I can’t.”
“They’re tearing the house apart.”
“That isn’t my decision.”
“They took computers.”
“Talk to your attorney.”
“Craig, listen to me.”
“I am.”
“Brent is blaming me.”
There it was.
I sat down behind my desk.
“For what?”
“Everything.”
“The crash?”
“No.”
Her voice dropped.
“The car. Derek. Your shop.”
I said nothing.
She rushed into the silence.
“I didn’t tell Derek to break in.”
“Did you call him?”
“Yes.”
“At midnight?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Brent.”
I closed my eyes.
Again she offered the version easiest for me to believe.
“He said if the police got that data, he was finished. He said I had to fix it.”
“So you called Derek.”
“I asked him if there was any way to delete something from your computer.”
I stared through the office window at Marcus working on a pickup.
“Do you hear yourself?”
“I didn’t tell him to steal it.”
“What did you think he would do at midnight?”
“I don’t know.”
“You called a mechanic who works for Brent and asked him how to erase crash evidence from my computer.”
“I panicked.”
“You keep saying that like panic erases decisions.”
“You don’t know what Brent is like when he gets angry.”
The old reflex rose again.
Protect Laura.
Believe Laura.
Separate the woman I married from the woman standing inside consequences.
Then I remembered Rick saying Brent told him silence was his responsibility.
I remembered Noah’s split booster seat.
“You had choices before the crash was ever hidden.”
“I was scared.”
“You could’ve called me.”
“He would’ve known.”
“You could’ve taken Noah to the emergency room.”
“He was okay.”
“You did not know that.”
“I checked him.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
She started crying harder.
“I know.”
For several seconds neither of us spoke.
Then she said something I did not expect.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“What wasn’t?”
“The accident.”
“I know.”
“No.”
Her breathing changed.
“I mean we weren’t supposed to be on that road.”
I sat straighter.
“Why were you?”
She stopped.
“Laura.”
“I have to go.”
“Why were you on Lakeshore Drive?”
The line went dead.
I immediately called Ramirez.
She answered on the second ring.
I told her everything.
“Don’t contact Laura again unless it concerns the boys.”
“She called me.”
“Then document it.”
“What did she mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you check where they came from?”
“We are.”
I heard papers moving.
“Actually, I was about to call you.”
Another impact.
“What now?”
“During the lake-house search we found a damaged cellphone.”
“Whose?”
“Unknown yet.”
“Why does it matter?”
“It was in the garage near where the Mercedes had been stored.”
“Could be old.”
“Could be.”
Her tone told me it wasn’t.
“We recovered the memory card.”
“And?”
“There’s video.”
I stopped breathing.
“What kind?”
“Short clips from the party that night.”
I pictured adults drinking, children downstairs, Brent’s bottle.
“Does it show him drinking?”
“Yes.”
Relief and anger mixed.
“That proves Rick—”
“Craig.”
She interrupted gently.
“There’s more.”
I waited.
“One clip was recorded outside the party house around one thirty.”
“And?”
“The Mercedes is visible.”
“Brent gets in?”
“No.”
I gripped the desk.
“Then who?”
Ramirez paused long enough for dread to become certainty.
“Laura gets into the driver’s seat.”
I could hear my pulse.
“That’s impossible.”
“I watched the clip myself.”
“But Rick said Brent was driving.”
“He may still have been driving when the crash occurred.”
“How?”
“We’re working that out.”
I stood, unable to remain seated.
“What does the video show after Laura gets in?”
“Brent approaches the passenger side.”
My mouth went dry.
“So she started driving.”
“Yes.”
“Then at some point they switched.”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know.”
I remembered Laura’s sentence.
We weren’t supposed to be on that road.
I remembered Brent telling her she should have waited.
Something had happened between the party house and the crash.
Something neither of them had told police.
And for the first time since the Mercedes arrived, I realized the lie about the deer might not even be the largest secret hidden inside that night.
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