“Mia told me about her, how she helped those battered women, running from their husbands. How you helped her do it.”

“No, I just fixed the roof.”

“Which meant a hell of a lot to the frightened women who had a dry place to hide with their children. Why did you do it? For Dana or for the women and their children?”

“Both. Dana was doing something concrete. She didn’t just talk about the plight of these women and their children. She did something. I admired that.”

“You loved her. Dana.”

He’d turned back around now and she couldn’t see his face. “Yes,” he said and she felt the stab of envy and dismay. “Or maybe the idea of her,” he added quietly. “I always knew she didn’t feel the same. Maybe that made her safe. Sounds stupid.”

“No, not at all.” For long minutes they sat in silence. “What was her name, David?”

He shuddered out a weary sigh. “Megan.”

“And she was eighteen, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you love her?”

The harshness in his laugh made her wince. “Not as much as I loved myself.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died,” he said flatly. “Murdered by her step-father. Is my interrogation finished?”

“You said you’d answer my question,” she said quietly. “I’m thinking that who you are now has a great deal to do with who she was then.”

She waited a long time until finally he sighed. “I don’t even know where to start.”

She ran a hand down his arm. “How about, ‘Once there was a girl named Megan’?”

He swallowed. “We met in junior high. She was my first dance, first date. First kiss.”

“So what happened?”

“Time passed. We went on to high school, drifted apart, but we were still friends. Then my brother Max went pro and everything changed. He got drafted into the NBA. His life changed, and so did mine.”

“For the better?”

“At the time I thought so. I was sixteen and already so full of myself. I played on my school’s baseball team, my coach said I was a shoo-in for a scholarship. I was good-looking. Girls wanted me. Lots of girls. Then, that was everything.”

“What happened to Megan?”

“I’d left her way behind by then. I was an athlete. I needed the prettiest girl in class, the fastest. Megan couldn’t compete. I felt sorry for her… social awkwardness.” He said it with self-recrimination. “I shouldn’t have, not for that anyway.”

“Then for what?”

“Her dad died when we were in junior high. She had a little brother and her mom worked hard to support them. Then when Megan was sixteen, her mom remarried. Life was supposed to get better for them, but her stepdad was a piece of work.”

“Oh no,” she whispered sadly, as if she already knew what was coming.

“He yelled at them, all the time. Nobody knew he hit them, but we should have. But I was busy,” he said scathingly, “being popular. Having fun with the beautiful people.”

“It’s just a face,” she murmured, understanding now. “David…”

“I was busy,” he continued, as if she’d said nothing. “Going to dances, playing ball, basking in being the brother of an NBA star. I never cracked a book. The smart girls did my homework. My mother prayed for me every day, begged me to straighten up, fly right. But what did she know? I had the world by the tail.”

“How did the tail break?”

“We were seniors and there was a party. One of the kids’ parents were gone for the weekend and we were partying hard. Kegs, bottles, weed. Lots of girls. I got drunk. And Megan showed up.”

Olivia said nothing. His jaw was tight, his eyes staring straight ahead, unseeing.

“I was so drunk, so self-involved, that I didn’t see she had a black eye. It was dark and the music was too loud and I assumed she’d come for the same reason the other girls had. For this face. I kissed her, and for a minute she held on. Then I pawed at her. Ripped her blouse and she tried to push me away. Nobody ever pushed me away.”

“It made you angry.”

“Yeah. Then she started crying. Said she needed my help. Needed my car. She needed to get away. But I was mad, so I pushed her away, told her to ask somebody that…” His throat worked as he tried to finish, but his voice broke. “That cared. She was just Megan from down the street. I was David, Mr. Perfect.”

Olivia rested her hand on his back, felt him flinch, but he didn’t pull away. “And?”

“The party went on. No one saw her come in or leave. She was a nobody. We were popular. I didn’t give her another thought the rest of the night. I’d never been drunk before and the next morning I had a horrible hangover. All I could think was that I needed to get home before Ma got back from Mass or she’d kill me. And then I passed Megan’s house.”

“You remembered what you’d done?”

His lips twisted. “I had a vague recollection of what she’d said, that she’d cried. But I didn’t understand until I passed her house. There was a cop car parked in front, lights flashing. My heart started pounding. I stopped my car and ran to the front door and… I saw her. The cop inside tried to block my view, but he was too late. I’d already seen.”

“She was dead?” Olivia murmured.

“They all were. Her mother was on the stairs. Her head… He’d beaten her head in with a bat. Megan was in the middle of the living room floor.” He drew a shuddering breath. “He’d beaten her, too. She was lying on top of her brother, shielding him. There were clothes everywhere and an empty suitcase against the wall.”

“She’d been running away.”

“She tried,” he said hollowly. “He must have caught her. Flew into a rage. Killed them all, then shot himself.”

“What did the police do?”

“That day? They asked me what I knew. I said I didn’t know anything. I never told them she’d come to me the night before.”

There was hatred and contempt in his voice, all for himself. Her heart ached for him, even as she struggled for the right words to say. “And after that day?”

He shrugged listlessly. “Then it was old news. There was no mystery to solve, other than why the hell no one had stopped him before he killed three innocent people.”

“Did you ever tell anyone what happened?”

“No. I tried, a couple of times. I tried to tell my dad that summer, but I couldn’t stand to see how disgusted he’d be with me. Dad was already hurt by my brother Max who was playing pro ball by then. Max had a new set of friends and hadn’t been home in a while. He was living the high life and my folks were brokenhearted.”

He sighed. “I couldn’t even tell my priest. I went away to college that semester and failed miserably. I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing them, dead. I was losing my mind. I had to talk to someone, so I scraped my money together and bought a plane ticket to see my brother Max in LA. We’d always been so close and… I trusted Max not to hate me.”

Her heart cracked. “What did he say?”

“I never told him. When I got to his place there was a real party going on. I saw all the booze and women, and I guess I snapped. I was thinking about the party that night, how stupid I’d been. I threw all Max’s booze bottles out the window, told his guests to go home. Max thought I’d come to save him, make him go back home. I think he needed someone to set him straight and by accident, it was me. Max came home, reconciled with our dad, then that same night there was an accident. My dad died and Max was paralyzed. My mom was just devastated and Max couldn’t walk. He needed help with his physical therapy. He needed me.”

“Like Megan had needed you.”

“Yeah. So I threw myself into helping Max and some days there were blocks of hours I didn’t think about Megan. Everyone thought I was so noble. I was just trying to stay sane. I was just trying to make the pictures in my mind go away.”

“Like Lincoln. That’s what you understood. You pitied him.”

He drew a breath. “I keep thinking, ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’”

“It’s not the same at all,” she murmured. “But I can see how you drew the parallel. Somehow Lincoln knew you understood. Maybe you were his first real human connection in a long time.” Olivia laid her cheek against his arm. “That’s a helluva secret to have carried around for eighteen years.”