A Secondhand Lie Read online

  “Maybe I should ask him. If he says he didn’t, I want to believe him. And if he admits to all of his other sins, why lie about this?”

  “True.”

  “But then on the flip side,” I resumed, playing devil’s advocate against my own mind, “I have to ask on what grounds could they convict him if he was innocent? Surely the evidence must have pointed to him to land him in jail.”

  “Except that they convict innocent people all the time.”

  I sighed. “What does it matter? I hardly know the man. Why should I care?”

  “Because he’s your dad. I would give anything to see my dad again.”

  A pang of guilt tapped me with its bony finger. Mia had lost her father in a car accident around the same time mine went to jail. While we both lost our fathers that year, at least mine was a jail visit away. Six feet of dirt separated Mia from hers, leaving her with only an austere headstone to connect with. Perhaps my situation wasn’t as bad as it felt some days.

  “Maybe you’re right. Though, how will I know if he’s telling me the truth? I don’t know how to tell the truth from the lies.”

  “Maybe that’s not your job, Landon. Just hear him out. Then once you have his side, put on your mental gardening gloves and dig deeper to find out the truth.”

  “Real men don’t wear gardening gloves,” I retorted.

  She nudged me lightly with her shoulder and laughed. “Whatever. You know what I’m trying to say. Maybe your job is simply to listen to your heart.”

  It sounded simple enough, or like a cheesy 1980’s song. But my heart had long ago stopped talking.

  “And what if my heart has nothing to say about it?” I asked her, knowing she’d have an answer for any question I tossed at her.

  She thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Then you go all Bonnie Raitt on it and ‘give it something to talk about… a little mystery to figure out.’”

  When a second later she broke into song, I knew it was going to be an interesting day.

  **

  Durham County Detention Facility

  Later that day…

  As my footsteps echoed along the painted concrete floor, I mentally prepared myself for lies. Firsthand lies from my dad about how much he loved his family but regretted not being a better father. Secondhand lies from my mom about how much Dad wished he could fix things between us. And then there were all the lies in between.

  Today was the first time in twenty-two years that I mustered the courage to visit my father, Dan Worthington, alone. Only once before had I come—and that was a month ago with Mia’s prodding and emotional support. My reasons for that previous visit rested solely on finding my sister’s killer, but today it was about my relationship with my dad. So here I was, by myself in a roomful of killers and thieves, and my own flesh and blood was among them.

  I felt eyes scouring me, ears eavesdropping. Jail wasn’t a place for pretty boys like me, with my clean-shaven face and gelled Salon Blu haircut. Tense jaws clenched as I passed vestibules where cartoonishly over-muscled criminals flexed arms thicker than my thigh. Eyes that had caused and relished violence watched me with malice. Hard faces crinkled with curiosity—and some, I shuddered to realize, with desire. I felt like an endangered species on display—vulnerable, ready to flee, and wanting never to return.

  But I couldn’t run yet. I hadn’t gotten what I came for.

  The truth.

  The metal chair groaned and squeaked as I sat down, resting my arms stiffly on the cold table. My nerves were snapping with anxiety about what I would ask, how Dad would answer, and what unspoken confessions lingered between the lines.

  Two minutes into my wait, a guard led my father—dressed in a loose, faded green jumpsuit that shrunk the man within it—to the chair in front of me. I exhaled the pent-up energy that had surfaced through the tapping of my foot on the floor.

  As Dad sat down, he seemed smaller than I remembered. He had always been a towering figure—even to me, at a lean six-foot-two. Although bulky from years of prison workouts, I assumed, there was something meek about his bearing.

  “Hey, Landon,” Dad said with a genuine smile. “It’s great to see you again so soon. I wasn’t sure if you’d ever come back.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” I replied tersely.

  “Can’t say I blame you.” Turning his neck right and left, Dad scanned the room. “Where’s your friend—Mia?”

  “She didn’t come with me this time. It’s just me… me and you.”

  Dad sighed in what I could only interpret as relief. “I’m glad. I kinda wanted to talk to you man-to-man one of these days. I just didn’t expect it to be today.”

  “There’s no better time than now, right?” Clichés were all I could afford. My own words were buried too deep to surface.

  “Yep, that’s true.” He paused. “You look good, son. A little tired, though. You doin’ okay?”

  “I’m fine. What did you want to talk about?” I wondered aloud, itching to move the idle chitchat along.

  For a long moment he said nothing, only examined me. His liver-spotted hand, roughened by time, reached out to me, touched the heavily smudged Plexiglas pane that separated us halfway across the table, then returned to his lap. When his gaze shifted downward, I noticed pools of swelling emotion in his eyes. For a second I mistook it for a smudge on the glass, until he blinked the teardrop free. The droplet coursed its way down his cheek, then dropped into the oblivion below.

  “It’s funny. I, uh… I’ve had two decades to plan for this moment, and when it arrives I’m speechless. I don’t even know where to begin.”

  Dad wiped at his watering eyes, his lips quivering. With an unconscious gesture, he ran his palm over his balding head.

  It was the rawest emotion I’d ever witnessed from him… other than the day of his conviction.

  “There’s no starting place for an apology, I suppose,” he continued. “You just dive in the middle.”

  As I watched this hardened man break, suddenly the anger and hurt and frustration and neglect I’d accumulated over a lifetime of letdowns lifted, and in its stead was pity. I pitied my father for being trapped in his own poor decisions, left in a piss-reeking crypt to rot for mistakes that had arisen from bad decision after bad decision. Looking at him now, I knew he wasn’t evil to the core. Just broken. Like me.

  “Dad, you can talk to me. What do you want to tell me? Now’s your chance.” Although the words sounded clipped, there was heart attached to them.

  “First, that I’m sorry. I’m sorry I spent more nights at the bar than with you. Sorry that I drove your mom into the arms of other men. Sorry that Alexis died because I wasn’t there to protect her. Sorry for it all.” He stopped, but when I opened my mouth to speak—what, I wasn’t even sure yet—his meaty palm shot up.

  “Son, I’m paying the price for my sins, and I want you to know I don’t see myself as a victim of circumstance or none of that bullshit that some of these guys in here feel. I didn’t take care of you and your sister like I should have. I didn’t love your mother like she deserved. You all were innocent, and I ruined you with my selfishness. Drinking and wasting away the only good things I got in life—you, Alexis, and your mom. I wish—”

  Dad’s voice halted as a sob escaped, and for the second time in my life I saw my father cry. Not a watered-down version of sadness, but heartbreaking, soul-crushing bawling. “I wish you could have had better. I’m sorry, son, that you got stuck with a lousy father.”

  If only a wall of Plexiglas didn’t separate us, I would have hugged him. Squeezed him with all the love that had been missing for two decades, restoring all that was lost in that one healing embrace. I needed it. He needed it. We both needed it after all we had suffered through since the day Alexis was murdered.

  “Dad, I’ve forgiven you for everything.” It was little consolation for the torment he was clearly feeling, but it was all I could offer.

  “Oh, Landon, there’s not enough forgiveness i
n the world to wipe away what I’ve done. Your sister’s dead cuz of me. Your mother, well, I made her life a living hell. And you—God only knows the damage I’ve done there. Ain’t no forgiveness enough, son.”

  Part of me agreed with him. He left lives in ruin behind his acts of carelessness. But he had spent years paying for it, and by now it should have been paid in full. Then I wondered, was jail even enough? Enough to cover the cost of Alexis’s life?

  “As corny as it sounds, I figure you’ve just about paid your debt to society by now,” I said, trying to console him.

  “Yep, one of life’s little ironies,” he muttered with a chuckle.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Just that I got put in here for a crime I didn’t do, but I deserved much worse, I’d say. It’s just ironic is all. But I guess that’s karma for ya.”

  “So you’re sticking to the story that you didn’t rob that lady’s house or shoot her or have anything to do with it?”

  Dad shook his head. “I swear, I’ve done a lot of bad things, but that wasn’t one of them. In fact, while the robbery was going on, I was buying a bouquet of gas station roses, then waiting for your mother to get home to surprise her. It’s no matter. I’m getting my just deserts.”

  Just deserts or not, if my dad was telling the truth—and I admittedly still had my doubts—whoever did do the crime got away with it. That wasn’t justice at all.

  “Dad, you shouldn’t be in jail for a crime you didn’t commit. Do you know who was involved?”

  “I have my suspicions, but it ain’t worth doing anything about.”

  “Tell me,” I insisted with a firmness that left him no alternative. “I want to know exactly what happened.”

  “Why dig it up now, after all this time?”

  “Because the real offender got off the hook because he baited you. Justice isn’t about catching a criminal, but catching the criminal. Dad, if you didn’t do it, someone else did. And his actions warrant punishment. Do you know who was involved?” I repeated.

  I heard a symphony of tiny crackles as my dad rolled the kinks out of his beefy neck. “Well, at first I thought it was your Uncle Derek. But I just don’t think your uncle could have done it alone. Besides him, there was only one other guy who knew about it—we called him Grizzle, but his real name was Gene. But I dunno…I don’t think it was him neither.”

  “Those were the only two who knew about it—and you can for sure rule them out?”

  “I can’t for sure say both was innocent, but as far as I know they were.”

  I needed more info if I was going to figure this out. “Tell me everything from the beginning, Dad. Every detail you can recall.”

  “You got time?” Dad asked, glancing at a dirty-faced clock in a wire cage above the exit.

  “As much time as it takes.”

  “Well, it all started when your Uncle Derek got himself sucked into some shady business and dragged me down with him…”

  And thus began the story of how my dad and I set ourselves free.

  Chapter 4

  1992

  All People’s Grill

  Durham, North Carolina

  The black-and-white-checkered tile disguised the scuffmarks from years of patrons Jitterbugging to the live roadhouse blues combos that often took to the stage. Only a handful of people were out on a Wednesday night at this hour, talking over the lull of B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone” that swept throughout the small three-room establishment. Like all the best BBQ joints, it didn’t look like much from the outside—just a plain, two-toned concrete block affair, with a gravel-and-dirt parking lot that would have been at home on any country road in the South. The locals—and lucky travelers—revered it for the best chicken ’cue anywhere, bar none.

  At a wooden table pushed against a corner of the main room, brothers Dan and Derek Worthington sat on one side, mirror images of each other in their yellowed Hanes t-shirts, while a man with a frizzy, dirty white beard known as “Grizzle” lounged opposite them smoking a Marlboro and nursing a Budweiser bottle.

  “What’s so urgent you needed to drag me from the middle of my poker game?” Dan grumbled at his brother after he tossed back a shot of Wild Turkey. “I was gonna win big tonight, I could feel it.”

  “Forget poker. You’ll never git ahead. Naw, I got a lead on how we can git our hands on some money… big money, brother.” Derek smiled crookedly, his overcrowded teeth a dull yellow-brown from years of tobacco and black coffee.

  “Big money, you say? Sounds shady to me,” Dan said with a shake of his head. “I’m not into anything that’s gonna git me arrested. I’m tryin’ to fix things up with my family, ya know.”

  “Fixin’ things? You’re crazy if ya think Jennifer’s goin’ back to you.” At this Derek cackled loud enough to wrest the attention from a girl at the bar wearing neon print biker shorts with a hot-pink cropped tank top revealing an inappropriate glimpse of her under-boob. Her permed hair stood tall and stiff under a pound of hairspray as she turned back to her friends. Derek’s lips curled in a lusty grin.

  As Derek ogled her a little too long, the boyfriend attached to her bare waist turned and glared. Setting his glass of dark beer down, he rose from his stool, his high-top fade haircut and LA Gear sneakers adding at least two more inches to his already impressive six feet four inches. Yet Derek refused to cower, maintaining his challenge.

  The younger man slowly removed his colorblock Nike windbreaker, one sleeve then the other with dramatic bravado—the universal sign for let’s take it outside.

  Dan grabbed Derek’s shoulder and swung him around to face him. “Will you stop it? Every peckerwood in here is giving us the stink-eye. Back down, cuz I ain’t backing you up tonight.”

  Tossing a nonverbal plea to their so-far silent companion, Derek got another refusal for aid. “I ain’t part of this,” Grizzle said, kicking his booted feet up on an empty chair. “You on your own, Derek.”

  His cockiness subsiding now that he was going solo, Derek withdrew with two raised palms of surrender. “Sorry, man. I wasn’t meaning no harm.”

  The young man tilted his chin up in victory, then turned back to his posse.

  “You better git to the point before we git kicked outta here,” Grizzle urged as he finished off his last swig of beer.

  “Right, as I was sayin’, I know a way for us to make a load of cash. Quick, too. Alls it takes is a little recon, which is what Dan’s for. The rest me and Grizzle’ll handle.”

  “Me? What do I know about reconnaissance? I don’t even wanna be a part of it.”

  Derek closed his eyes in frustration, thrust his head back, and tightened his lips. After a calming breath, he looked his brother square in the eyes. “Do ya want your wife back?”

  “Yeah,” Dan replied. “Course I do.”

  “Then you gotta make a grand gesture. Valentine’s is comin’ up. Gitter sumpthin’ nice. Spoil the kids for once. Use the money to catch up on bills. Shit, I don’t care what you do with it, but this is our chance—your chance—to get on top. You either grab this opportunity, or ya lose everything. Which’ll it be?”

  Dan humphed, then rolled his eyes. “Tell me more about this supposed opportunity,” he said with a groan.

  “Well, ya know all them fancy houses in that subdivision off of 157, near that church?”

  “Yeah,” Dan said warily.

  “There’s an old lady who used to live in one of them mini mansions, but word is that her daughter sent her to a nursing home type place. All her stuff’s just sitting there, waiting to be auctioned off or donated to charity, unless we get there first—”

  “Hold up,” Dan whispered harshly. “Your plan is to rob an old lady?”

  “No… my plan is to empty out a mansion that no one lives in.”

  With a thrust against the back slats of his seat, Dan let out a staccato “ha ha!” before leaning in closely. “You’re kidding, right? Derek, I ain’t gonna rob nobody. I admit I’m not a good gu
y, but I’m not a bad guy either. And what you’re talking about isn’t right. We’re gonna get caught, and we’re gonna go to jail. All for what? A few hundred bucks? No way, man. You gotta come up with something better than this.”

  With childlike exuberance, Derek shuffled his chair closer, the excitement of his words building. “Don’t ya see? It doesn’t get better than this. This lady was loaded. And her daughter is just tossing her stuff out. It’s a victimless crime. Just look into it, Dan. I’ll give ya the street name and number. Check it out, and if it ain’t what I’m telling you, then fine—we’ll call it off. But if it is what I’m sayin’, we have all the world to gain. And we can git it done next Friday night. In and out and over. I’m sure Jennifer would love a new TV, and the kids could use new clothes, right?”

  Amid the promise of wealth and new beginnings, something wasn’t being said, and Dan knew it. Scratching his chin, he eyed his seedy brother, wondering what he was leaving out. “Why you so eager to do this so soon? Why not wait a little, think this through?”

  “We can’t wait or else the stuff’ll be gone,” Derek said, spraying the table with spittle in his fluster. “We gotta do this now. It’s an open door; let’s walk through. Please, don’t let me down,” Derek entreated, his worry pleating folds along his forehead where his hairline was just starting to recede.

  Dan hadn’t seen such passion from Derek since he was a kid begging Mom for the latest GI Joe figure—back when they were a measly $2.32 each. Well, that and the Satellite Jumping Shoes, which Mom immediately nixed since ten-year-old Derek wasn’t known for his coordination.

  So clearly Derek was in trouble. He was never the “idea man” in the group. He was a sheep, one that always got stuck in the briars. Something was up, and Derek apparently needed cash fast. And if Derek was indeed in trouble, that meant Dan’s own family could be on someone’s shit list too. There was only one choice to make.