Chapter 21: Fourteen Missed Calls

Vernon got to his feet.

"This meeting is closed."

"It isn't," said Connie's husband.

"I am the president."

"You're the man who wiped the box."

Dean walked down the length of the table, past the pizza, past the pot of cold potatoes, and stopped three feet from me.

He didn't touch the gavel, or the monitor, or his father.

He looked only at me.

"On the night Wyatt died, at twenty to seven, my phone rang," he said.

The clubhouse went so quiet that I could hear the refrigerator again.

"It was Delilah. She was crying so hard I couldn't understand her."

I didn't look at her.

"Then she said she'd taken every pill in the bathroom cabinet. She wanted me to know before she went to sleep."

I turned my head.

In the doorway behind Dean, in her coat, stood Delilah.

Connie had come in with her and had not told me.

Delilah's face had gone the color of paper.

"I'd been paying her rent for two months," Dean said. "Nothing else."

"Why?"

"She'd lost the bakery job, and her landlord had put a notice on the door. I told you it was a favor to your sister, and that was true."

"Go on," I said.

"I left. I told Pop I had a bike to fix. I told myself it was ten minutes."

"You told me to give him Tylenol."

"He was warm at dinner. I thought it was a cold."

His voice broke.

"I drove to Pine Street and found her on the bathroom floor. I made her drink salt water until she was sick. I held her head over the toilet."

"You didn't call an ambulance."

"She begged me not to. She said they'd put her in a ward and Vernon would find out."

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