The Accidental Detective

didn’t come visit him. Why didn’t you visit him?”
    So many reasons.
Because he was an angry drunk most of the times. And when he wasn’t angry, he was pathetic, self-pitying.
But the main reason was the one that divided them long ago: it was simply too painful to be around each other. They couldn’t talk about it, and they couldn’t not talk about it, so they stayed away from each other.
    “When Sean moved away, I lost touch. Mickey Wyckoff, too. And my father keeps to himself.”
    “Yes, he always did.”
    He did?
Gwen remembers her father as gregarious. But, perhaps, a little snobbish about the Hallorans. That’s why the night of the hurricane had been unusual, all the parents together in the Robisons’ house, drinking and laughing late into a weekday night.
    “Don’t be a stranger now,” Mrs. Halloran says suddenly, full of fake merriment. “We’ll be seeing lots of each other. Right?” The question feels unusually earnest—and a little threatening.
    “Absolutely.”
    Sean and Tim finally appear, explaining that they have been speaking with the priest about tomorrow’s service. Sean takes his mother by the shoulders, gently, and begins guiding her to other well-wishers, making Gwen feel as if she is in the wrong somehow, that she has monopolized the grieving mother when it was Doris who insisted on prolonging their contact.
    Tim gives her a half smile. “Sorry.”
    It seems to be the word of the evening. “No need. I think it’s a miracle she’s standing upright.”
    “Sean said your dad had an accident?”
    “Yes. As I told your mother, that seems to be the theme of the week.”
    Tim’s face is blank. It’s funny, how he looks so much like Sean, yet still isn’t handsome. Everything is a bit fuzzier in Tim’s face. Rougher, coarser, indistinct. It’s like a face drawn by a child, the features slashed in. Plus, he’s allowed himself to get plump.
    “Go-Go’s death wasn’t an accident, Gwen. He drove right into the Jersey wall at over a hundred miles per hour.”
    “Sean said—”
    “Oh, Sean. He’s proper now, careful about what he says. Professional liability since he moved to public relations. He can’t stop spinning things. No, Go-Go aimed his car straight at the barricades at the end of the highway. Probably drunk, so it’s hard to know his intent, but he clearly didn’t try to steer away. We’re waiting for the toxicology reports. Well,
we’re
not waiting for them. The insurance company is, because they’re keen to deny his kids the life insurance if they can. I can’t figure out if we should root for drunk and claim he wasn’t capable of forming suicidal intent or pray for sober and say the accelerator got stuck.”
    “I thought he was in a sober phase.”
    “He was, best I can tell, right up to last Tuesday night. Went to meetings every week, seemed to be making progress. We only have Mom’s word for it and she forgave him everything, covered for him whenever possible, but he had been clean for almost two years. He left to go to a meeting, in fact, about seven P.M. Next thing Mom knew, it was two A.M. and the cops were at her door. They had gone to Lori’s first, because that was the address on his license.”
    “Lori?”
    “His ex, although I guess technically they were just separated. The second ex, the one with the kids.” Tim points to two blondes, tiny things. These girls are not inspecting the dead man in the casket but keeping their distance, clinging to their mother. Even in their sadness, all three are gorgeous. “Only decent thing he ever did for her and those kids was taking out that policy and now he might have screwed that up. All he had to do was hit the brakes, leave some skid marks, but no—”
    “Shut up, Tim,” Sean says, joining them.
    “It’s just Gwen.”
    The words are at once warm and vaguely insulting, conferring a privilege while making it sound as if Gwen is a person of no consequence.
    “Gordon did not commit suicide.”
    “Look, we’re not going to rat him out to the church, keep him from being buried in consecrated ground. And I’m not going to break Mom’s heart. But among the three of us, can’t we at least drop the bullshit?”
    “He was drunk. He called me an hour before, wasn’t making any sense.”
    “Probably.”
    “If he was drunk, then he didn’t know what he was doing. He was drag racing, like in the old days, and he miscalculated.”
    “OK, but—we lived here all our lives. We all learned to