My Sister, Myself. Alice Sharpe

hustled Tess to a diner down the block, thankful the relentless winter rain had stopped for a few moments. He hated that hospital. Peter had died there—technically, anyway. His real death had occurred in a flop house down near the tracks.

      But that had been twelve years ago and until very recently, Ryan had managed to put his kid brother’s miserable death and the part he himself had unwittingly played in that death behind him. This whole thing with Katie Fields had brought it back with a vengeance.

      Tess finally put her fork down and, finding him looking at her, flashed him a guarded smile. “That was delicious.”

      He nodded, glancing at the wall clock. It was straight up on midnight. When it came to the middle of the night, he was a cup-of-black-coffee kind of guy.

      “What do you do?” he asked. “I mean for a living?” He was trying to figure out how a petite woman like this one managed a stack of pancakes doused in ice cream. Maybe she dug ditches, though the pearly white of her skin suggested she worked indoors. Her clothes didn’t look as if they belonged to a laborer, either. Tailored slacks fit her small but curvy figure perfectly, and the red blouse floating over her upper torso looked pricey. An executive of some type? If so, she was a far cry from her bartending, fun-loving sister.

      “I’m a veterinarian,” she said, brushing a few strands of hair away from her heart-shaped face. Her shoulder-length hair was wavy. He tried to recall what Katie’s hair had looked like the last time he’d seen her but couldn’t. To him, Katie had always been Matt’s daughter, a nice enough woman he saw once or twice a year but never gave a second thought to when she was out of sight.

      “Dogs and cats, mostly,” she added, her smile deepening as she apparently thought of her patients.

      “I have a cat,” he said for no particular reason. Matt Fields’s secret daughter was an animal doctor? Didn’t a career choice like that take not only brains but conviction? Katie certainly was smart enough, but she always struck him as aimless. Because Tess looked like Katie, he’d expected her to be like Katie.

      “You’re staring at me,” she said softly.

      “Sorry.”

      She didn’t respond but she looked unsettled and he didn’t blame her. Less than twenty-four hours before, she’d been unique in the world, or so she’d thought. And now…

      He said, “Did you reach your mother?”

      She took a sip of coffee as the waitress reappeared to whisk away her plate. “No.”

      “She’s not at home?”

      “She just got married last weekend. One of those whirlwind courtships. She and her new husband started out on their honeymoon to Seattle right after the ceremony, but I guess they haven’t arrived yet. It’s a long drive. I suppose they decided to take a side trip or two.”

      “It sounds as though you don’t approve of your mother’s spur-of-the-moment romance.”

      She blinked a couple of times and looked down at her hands. “My mother allowed one man to just about ruin her life. Now she expects another man to salvage it.”

      “And you don’t believe in love at first sight.”

      She looked up at him, her eyes a summer blue, large in her small face. “No. Do you?”

      He smiled. “No.”

      “You have to solve your own problems. You have to rely on yourself,” she said. “Needing other people is tricky.”

      As a philosophy of life, it sounded lonely.

      “Okay, let’s get it over with,” she said with a deep breath. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

      He folded his hands and adopted a serious expression, not hard to do since the topic was so grim. He said, “First, about your father—”

      “Yes, my father,” she said, her face lighting up with an eagerness that touched him. “I want to know everything you can tell me about him. You said you were his partner. Tell me what he looked like, what he liked to do, start there, don’t start with his death.”

      Matt Fields’s death had been exactly where Ryan had intended to start. Reining in the impulse to blurt out the worst, he said, “Let’s see. Your dad had graying brown hair and green eyes. About five-ten, 170 pounds. He was out of shape, didn’t take care of himself, especially toward…well, the last. He wore glasses to read. I’m not sure about his hobbies. He was private. He liked his work…”

      Ryan’s voice trailed off. How well had he really known this woman’s father? A couple of months ago he would have answered that with a laugh; hell, a cop gets to know his partner pretty damn well in four and a half years.

      But he hadn’t really known the guy at all. He knew that now. He suddenly recalled something he’d learned just recently. “Your dad liked to play the piano. He did it for charities, you know, in one of those little ensembles that perform at homes for the elderly or the disabled. Him and a couple of other guys. Nothing formal. It came out in the investigation afterward.”

      This seemed to please her. She smiled into her coffee cup.

      “And, well, he adored your sister.”

      “But he never mentioned me?” she said, pinning him with that clear, blue gaze.

      For a split second, Ryan thought of lying. He could make up a story and make her feel better and who would ever know? But he reached across the table and patted her hand. “I’m afraid not.”

      “I used to fantasize about him, you know?” she said. “Mom absolutely refused to talk about him, called him a cad, said she didn’t even know his name, used him as a cautionary tale for premarital sex as I grew up. But I created stories about him anyway, larger-than-life-type fantasies. He was always searching for me in these daydreams, I was always just one day away from being found. And all the time, he knew more or less exactly where I was and didn’t give a damn.”

      “I’m sorry—”

      “No, please, don’t be sorry.” Looking him square in the eye, she said, “Tell me how he died.”

      At last. Ryan took a deep breath and met her gaze. “A couple of months ago there was a fire. The woman trapped in the house was an invalid. Your dad—”

      “The woman lived?”

      “Yes. Your dad—”

      “My father died a hero? This is what you’ve been wanting to tell me? That’s wonderful. Oh, you know what I mean, not that he died, but that he died trying to save someone. Still, I imagine his unexpected death made Katie crazy.”

      He couldn’t let her go on this way. He said, “No, Tess. Not a hero.” For a second Ryan flashed back to that terrible night. By the time he’d arrived, the woman had been in the ambulance, her small dog yapping endlessly in a neighbor’s arms. Matt was already dead; it was assumed he’d answered the fire call. That was before anyone realized he’d arrived before the call ever came.

      “Ryan?”

      “What I’m trying to tell you is that your dad shouldn’t have been in that house. It was outside our district. He didn’t know the family.”

      Tess looked puzzled. “Then how did he end up there?”

      “Nobody knows for sure, but everyone suspects. He sent me off on a wild-goose chase. By the time I found out about the fire, he was dead. What you need to understand is that the fire investigator found an accelerant on scene. That means arson.”

      He could tell she was beginning to sense the direction this talk was taking, and he hated himself for having to continue. He folded his hands together and pinned her with his gaze. “When a fire is purposely started, everybody involved gets investigated, and that includes the cops. Your dad died with huge gambling debts, Tess. I didn’t even know he gambled, let alone on that scale. He’d lost almost everything he owned.