SEVENTEEN
“WHOA, OKAY, SLOW DOWN,” Danny said, pulling her to the recliners to sit them both down. “H? You think he killed her?”
“Maybe not killed her,” Tess said, her determination heating. “But it’s his fault that she’s dead.”
He swiped the tears away from her wet cheeks. “Start at the beginning. Spell it out for me, baby. I’m just a dumb grease monkey.”
“Oh, Danny,” she said, sniffing. “She was so in love with him. She just… She lived for him.”
“And that… killed her?”
What was sense? There was none. All her life, she’d believed her mom to be a stalwart; a strong woman with no desire to lean on a man. But she had been leaning, or she’d tried to, and H wasn’t there to hold her up.
“I didn’t hear her,” Tess said, accepting her own role in her mother’s demise. Reading her words, the
