At this point Butch had been a published author for a number of years. Over time Joanna had learned that authors are paid on an irregular basis. Advances on royalties are paid on signing a contract, on delivering a manuscript, on hardcover publication, and again on paperback publication. With Butch still off on tour and due back on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, this envelope most likely contained the pub payment for his current book.
Wanting to guarantee that the important missive didn’t go AWOL, Joanna ventured into Butch’s office and placed it on the keyboard of his desktop computer. As she turned away, she came face-to-face with the shelves containing her father’s leather-bound diaries, although “journals” probably would have been a better term. At least that was the word written in gold leaf on the spine and front cover of each volume.
The books had arrived at Joanna and Butch’s home in a roundabout fashion many years after her father’s death. D. H. Lathrop had come to law enforcement later in life, having spent his early years working as an underground miner. As first a deputy and later a sheriff, he had never been more than a two-finger typist. Joanna remembered him spending night after night, sometimes long after her mother had shut off the TV and gone to bed, laboring over the books in longhand while seated at the dining-room table. Joanna never remembered asking him what he was doing. She had simply assumed it was something to do with work. Her father had made it clear on numerous occasions that he didn’t like discussing work at home under any circumstances, except in vague good-guy/bad-guy terminology that had charmed his daughter and made his job sound not at all dangerous or threatening—more like a game of cowboys and Indians than anything else.
When her father died in an incident long presumed to be an accident, Joanna saw no sign of his books. His personal effects had been packed up and sent home, and her mother had stowed the many boxes in her garage. For almost two decades, they had sat unopened on makeshift platforms on the rafters of Eleanor’s garage.
No one had been more surprised than Joanna when her long-widowed mother had fallen in love. Even more startling was the fact that the object of her affections was a relatively new arrival in town, George Winfield, the medical examiner. They had merged households, with George moving into Eleanor’s home. As part of that process, he had cleaned out the garage and stumbled upon the journals written by his long-dead predecessor, D. H. Lathrop. Eleanor had been of only one mind concerning those journals—get rid of them. George respectfully disagreed.
Prior to marrying Eleanor and in his role as the Cochise County medical examiner, he had worked with Joanna for years. Eleanor saw Joanna as her headstrong, opinionated daughter, while George regarded her as a respected colleague. Since she had followed in her father’s law-enforcement footsteps, George felt she deserved to have access to her father’s personal history.
Against his new wife’s wishes, George had turned the journals over to Joanna, and Butch had taken charge of them. He shelved them in his study in strict chronological order, and there they’d remained. Twice in dealing with cold cases, Joanna had searched through the applicable volumes. Other than that, however, the books had simply languished there, gathering dust and mostly forgotten.
In Joanna’s view her father had always been larger than life. She regarded him as perfection itself. Even before D.H.’s death, Joanna’s unrelenting hero worship of the man had been a bone of contention between her and her mother, and once he was gone, things got worse. It was only after Eleanor’s marriage to George that she had finally revealed her first husband’s feet of clay, disclosing to Joanna that prior to his death her father had been involved in a longtime affair with Mona Tipton, his secretary from work.
At the time Butch had already unpacked D.H.’s journals. In full denial, shaken by what her mother had told her, and hoping to disprove what she thought to be an unfounded allegation, Joanna had turned to the journals in search of the truth, and once she found it, the truth hurt. In among the last journal’s concluding entries, Joanna learned that Eleanor was right. Her father and Mona Tipton had indeed been romantically involved. Once Eleanor became aware of her husband’s infidelity, she had given him the basic her-or-me ultimatum.
The book’s final entry, scribbled in Joanna’s father’s distinctive handwriting, indicated that he had reached a decision of some kind, but there was no accompanying hint as to what that decision might have been, because he had died right after that. With no additional entries to supply the missing information, eventually Joanna had gone to Mona Tipton herself in search of answers. In the unlikely conversation that followed—a conversation between D.H.’s grown daughter and his still-grieving mistress—Joanna had learned that the night before he died, her father had told Mona that he was breaking up with her. He had decided to cast his lot with his wife and daughter.
Joanna had vivid memories of Eleanor’s tight-lipped fury at the funeral and in the days, months, and years after her husband’s passing. As a teenager Joanna had attributed her mother’s anger and apparent lack of grief to a lack of caring. After talking to Mona, Joanna began to suspect that Eleanor had been more crushed by her late husband’s betrayal than she had been by his death.
Would things have been different if Eleanor had known that D.H. had decided to give Mona up in favor of hearth and home—in favor of staying with his wife and daughter? Joanna was left to wonder. Perhaps Eleanor had known the truth and it had made no difference. In any event it was something Joanna and her mother never discussed. The topic of how and when Eleanor had learned of her husband’s affair was never broached between them. Had they been allowed more time together, a few more years maybe, they might have found a way to have that conversation, but Eleanor’s unexpected death had precluded any such outcome.
Now, with Butch away, Joanna stood in his office, staring at the shelf containing her father’s journals. Other than those three occasions when she’d gone looking for answers, Joanna had maintained a hands-off policy toward the books. Butch had read through them—he’d told her so—but she herself had not.
Why? she wondered now. Had she done so out of some kind of loyalty to her mother? Or maybe a sort of misguided allegiance to her father had been at work. Perhaps she suspected that there were other betrayals on her father’s part lurking in those pages and hadn’t wanted to uncover them.
But now Joanna’s parents were both dead and gone. She was the only one left to be the actual grown-up in the room. Maybe it was time for Joanna to finally come to terms with all three versions of her own history—as her father told it, as her mother told it, and Joanna herself told it.
And so, with trembling hands, Joanna Brady went to the first volume on the shelf, pulled the book out of its designated slot, and carried it out to the living room. There, settled in her favorite chair, while Sage slept and while Denny was safely stowed at school, Joanna turned the first page and promptly fell into a rabbit hole.
1967
I hate swing shift. I get off work and come home in the middle of the night. Usually Ellie’s left something on the back of the stove for me to eat, but by then she’s already in bed. I’m done with my day, ready to relax and maybe have a conversation, but like I said, Ellie’s in bed. The TV stations are already off the air by then, so what am I supposed to do? Haul out the booze and drink myself into oblivion every damned night? Nope, that’s what my old man did, and it’s no way to live. It’s also the whole reason I left West Texas, so I wouldn’t turn out to be like him. Not ever.