The confession.

Karen closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then, with one hand clasped to her chest, said, "from the time I was eleven until I was seventeen and finally left home, my father molested me."

"Is that when you went to live with Robbie?" Detective Milo asked.

"Yes", Karen, her eyes still closed, her hand still clasped, replied.

"And did you tell Robbie this?"

"I know where you're going with this, detective!"

Milo noted that at the mention of her brother's name, Karen grew fiercely defensive.

"Why don't you just haul me downtown, the way that other detective did last year? Do I need a lawyer?"

"Miss Hatch, please!" Milo rushed to assuage. "This isn't an interrogation. Look, can I be honest with you? Detective Patrick's back was sort of against the wall when he questioned you that time. He was having to take an early retirement. He wanted to close what he thought was one last case. He was under pressure from his boss. And I think you know who his boss was under pressure from.

Karen smiled cynically.

Your father's death was ruled an accident, but there were just some things that didn't fit. We didn't know about the molestation back then, of course. But we were aware of the fact that your father was not exactly the poster boy for morality, and was not liked by a lot of people, some being his own family. It was an attempt to get something from nothing.

Now, there's been a changing of the guard. Chief Boorman's gone. Patrick's gone. The general fervor's died.. And we're all just anxious to move on.

But ever since you've come back...again, your sister's been coming in and raising issues...again. And our new chief just wants her to go away. He wants to settle this once and for all."

"Yes, well, my sister Delia is as controlling as my father was", Karen said. "Now that Robbie's dead too, and with me being the only one left to lay any claim to my father's estate and business interests, she wants me out of the way as well. What's ironic is that I have zero interest in my father's money, I'm doing just fine on my own. Most especially with not having any part of that vile man's legacy!"

Detective Milo went to the chair across from where Karen was seated on her sofa. She stood, gazing down at Karen for a moment. Then she sat herself.

"Tell me about how close you and Robbie were."

"We were more than just brother and sister", Karen said. "We were best friends."

"That's so cool, and unusual", Milo observed. "Most older brothers wouldn't want their kid sister hanging around. I know mine wouldn't!"

"Well, Robbie was cool and unusual", Karen said.

"Car crash, was it?"

"Yes, he was driving home. He'd been out on the road working for days, and the weather got bad. A trucker lost control in the ice storm and hit him head-on."

"I'm sorry", Milo said. "But the summer before that was when you and he came home for your mother's funeral?"

"Yes."

"Where did you stay?"

"Delia's home, with she and her husband at the time."

"The entire summer?"

"No, just during my mother's funeral."

"But you and Robbie decided to stay for that whole summer afterward, correct?"

In spite of her earlier assurance to Karen, Detective Milo realized she was, in fact, paving her way toward interrogation and, inwardly, felt a twinge of shame for it. But it was what she did. It was, in fact, why she'd made this visit. She was just hoping Karen wasn't realizing it too.

"Well Robbie didn't have to get back to work until the beginning of October. And I was able to line up some photography work in Middlebury. Robbie had an old friend from high school here who had a coach house we were able to rent."

"And throughout that whole time the two of you were back here, you never visited your father?"

"No. By then, he and Delia were tight as twins. She'd started 'taking care' of him, the grieving widow. And getting her foot in the door of his business enterprises. She and her daughter Sharon were spending all of their time up there in his big house. I think that's what started sinking her marriage. Her husband felt left out of everything, and she grew more and more just like my father."

"What about Sharon?" Milo asked.

"Sharon?" Karen echoed, quizzically.

"Delia's daughter."

"What about her?"

"How did she feel about her and her mother spending so much time at your father's?"

Instantly, Karen seemed to grow uneasy. She averted her eyes, and shifted as though uncomfortable. "Wh..why do you ask that?"

"I don't know", Detective Milo said. "Maybe just curiosity. Did you ever talk to Sharon during that time, Karen?"

"I don't think I like where this conversation is going again!" Karen said.

"Karen!" Detective Milo leaned forward and gripped Karen's arm. "Did you ever tell Robbie what your father did to you, ever?"

Karen raised her eyes, with which she met Milo's. Then, after a tense few moments, she said, "yes", in almost a whisper.

"And what was his reaction?"

"He was angry."

"Just angry? That's it?"

"He said..he said if He ever saw dad again, he would kill him."

"Did he still feel that way when the two of you came home that summer?"

"It took him those years to finally not", Karen said. "By the time of my mother's funeral, he was resigned to just think of dad as being dead to him already. That's why we never went up to the house all the while we were here."

"Are you sure that's true?" Milo pressed. "Are you sure something didn't happen that made him go up there one last time?"

"Look, it wasn't just Robbie's fault!"

"What wasn't?"

Karen fell silent for a long moment. Her arms, hugging herself, her legs jittering up and down slightly, she just sat. Then, all of her resistance seeming to wither, she said, "Sharon came to me one day when I went to Delia's with Robbie, he was going to work on Delia's car. And she asked me to promise not to tell anyone what she wanted to tell me. And she told me that her grandfather had gone into her bedroom at night when she was sleeping over there. And she said that he had laid next to her in her bed. And he'd rubbed her arms and legs. And he told her that sometimes grandfather's did these things to show a special kind of love. And he told her that she was going to have to learn how to show special love back. And that it was only special if they kept it secret."

"Did you tell Delia this?".

"I did."

And what was her reaction?"

"Disbelief at first. She said that Sharon was just acting out. That she'd been acting out a lot since my sister began working so much for my dad, and since her father and Delia had split. But then I told her what dad had done to me all those years. Then she was outraged and angry!"

"So then what happened?"

"What always happened where my father was concerned. He was able to spin it all away from him. Delia came to me and Robbie a couple of days later, all furious and self-righteous, and accusing. How dare I try to poisen her daughter's mind against her own grandfather by telling her my disgusting jealous lies. Delia had confronted my father, and he'd told her that those stories I'd told her about what he'd done to me were the same lies I'd told my mother to come between the two of them, and my mother hadn't believed me either. He told her that Robbie and I had approached him about being appointed as his new executors instead of Delia, and he'd outright refused in favor of her. She was already power hungry by then. In her view, we were just trying to sabotage her new relationship with him."

"Well, she should have asked Sharon if she'd told you what she told you!" Detective Milo put forth angrily.

"She said she did, and Sharon denied ever telling me that. She must have been angry that I'd betrayed her confidence," Karen said.

"See, I don't understand that," Milo retorted. "Why wouldn't she want anyone else to know what her grandfather was trying to do to her?"

"Maybe because she was like I was when it was happening to me," Karen said. "I felt alone and scared. And I would have given my soul for just one person I could trust. But I sure wasn't going to trust the whole world!"

"Why not?"

"Because, maybe back then, I believed that my father owned the whole world!

And apparently he owned his corner of it at least. You were right about that Chief Boorman. I know who pressured him to have me brought in last year. When I brought Robbie back here then to bury him next to my mother, your gung-ho Detective Patrick waylaid me right there in the cemetery, right after the burial. And Delia was standing right there, smiling, when he drove off with me in the back of his car! See, they were in my father's pocket. Which meant, in turn, they were in Delia's, now that she was running the show for my father!"

"And, what did you tell them at the station?" Milo asked Karen.

"I think you know what I told them, Detective Milo!" Karen replied, in somewhat chiding fashion. "I'm sure that was all a matter of record. Or, at the least, note."

"That neither you nor Robbie were anywhere near his home the night he died!" Milo summated. "You're right, I read that report. I've also read a number of other reports and documents. Interesting ones. For instance, Karen, I read a document of registration in your name for an ownership of a firearm. I've read a report filed by your sister Delia, in which she alleges someone had been in her home before your father had his accident. She'd been attending a parent-teacher school orientation with her daughter. She'd come home afterward, and found nothing unusual at first. But over the next couple of days she began to notice subtle disturbances. Things out of place. Things ajar. And, most particularly, a small number of keys missing from a keyring. One of which - and of this, she could not be one hundred percent certain - may have been a spare key to her father's home."

"The gun, I'd bought, I told Robbie, was because I'd feel safer, what with his long trips away from home during his work seasons", Karen explained. "I'd even taken practice at a shooting range. Really though, it was because even after all those years I kept waking up from nightmares. Nightmares about my father coming to me in my bed, even as far away as Robbie and I were, at that time. I still believed he could find me wherever I went. And I slept with that gun by my bedside always!"

"Well that answers the question of why you bought it," Milo said. "But does it factor into any of this anywhere else? And listen, Karen, let me just say, at this juncture, since we're coming down to whatever we're coming down to here, that you don't have to answer that question. You don't have to answer anymore questions, in fact, if you don't want to!"

Karen chuckled dryly. "You're reading me my rights now detective?"

"Yes", Milo replied. "Usually, I don't until after I've slapped the cuffs on. But I want you to know that I'm not unfeeling. I can only imagine the shame and the pain and the fear you suffered at the hands of that scum. And I understand how you would have wanted to protect Sharon from going through the exact same thing. I have a daughter myself. And if I learned that a monster like him were trying to prey on her, I'm not sure how much within the confines of the law I would stay. And I'm a police detective! So I get it. I'm not out to railroad you.

"You can clam up. You can lawyer up.

You can tell me to go pound sand. All that good stuff! Hell, if you do tell me anything, I'm even hoping it'll be that your brother did it all by his lonesome. That you have no knowledge of what happened up there. You weren't privy to any of it. And since he's deceased, rest in peace, that'll be that."

Waving her hand in a gesture of dismissal, Karen shook her head, and raised herself straight on her sofa. To Detective Milo, now, she didn't seem "wilted" anymore. She seemed complacent. Complacently resigned, that is. As though she'd always known this time would come, and she was at peace with it now. Milo felt an overwhelming sympathy for her.

"It was late September by then. Robbie and I planned to do it just before we left again. Now that school had started, Sharon had to be home instead of at my father's, and Delia was usually working late at one or another of his offices.

"Robbie had been the one the one who'd gone into Delia's house a couple weeks before that. From when we'd stayed there, when we'd first come back for my mother's funeral, we knew that Delia kept a spare key to my dad's place on a big keyring in her kitchen drawer. And we still had a copy of a key to her home that we'd forgotten to give her back. So it was simple for Robbie to go in there and pilfer that key. He had to take a few though, because they looked alike.

"His plan, was just to go to my father's ,with a knife. Let himself in. And, where ever my father was in that house, stab him to death! I gave him my gun to take with him too, just in case."

Milo felt her heart sink, at Karen's straightforward admission of her complicity.

"But your father drowned!" She was quick to point out, however. "The coroner's findings were that he had an astronomical level of alcohol in his system. And it was surmised that he fell into his swimming pool accidentally. No gun or knife were used!"

"Robbie told me, that after he came into the house he found my father out back slumped over in a chair by the pool, a half-drunken bottle of Scotch next to him," Karen said. "He decided then it would be easier to just stand my father up and push him into the pool. He waited until he was sure my father was dead. Then he came back home. We left the next day."

They both sat silently for an interval

Then, Karen asked, "So is it time for you to slap those cuffs on, detective?"

"For what?" Milo asked her, in return.

"Complicity to commit murder, I suppose, for one thing," Karen replied.

"Where's the gun?"

"Robbie got rid of that," Karen said. "We thought it just as well".

Milo stood up. "Don't ever bring it up again, you understand? To anyone!"

After she took her leave, Karen cried.

During her drive back to the squad, Milo thought about her old partner, Glen Stuben. Glen always told stories about when he'd worked homicide. One such story he told her, was about a lowlife who Glen and his then partner tried to arrest for a rape and murder. Only, the guy pulled out a gun and Glen ended up shooting him twice.

Thing about this guy was, he'd been arrested before for rape and other violence against woman, and he just kept getting off!

"This time", Glen told Milo, "we decided to make sure he was going down for good."

"How'd you do that?" Milo asked him.

"We waited a few minutes before we called it in. By the time the ambulance got there he was gone. 'Cause sometimes, detective, real justice needs a little help!"

When she arrived at the station, her chief called her in immediately.

"So, what's the story?"

"Well, other than what we already know, nothing", Milo said.

"No complicity on the sister's part?"

"No."

"The dead brother?"

"Not that I could discern."

"No extenuating or unusual circumstances?"

"Chief, I think that Delia Hatch, or Maycard, or whatever name she's going by these days, is trying to protect her newfound wealth, and she's playing real dirty to do it. This poor girl, Karen, isn't interested in getting a cut of the pie. She just wants to be left alone. And I think we should accommodate her!"

"OK, then," the chief concurred. "Good work!".

Milo clocked out after that.

She headed home. She wanted to hug her daughter.