Chương 2
Richard exhaled loudly. “This is getting ridiculous.”
Daniel turned.
“Go inside, Richard.”
Richard blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“You work for us.”
Daniel’s eyes stayed on him.
“I work for Mrs. Whitmore.”
That landed harder than Eleanor expected.
Richard looked at his mother.
For years, people around the Whitmore family had done that before deciding where authority really sat. Accountants. Contractors. Lawyers. Neighbors. Hotel managers. People at restaurants when reservations had gone wrong.
Eleanor had always disliked it.
That afternoon, soaked and trembling on a dock she had paid to rebuild twice, she did not dislike it at all.
Madison finally touched the screen of her phone.
The recording stopped.
Richard saw it.
“Delete that.”
Madison looked up.
“What?”
“You heard me. Delete it.”
“Dad—”
“It was a family joke. Delete it.”
The brunette woman stepped away from him.
Her name was Leah Morgan. Eleanor had met her twice before, both times at large family gatherings where Leah had been introduced as Tyler’s girlfriend and then largely ignored while Richard talked about boats.
Now Leah folded her arms across her blue T-shirt.
“That wasn’t a joke.”
Richard’s head turned slowly.
“No one asked you.”
Tyler stood.
“Dad.”
“Stay out of it.”
“You kicked her hand.”
Richard stared at his son.
Tyler’s face reddened, but he did not look away.
Richard gave a short, incredulous laugh. “I tapped her shoe-side. She was hanging onto the dock.”
“Her hand went under.”
“She’s fine.”
Eleanor coughed again.
No one spoke.
Daniel pulled his phone from his pocket.
Richard took a step toward him.
“Don’t turn this into something.”
Daniel looked down at the screen and dialed.
“You did that already.”
The young man in the gray T-shirt, Connor Bell, had not said a word since Eleanor came out of the water. He stood with his arms stiff at his sides, flip-flops darkened from spray. He had come with Madison, though Eleanor was not certain whether he was a boyfriend, coworker, or the latest person Madison had decided not to define.
Connor cleared his throat.
“Maybe she should lie down.”
Daniel shook his head. “Not flat. Let her sit.”
Richard paced two steps away and back.
“This is insane.”
Eleanor watched him.
All her life she had been good at looking at Richard without seeing what was in front of her.
When he was ten and stole cash from his father’s wallet, she saw a frightened boy who wanted baseball cards.
When he was nineteen and wrecked James’s Oldsmobile after drinking, she saw a college student who had made one mistake.
When he was thirty-six and blamed a failed development project on a partner he had once called his closest friend, Eleanor saw a man under terrible pressure.
When he was forty-eight and asked for money Eleanor knew he would never repay, she saw her son.
At fifty-three, standing on the family dock after kicking the fingers of a seventy-four-year-old woman who could not swim, he was still her son.
That was the problem.
The ambulance came twenty-three minutes later.
Richard spent eighteen of them trying to regain control of the afternoon.
He started with volume. He told Tyler to move the cooler. He told Madison to put her phone away. He told Connor to untie the runabout because they might need the dock clear. He told Leah that there were dry towels in the guest bath.
Nobody followed his instructions.
Then he changed tactics.
He crouched several feet from Eleanor.
“Mom.”
She did not answer.
“Mom, look at me.”
She did.
He lowered his voice.
“You slipped. We were messing around. You know that.”
“I know what happened.”
“You were laughing.”
“I was not.”
“You were.”
Daniel looked at him.
Richard corrected himself. “Before. Before you fell.”
Eleanor tried to remember.
There had been a discussion at the edge of the dock. Richard had been holding a bottle of beer. Madison had been filming because Richard had asked her to record what he called “the handoff weekend.” Eleanor had told him, for the third time, that there was no handoff.
He had laughed.
Then he had taken the keys from the table and held them above his head like a trophy.
Eleanor reached for them.
Richard pulled away.
Someone said, “Dad, stop.”
The keys fell.
Eleanor had stepped down onto the lower platform to retrieve them.
A wake from a passing boat struck the dock.
Her foot slid.
She remembered wood against her shoulder, the shocking cold, then Richard looking down at her.
And the kick.
There had been no joke before that.
There had been Richard pretending a decision had already been made because he believed saying something loudly enough could turn it into fact.
He had done that his whole life.
“I wasn’t laughing,” Eleanor said.
Richard glanced toward the others.
Madison was looking at the lake.
Tyler was staring at the boards.
Leah looked directly at Richard.
Connor suddenly became very interested in the buckle of his sandal.
Richard stood.
“Fine.”
Eleanor saw humiliation spread through him like heat.
“Fine. Great. Everybody make me the monster.”
“No one said monster,” Madison murmured.
Richard wheeled on her. “Give me the phone.”
“No.”
The word surprised everyone, Madison included.
Richard held out his hand.
“Madison.”
She tucked the phone against her chest.
“No.”
His face hardened.
“I pay for that.”
Madison gave him a look that was almost pitying.
“You stopped paying my phone bill three years ago.”
For one absurd second, Eleanor wanted to laugh.
Not because anything was funny.
Because families could be standing around a near drowning and still find time to argue about a cellular plan.
The ambulance siren grew louder.
Richard looked toward the shore.
“This is unbelievable.”
Eleanor closed her eyes.
She could feel water cooling inside the fabric against her spine. Her teeth had begun to chatter.
Daniel draped a towel around her shoulders.
“Your lawyer coming today?” he asked quietly.
She opened her eyes.
Richard looked back.
May you like
Eleanor saw that too.
“Yes,” she said.
