Chương 4
At sixteen, Ryan found a box of old birthday cards his mother had kept from relatives he barely remembered. Half of them contained twenty-dollar bills she had apparently forgotten to give him. For one ridiculous afternoon he had convinced himself she stole from him. Then he found an envelope with unpaid utility notices from the same years and understood she had used the cash to keep the electricity on.
People kept refusing to stay simple.
His mother most of all.
“What did he do?”
Walter leaned against the workbench.
“You’re not going to stop asking.”
“No.”
“He transported stolen property.”
Ryan turned.
“That’s federal?”
“It was more complicated.”
“Of course it was.”
Walter ignored the comment.
“Boats. Engines. Electronics. Mostly across state lines. Sometimes across the Canadian border.”
Ryan stared.
“My father was a smuggler?”
“He repaired boats.”
“That’s not what you just said.”
“He repaired boats for people who were smuggling things. Then he started moving things himself.”
“Drugs?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because I was with him.”
Ryan went still.
Walter continued before Ryan could speak.
“I wasn’t moving stolen property. I ran this place with him for a while. Repairs, winter storage, fishing boats. People paid cash. We didn’t ask enough questions. Daniel asked fewer.”
“You knew?”
“Not at first.”
“And when you did?”
“I told myself it was engines with serial numbers filed down. Insurance fraud. Rich people stealing from other rich people. Pick whichever excuse makes me look least stupid.”
Ryan stared at the old rusted tools on the wall.
“What happened?”
“A boat went down.”
His stomach tightened.
“Someone died?”
Walter nodded.
“Two people.”
“Because of him?”
“No. Because the men running the operation overloaded it and took it out in weather they shouldn’t have. But after the recovery, investigators found equipment from three states. Daniel’s name was in repair records. Mine too.”
“And you went to prison?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I talked.”
Ryan gave a humorless laugh.
“You informed on him.”
“I informed on everybody.”
“Except yourself.”
“No. I told them what I did.”
“And somehow you’re here.”
Walter looked toward the lake.
“I was more useful outside.”
There was no pride in it.
Ryan felt a new piece click into place and immediately disliked the picture it created.
“Did my father know?”
“Eventually.”
“That you cooperated?”
“Yes.”
“What did he do?”
Walter’s gaze dropped to Ryan’s hand.
The same hand he had slapped.
“He broke two of my fingers.”
Ryan instinctively flexed his own fingers.
Walter noticed.
“That’s why you said I did better.”
“Yes.”
Ryan rubbed his face.
The storm had softened slightly, or maybe he had stopped hearing it.
“So Dad went to prison because you turned on him.”
Walter’s expression hardened.
“Your father went to prison because he made choices.”
“That sounds convenient coming from you.”
“It is convenient. Doesn’t make it false.”
Ryan wanted to reject the answer.
Couldn’t.
Walter walked to a chair near the wall and sat.
His knees seemed to bother him on the way down.
That ordinary sign of age did something unpleasant to Ryan’s anger. It made it harder to hold Walter as an object.
Ryan sat on an overturned bucket across from him.
Neither spoke for a while.
The rain found a leak near the middle of the roof and began tapping into a coffee can on the floor.
Walter looked at it.
“Been meaning to fix that.”
Ryan stared at him.
Walter glanced back.
“What?”
“You say that now?”
“It’s leaking.”
Ryan covered his face with both hands.
A laugh escaped him.
This one was real and exhausted.
Walter’s mouth twitched.
Ryan lowered his hands.
“Why did my mother lie?”
Walter’s expression changed again.
“I can tell you what I know.”
“That’s a start.”
“She was afraid.”
“Of him?”
“Yes.”
Ryan had expected the word.
Still, hearing it hurt.
“Did he hit her?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure of what she told me and what I saw.”
“What did you see?”
“Daniel angry.”
Ryan waited.
Walter ran a thumb along the seam of his jeans.
“He had a temper. Not every day. Not all the time. That almost made it worse. You never knew which Daniel was walking through the door.”
Ryan looked down at his own hands.
He thought of the hole he had punched in his bedroom wall at seventeen.
The time he threw a socket wrench across Mark’s shop after stripping a bolt.
The look on his mother’s face when it hit the concrete.
Not fear exactly.
Something older than that.
Recognition.
Ryan’s stomach turned.
Walter watched him.
Ryan said, “He hurt her.”
“He scared her.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Walter took his time.
“One night he shoved her into a door.”
Ryan’s jaw tightened.
“She was pregnant?”
“Yes.”
Ryan stood so quickly the bucket tipped backward.
Walter did not move.
“What happened?”
“She left.”
“Good.”
“She came back two weeks later.”
Ryan stared at him.
“Why?”
Walter’s eyes held his.
“Same reasons people go back.”
Ryan paced toward the door.
The lake beyond it had become visible again as the rain thinned.
He wanted to call his mother immediately.
He also wanted five more minutes in which she was still the woman who had lied to protect him instead of the woman who had lied for some other reason he had not discovered yet.
He hated himself for needing the distinction.
“Did she know he went to prison?”
“Yes.”
“Did she visit?”
“Once.”
“When?”
“Before sentencing.”
“Did she write?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he write to her?”
“Yes.”
Ryan turned.
Walter nodded toward the case.
“Some are probably in there.”
“She kept his letters?”
“Not those. Copies.”
“Copies he made?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Daniel kept records when he was scared.”
“What was he scared of?”
Walter’s eyes shifted to the case.
Ryan followed them.
“The people he worked for?”
“Partly.”
“And?”
“Your mother.”
Ryan’s head snapped back.
“What?”
“Not because he thought she would hurt him.”
“Then what?”
May you like
Walter rubbed his mouth.
“He was scared she would tell you the truth before he could.”
