Chương 16
Not an unidentified body.
A man whose identification had been inconvenient.
“When?” Leo asked.
“Saturday.”
“I’ll drive.”
Thomas looked up.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
They drove to Cleveland in silence broken by traffic and Thomas’s complaints about Leo following too closely.
“You faked your death,” Leo said. “You don’t get to criticize my driving.”
“The two things are unrelated.”
“That’s what makes it irritating.”
Thomas looked out the window, hiding a smile.
Samuel’s daughters met them at a restaurant near the lake.
Elena Ortega was thirty-one and wore blue medical scrubs beneath her coat. Her older sister, Marisol, arrived ten minutes late and apologized only to the hostess.
Thomas stood when they approached.
Neither woman offered a hand.
They sat.
A waiter brought menus. No one opened them.
Thomas began with an apology.
Marisol stopped him.
“I don’t want the polished version.”
“I don’t have one.”
“You practiced in the car.”
Thomas looked at Leo.
Leo said, “He did.”
Thomas gave him a betrayed glance.
Marisol folded her hands on the table.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
Thomas did.
He explained the burned vehicle, the bribed physician, the forged permit, the empty casket. He admitted he had been told the body was unidentified and had chosen not to ask further questions. He did not mention fear until Elena asked whether Hale had threatened Leo.
“Yes,” Thomas said.
“Then why not go to police?”
“The police were involved.”
“State police?”
“I did not know whom to trust.”
“Federal?”
“I was afraid the evidence was incomplete.”
Marisol leaned back.
“You had reasons.”
“Yes.”
“My father had reasons for drinking. He had reasons for disappearing. Reasons didn’t call us.”
Thomas lowered his eyes.
“No.”
Elena asked, “Where are his ashes?”
The funeral home had cremated Samuel’s body after using his records in Thomas’s false death paperwork. The ashes had been stored under Thomas’s name.
Thomas had brought them in a plain urn.
He placed it on the table.
Marisol stared at it.
“You carried him in through the front of a restaurant?”
“I didn’t know where else—”
She began laughing.
It was sharp and shocked. Elena covered her mouth. Leo looked at Thomas, who seemed horrified.
Marisol wiped her eyes.
“Our father would have loved this. He took us to diners for every major event because he hated quiet rooms.”
The laughter ended as abruptly as it began.
She put one hand on the urn.
Elena asked Thomas to leave the table.
He did.
Leo started to rise, but Marisol said, “You can stay.”
Thomas waited outside beside the parking lot.
The sisters told Leo about Samuel. He repaired neighbors’ cars for beer money. He disappeared for months, then returned with gifts purchased from gas stations. He taught Elena how to change a tire and forgot Marisol’s high school graduation.
They loved him.
They resented him.
Death had not corrected either feeling.
Before leaving, Marisol asked Leo whether Thomas had been a good father.
Leo considered lying.
“No,” he said. “But sometimes he tried hard enough that I confused trying with being good.”
Marisol nodded as if the answer belonged to her too.
The sisters took Samuel’s ashes home.
Thomas watched them drive away.
“I thought they would yell more,” he said.
“Disappointed?”
“No.”
“You look disappointed.”
“I thought anger might be easier.”
“For you?”
“Yes.”
Leo unlocked the car.
Thomas remained near the curb.
“Why did you come?” he asked.
Leo looked across the parking lot toward the gray lake.
“Because they shouldn’t have to sit with you alone.”
“That sounds almost kind.”
“It wasn’t for you.”
“I know.”
Leo looked at him.
Thomas raised both hands. “Sorry.”
The civil case against Bellwether County lasted nearly two years.
Leo received a settlement large enough to buy a modest house, pay legal fees, and establish a fund for reentry assistance. He did not become wealthy. Evelyn made him meet with a financial adviser before he signed anything.
Grant Hale pleaded guilty to fraud, conspiracy, and obstruction. He received eleven years in federal prison.
Ross Vey went to trial.
Harold testified about Darren’s memory card and storage unit. Thomas testified about the audit, his false death, and the threats. Cole testified for six days and admitted to crimes that had never appeared in the original investigation. Rebecca testified against all of them, then received a reduced sentence for her own role.
The jury convicted Vey.
Afterward, Harold stood outside the courthouse smoking a cigarette despite having quit seventeen years earlier.
Leo took it from his hand and crushed it under his boot.
“You’re irritating,” Harold said.
“You’re old.”
“That isn’t an argument.”
“It wins eventually.”
Harold looked toward the courthouse doors.
“Darren would still be alive if I had reported Vey when Thomas first told me.”
“You didn’t have proof.”
“I had suspicion.”
“So did half the county about half the people in that courtroom.”
Harold put his hands in his coat pockets.
“I should’ve done more.”
Leo thought of Miguel Santos’s letter.
“You should have,” he said.
Harold looked at him.
Leo continued.
“And Vey still killed him. Both can be true.”
They walked back to the parking garage.
Thomas and Leo never returned to what they had been before prison.
That relationship had depended on smaller disappointments: unpaid bills, missed calls, hidden pills, lectures delivered from doorways. The new one had to include an empty grave, six stolen years, and choices neither man could defend.
They met most Sundays for breakfast.
Sometimes they discussed the case. Usually they did not.
Thomas complained about restaurant coffee. Leo ordered pancakes and left half the syrup untouched. Janice joined them when she was not working. She renewed her nursing license and took a job at a rehabilitation clinic.
Thomas apologized too often at first.
Leo eventually told him to limit himself to one apology per month.
“What happens if I need two?” Thomas asked.
“Save one.”
“Do they carry over?”
“No.”
“That seems punitive.”
May you like
“It is.”
One Sunday, Thomas admitted he had visited Leo’s prison twice after faking his death.
