Chương 8
“You planned all of that?”
“I adjusted.”
It was the word that frightened Ethan most.
Lucas gave him an address and told him to come alone the next night. It was their father’s old workshop, a corrugated-metal building outside town that had been empty since the property entered probate. Lucas wanted the statement signed and notarized. Ethan was to bring fifteen thousand dollars in cash.
“You said you’d return money,” Ethan said.
“I will. After I can trust you.”
“You assaulted my wife.”
“You grabbed our mother.”
The line went dead.
Ortiz entered the office.
“You did well,” she said.
Ethan stared at the phone.
“No, I didn’t.”
“You kept him talking.”
“He was right about some of it.”
“That doesn’t make him less responsible for the rest.”
The sentence sounded like Margaret.
Ethan went to therapy the following morning and spent forty minutes explaining why he had failed to see Lucas clearly. The therapist listened, then asked why Ethan kept describing blindness as though it were passive.
“You made decisions,” the therapist said.
“I was manipulated.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You knew pieces.”
“Not enough.”
“How much certainty do you usually require before acting?”
Ethan thought of Margaret’s wrist.
“Not much.”
The therapist nodded.
“That’s the problem.”
Ethan disliked him for most of the session.
Near the end, the therapist asked what Ethan believed would happen if he stopped protecting Lucas.
“He’ll have no one.”
“What happened when you protected him?”
Ethan looked at the carpet.
“He had everyone.”
“And?”
“He used us.”
The therapist waited.
Ethan understood that he was expected to say more, which made him refuse for almost a minute.
Finally, he said, “I think I liked being the person he came to.”
“Why?”
“Because he needed me.”
“Did Claire need you in the kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“What did she need?”
Ethan’s answer arrived quietly.
“For me not to make it worse.”
Claire agreed to meet him that afternoon at a coffee shop near Margaret’s house. Noah slept in a stroller between them. Claire ordered tea, forgot to drink it, and peeled the paper sleeve from the cup in small strips.
Ethan told her about the workshop.
“You’re going,” she said.
“The police want me to.”
“You wanted to before they did.”
“Yes.”
She tore another strip from the sleeve.
“What happens if he asks you to choose?”
“He already did.”
“No. In person.”
Ethan looked through the window at traffic moving along the wet street. A delivery driver jogged between cars with a paper bag held under his jacket.
“I don’t know.”
Claire nodded.
The answer seemed to relieve her more than a promise would have.
“I need you to know something,” she said. “I don’t hate Lucas.”
Ethan looked at her.
“I wish I did. It would be easier. He held Noah when I showered. He brought me food after the C-section. He sat in the emergency room with us when Noah had that fever.”
“He loved him.”
“Maybe.”
“He did.”
Claire’s eyes hardened.
“You’re doing it again.”
Ethan stopped.
She continued. “Maybe he loved Noah. Maybe he loved how Noah made him feel. Maybe those are mixed together. I don’t know. You don’t know either.”
“I keep wanting one version to erase the other.”
“I know.”
“What do you want me to do tomorrow?”
“Come home afterward.”
He stared at her.
“Not to live,” she said. “Come tell me what happened. Don’t disappear into your mother’s house or the office or a bar. Don’t decide you’re protecting me by keeping the worst parts to yourself.”
“I don’t drink when I’m angry.”
“That isn’t the important part of what I said.”
He nodded.
Claire pushed the stroller gently when Noah stirred.
“And Ethan?”
“Yes?”
“If he runs, let him run.”
The workshop smelled of dust, old oil, and damp wood. Ethan arrived ten minutes before the agreed time wearing a small transmitter beneath his shirt. Ortiz and three officers waited beyond the tree line in unmarked vehicles. The plan was not elaborate. Ethan would keep Lucas talking. If investigators heard an immediate threat or saw evidence of a weapon, they would intervene. Otherwise, they wanted Lucas to produce the documents or identify where the funds were held.
Ethan hated every part of it.
He had imagined undercover operations as controlled, technical things. In reality, the transmitter cable scratched his skin, the building’s lights flickered, and one of the officers had warned that the metal walls might interfere with the signal.
Lucas arrived through the rear door at nine twelve.
He wore a gray hooded sweatshirt and carried a duffel bag. His face had changed in nine days. Stubble covered his jaw. His cheeks looked hollow. Yet when he saw Ethan, he smiled as if they had arranged to watch a game.
“You came alone.”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
Ethan turned slowly, raising his arms.
Lucas patted his pockets and waistband. His fingers passed within an inch of the transmitter but did not find it.
“You lose weight?” Lucas asked.
“No.”
“You look terrible.”
“So do you.”
Lucas smiled again. “There you are.”
He set the duffel on their father’s old workbench. The bench still bore a dark crescent where Richard had once dropped a hot saw blade. Ethan remembered being fourteen and watching his father press ice against the burn on his palm while refusing to go to the hospital.
Lucas unzipped the bag.
Inside were loan papers, a laptop, three phones, and several thick envelopes.
“Cash?” Ethan asked.
“Some.”
“How much?”
“Thirty-two.”
“You said you lost one nineteen.”
“I can recover more if the accounts reopen.”
“They won’t.”
“They will if you say you authorized the transfers.”
“That makes me part of the fraud.”
“It makes it business debt.”
“It isn’t business debt.”
May you like
Lucas took a folded document from the bag and placed it on the bench.
The statement said Ethan had witnessed Margaret strike Claire with a kitchen utensil. It said Lucas had intervened to protect Claire. It described the voicemail as an edited recording created after Margaret learned she might face criminal charges.
