Chương 2
Mark stared at her.
“Most of it went to Northline.”
“What is Northline?”
No answer.
Rachel turned to Harold.
“You know?”
Her father’s eyes stayed on Mark.
“I know the name.”
Something in his tone changed the shape of the evening.
Rachel felt it immediately.
“How?”
Mark shook his head.
“Dad.”
Harold ignored him.
“A company sent papers here last winter.”
Rachel waited.
“What papers?”
Harold looked toward the station house.
“Let’s go inside.”
Rachel almost objected just because she was tired of men telling her where conversations should happen. Then the wind moved through the pines, sharp enough to lift the wet hair from her cheek, and she noticed her father’s hands were cold.
He was old.
She hated remembering that in the middle of being furious with him.
“All right,” she said. “Inside. Nobody leaves.”
Mark gave her a tired look.
“You planning to arrest us?”
“No. I’m planning to stop you from disappearing before I understand what you did.”
“I wasn’t disappearing.”
Rachel looked at the open SUV.
Mark glanced at the luggage.
“That’s not mine.”
Daniel raised a hand.
“Mine.”
Rachel frowned.
“I thought you came here to meet us.”
“I came here to take possession.”
Harold looked at him for the first time with something sharper than suspicion.
“Tonight?”
“That was the agreement.”
“With who?”
Daniel did not answer.
He did not need to.
They went into the station house.
The building had stopped serving passengers in 1989, when the rail company replaced the local stop with a bus connection from the valley. Harold and Rachel’s mother, Elaine, bought it two years later from the county and spent most of the next decade turning the waiting room into a kitchen and dining space, the ticket office into a small study, and the second floor into bedrooms.
They had raised two children in a place designed for strangers to pass through.
Rachel had spent half her childhood falling asleep to freight trains.
She had also spent half of it promising herself she would leave.
The front room smelled of old pine boards, damp wool, and the coffee Mark had made that morning and forgotten to empty from the pot. A floor lamp glowed beside Harold’s chair. One of Elaine Bennett’s quilts lay folded over the back even though nobody had used it since she died.
Mark noticed Rachel looking at it.
He took off his field jacket.
“I’m making coffee.”
“No,” Rachel said.
“I’m not asking permission.”
“Then make it.”
He went into the kitchen.
The ordinary movement unsettled her. Seven minutes earlier she had slapped him hard enough that her palm still stung, and now he was measuring grounds into the same dented metal filter they had owned since college.
Harold sat down.
Daniel remained standing.
Rachel looked at him.
“You can sit.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look like you’re going to pass out.”
“I wired four hundred thousand dollars to buy a property whose owner just told me the deed was forged.”
“That’ll do it.”
Daniel looked at her.
For the first time that evening, something almost human passed through his expression.
“Is that how you handle stress?”
“Usually I’m less charming.”
Mark spoke from the kitchen.
“That’s not true.”
Rachel turned.
“Don’t help.”
The coffee machine began to hiss.
Harold rubbed his thumb slowly along the arm of his chair.
Rachel sat across from him.
“What papers came last winter?”
He did not answer immediately.
“Dad.”
“A demand letter.”
“From Northline?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
Harold looked toward the kitchen.
Mark stood with his back to them.
“For a loan.”
Rachel waited for more.
When it did not come, she said, “A loan secured by what?”
Harold’s mouth tightened.
“The station.”
Rachel felt her anger move away from Mark for the first time.
Not disappear.
Move.
“You knew there was a loan against this place?”
“I knew somebody claimed there was.”
“When?”
“December.”
It was August.
Rachel stared at him.
“You knew for eight months?”
“I didn’t know it was legitimate.”
“Did you call me?”
“No.”
“Did you call a lawyer?”
“No.”
“Did you call the lender?”
“I told Mark to deal with it.”
Mark turned from the kitchen.
“And I dealt with it.”
Rachel stood.
“You forged a sale deed.”
“I kept the place from getting taken at auction.”
“You don’t get to say that like it’s normal.”
“I didn’t say it was normal.”
“You signed Dad’s name.”
“Yes.”
The room went still.
It was the first clean admission.
Harold looked down.
Daniel’s jaw hardened.
Rachel had expected denial, some technical argument, some claim about a power of attorney or a misunderstood form. The simplicity of the answer made her dizzy.
“You admit it.”
“I just did.”
“Why?”
Mark picked up the coffee pot and filled four mugs.
“No sugar left.”
Rachel stared at him.
He put the pot down.
“What do you want from me? I’m telling you.”
“I want you to explain why you forged Dad’s name on a deed and took four hundred thousand dollars from a man standing in our living room.”
“I didn’t take four hundred thousand dollars.”
Daniel finally sat.
“That is the part I would very much like explained.”
Mark brought the mugs over.
Rachel did not touch hers.
Daniel did, then seemed to remember he was drinking coffee made by a man who might have defrauded him and placed it back on the table.
Mark sat near the window.
“Northline got three hundred twelve thousand six hundred and change.”
Rachel turned to him.
“For a loan Dad says he never took.”
“I took it.”
“In his name?”
“In the property’s name.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
Mark rubbed both hands over his face.
“It was secured by the station.”
“With whose signature?”
Silence.
Rachel closed her eyes.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Wasn’t like what?”
“I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to steal the house.”
May you like
“You forged a loan before you forged the sale.”
“I signed paperwork to keep the roof over Dad’s head.”
