“Luka knows good people,” Giovanni replied, taking a seat on a chair beside me.
Bear gave Luka an awkward pat, and Luka responded by thumping his tail against the rug.
After a moment, Bear cleared his throat. “I know you offered to have me come over for a drink when you were at the diner, and I said no to the drink, but … I wouldn’t mind one now. If it’s still all right.”
“Of course,” Giovanni said, rising. “Whisky?”
“Yes, please.”
Giovanni poured a glass and handed it to him. Bear took a sip, then another, his shoulders lowering as the warmth settled in.
“All right,” he said. “Ask whatever you need to ask.”
I folded my hands in my lap. “At the restaurant, I told you Glinda and Anne saw a man in their neighborhood right before Anne went missing, someone matching your description. Anne’s mother, Violet, also saw a man sitting in a truck outside her sister’s house, and she believes it was the same person. Was that man you?”
Bear stared into his glass, swirling the whisky once before answering. “Yes.”
Giovanni sat back, absorbing what Bear had just admitted, though his expression remained calm.
“Why were you there?” I asked.
“It’s a long story.”
“We have time,” I said.
Bear looked into the fire, the flames flickering across his face. “My mother died twenty-six years ago,” he said. “Before she passed, she told me something she’d kept secret for most of her life. She said I deserved to know the truth.”
“The truth about what?” I asked.
“She told me that Violet and Glinda’s father … well, she said he was my father too.”
I exchanged a glance with Giovanni but remained silent.
“My mother told me she and their father had an affair decades ago,” he said. “It wasn’t long-term. It wasn’t serious. Just one of those things that shouldn’t have happened but did.”
“Before she told you the truth, who did you believe your father to be?”
“The man who raised me. He came into the picture when my mother was pregnant. I thought it was strange, the fact he was so small and, well, I’m not, but I never questioned it.”
“Did Violet and Glinda’s father know about you?”
“Doubt it. My mother said she never told him.”
“I assume that’s the reason you were seen at Glinda’s house all those years ago,” I said.
He nodded. “I just wanted to … I don’t know … I wanted to see them, to see where I came from and if they looked like me. I never knew they were worried about who I was, but I understand now why they would be.”
“How often were you in Glinda’s neighborhood?”
“It was just a few times,” Bear admitted. “I thought maybe I’d get the courage to knock on the door and introduce myself. But then Anne went missing, and everyone panicked. I realized it wasn’t the right moment to show up and say, ‘Hey, I might be your half-brother.’”
“And then Anne was never found.”
“She wasn’t, and after the dust settled and the years passed, it felt too late to step into their lives, so I kept the truth to myself. Aside from my mother and the man who raised me, Billy is the only other person who knows the truth.”
“That’s why he put in a good word for you today,” Giovanni said.
Bear nodded. “He’s a decent man.”
