Now I slide onto the stool beside him, as I have most mornings in the week since he was released from the hospital. He wears the same glasses, but a neat crew cut has replaced the ponytail. “You’re here,” he says.
“Where else would I be?” I say as Blancy brings me a mug of coffee.
“What about work?” he asks. “They must want you at the radio station.”
I took another two-week leave after what happened. Technically I’m due in the office next week, but I won’t trust Julian after he unleashed the podcast on the world, and I have the estate to sort out and the construction firm to run. I have to untangle the finances to see who’s owed what, and who I can hold off for a bit longer. As Reid told me, it’s a shell game, one I suspect I can make work.
My father and I are feeling each other out. I haven’t referred to him as anything yet, not sure whether I should call him Mark or Dad orsomething else. Most mornings, we pick up our conversation exactly where we left off the day before. He’s already told me about returning to Idlewood on the evening Isaac Haviland was killed. He found my mother slumped on the road halfway to the bungalow, bleeding from the knife wound. “I started the argument with her,” he told me. “I couldn’t let go of the affair, or how betrayed I felt, which wasn’t fair to Jane, not by a long run, not after the things I’d done. I left to cool off. By the time I returned—”
He didn’t complete the thought. “I couldn’t turn Reid in,” he said. “I couldn’t let his whole life be ruined because of his parents’ mistakes. So I ran and took the blame.”
Yesterday, my father told me he came to Idlewood the night Reid drowned to talk to him—to confront him, really.
“I worried he’d killed your mother,” my father said, staring at the counter as he spoke. “But Reid was dead when I got there. You showed up a few moments after I did, and I didn’t know what to do. I came to the Landing first to find Andrea, but I saw her working in the kitchen and realized I’d already done her enough harm. After I talked to Blancy, I went to Burkehaven Farm. Living off the grid was tolerable when your mother came to visit, when there was something to look forward to, but after Jane died ... I couldn’t face being on my own. I might as well have been in prison. I was ready to turn myself in and thought Paul could help. When I got to the farmhouse, Paul was in the kitchen, sopping wet.”
Something clicked for my father in that moment. The players had been cut away one by one—first my mother, then Reid, until only Paul remained. “I confronted him,” my father said. “It didn’t take him long to confess. Or to pull a knife on me.”
Today, I take a long sip of my coffee. “What if you’d let Reid take the blame for his choices?”
“We’d have had a different life,” my father says. “All of us. I can’t tell you what that life would have been, better or worse, but it would havebeen different. I made the choices I made. So did your mother. And so did Reid. That’s all we can know.”
“Very Zen,” I say.
“Try spending twenty-five years mostly by yourself,” he says. “You’ll find your Zen, too.”
Behind me, the bells over the door ring. A second later, something cold and wet nudges my hand. Ginger stands by my stool, tail wagging, Freya beside her. “Harold,” she says. “Mark, it’s good to see you up and about.”
My father nods hello, like someone not yet used to engaging with the public.
“Maude,” I say.
“That’s a bridge too far,” Freya says. “I may sic Ginger on you.”
“Or she can be a dog now.”
“You mean no more killing machine?” Freya asks. “She probably has it in her to change, like we all do. And now that the stalker’s been caught, let’s hope he doesn’t make a return appearance for Sweeps Week.”
“Let’s hope,” I say.
“I was at Burkehaven this morning,” she says. “The new construction is looking good. I like seeing you take charge.”
Freya’s opted to stay in Hero for the time being, though she’s not giving up the co-op in New York. After confessing, Paul took a plea deal that kept him from facing federal charges. Freya agreed to buy the lot of land at the end of the point if he’d put the rest of the lots in conservation. Soon, the town will set about replanting the shoreline to restore Burkehaven to what it used to be.
“Maybe construction is your calling, Charlie,” my father says.
I’m not sure what my calling is. The firm is mired in debt, but if I can turn things around, it could be worth some money. I also have the recordings I made, and a lurid story, one that’s mostly mine to tell. My father’s reappearance and Paul’s arrest garnered attention in the media, but for all the gossip and small-town whispering, the people in Heroprotect their own. They closed ranks and froze out the reporters, so that a week after the story blew up, it fizzled away on its own.
The bells over the door ring. This time, Duncan Gilcrest enters. I haven’t seen him since the EMTs lifted him onto a gurney and wheeled him down the mountain. Now, two weeks later, he’s as handsome and charismatic as ever.
“He really is ridiculous,” Freya says as Gilcrest talks to anyone who will listen. “But he’s also been working with Lisa Lawson, Wendy Burrows’s widow, to see if she can qualify for survivor’s benefits now that we know Wendy died on duty. He’s a lot more good than bad.”
“What about Gilcrest’s wife?” I ask.
“Near-death experiences bring clarity. For everyone,” Freya says, in a way that tells me she not only likes every inch of that ridiculous detective but has found her own clarity.
“I’m glad,” I say.
“Come out tonight,” she says, then kisses my cheek. “I have a show at seven. We can have a drink afterward.”
