“So I’ve heard, though I haven’t listened yet.” Reid takes a tiny sip of the cocktail. “I’ll have the rest when I’m done.”
“Did you know about Vance Moodey?” I ask. “About him and Jane?”
“Mom didn’t tell me,” Reid says, moving from his stretch into a set of push-ups. “She thought it was her secret, though they weren’t that great at hiding. All the guys on the crew knew.”
The sun has begun to dip toward the foothills, its light filtering through the trees. In my mind, I go over the earlier phone call with Mrs. Haviland, trying to make sense of what she told me. “I found a ledger,” she said, “with four payments from Vance Moodey to Reid Construction. The payments aren’t small.”
“Vance is a supplier,” I responded. “Wouldn’t money usually go the other way?”
“That’s what caught my attention,” Mrs. Haviland said. “The payments are on a lease in Finstock. Vance may have invested in the project.”
Now, before I lose my nerve, I say, “The first time I met Vance, I was with Jane. He told her she’d have to deal with him eventually. I assumed she owed him money, so that day I overheard you and Vance out by the firepit, I thought you were talking about an overdue invoice, nothing more.”
Reid’s movement catches mid-push-up, if only for a second. “Mom hated when you called her Jane.”
“Okay, Mom, then. But it turns out,” I continue, “that if you run the only lumber supplier in the region and live in a trailer, you can save some bank. Vance thought he’d impress Mom by helping you out with a lucrative new project. I bet he thought he’d get a good return, too. Is that what the lease in Finstock was supposed to be? A good investment?”
“Investments are always risky,” Reid says.
“As long as the investments actually exist,” I say. “You were supposed to secure a lease for that outdoor mall. Vance wrote you a check to get in on the deal, but you lost the bid, and you never returned Vance’s money.”
Reid stands. “Is this for your podcast? Where’s the mic? Let me be sure you capture this: You’re full of shit. You’re trying to stir up drama where none exists. Vance was the one who came to me. Hethought he could impress Mom by throwing money around. I told him to go to hell.”
“But where’s Vance’s money?” I ask. “He gave you over two hundred grand. Did you think he wouldn’t find out? When I finish going through the firm’s accounts, what else will I find? How leveraged is the company?” A thought forms at the back of my mind, one that connects two strands of this story. The more I try to push the thought away, the more it takes shape. “Did Mom know what you’d done?”
“What if she did?”
“I met Vance at the mall construction site this afternoon,” I say. “He confirmed that Jane ... thatMomplanned to put Idlewood into conservation, that she was having Paul draw up papers. Did you knowMomwas meeting Andrea Haviland that morning?”
“Mom was meeting Andrea to tell her to fuck the hell off, and Andrea hit her in the head and burned down the house. That’s what happened. And if Andrea had minded her own business, that spec house would have been finished a month ago, and I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in now.”
I keep my voice steady. “I don’t think so,” I say. “I think Mom saw how you were managing the firm. She knew you owed Vance, and that’s why she was so standoffish with him when she saw him at Burkehaven.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the way I manage the firm,” Reid says.
“Except you owe money to Vance Moodey and God knows who else, and those condos on the harbor have to be rebuilt.”
“There are some issues with the foundation and the septic system. I can manage it.”
I count off on my fingers. “You owe money you don’t have. Mom didn’t trust you anymore, and she said as much that night we played cards.” I pause. “It’s my thirty grand.She told me she’d never let Idlewood be developed, but you were trying to convince her to sell.”
Reid closes his eyes. “Move on with your life, Charlie,” he says, his voice softer this time. “The rest of us have.”
We haven’t, though. We’ve spent twenty-five years pretending our whole lives didn’t change in an instant, and I’ve spent the last few weeks using a podcast as an excuse to make people talk to me. “Mom’s dead,” I say, “and Dad’s in hiding.”
“Dad isn’t in hiding,” Reid says. “He died after trying to kill both of us, and he got exactly what he deserved. Imagine what it was like for me that night. Imagine having the man who cared for you for your entire life come at you with a knife stained with your own mother’s blood. Imagine lying in a boat on a cold night watching paper lanterns floating in the sky while trying to protect your baby brother and hoping to be rescued from a nightmare. I thought Mom was in the woods dying in a pool of her own blood and that we’d be joining her soon. And now, imagine twenty-five years later, having your brother question what happened to you as though it was his to discover. I saved you that night, Charlie. I was a fucking hero.”
Reid is the only one left who can tell the story of what happened on the island the night Isaac Haviland died.
“What did Mr. Haviland say?” I ask. “Right before Dad stabbed him?”
“How would I know?”
“It was in the papers. The police reports, too. You told the detectives he called Mommy love.”
“Then that’s what he said. She was having an affair with him.”
“But how could you have heard him? You were on the porch. Mom, Dad, and Mr. Haviland were by the cars.”
