The reception was still going. He could hear it but barely. Mostly, he heard the symphony of crickets and the rustling of leaves. There was also a voice in his head he was trying to ignore, but was failing badly.
Because Ben couldn’t turn off his brain.
Rob's voice. Loud. Confident. Completely sure of itself, the way Rob's voice always was.
He was ready to blow his entire future, and I was able to get him to see reason.
Ben turned the words over. Examined them from different angles. Held them up against what Ethan had said under the oak tree.
Ethan had gone to someone older for advice. Someone he trusted. He'd told this person about Lori, about the baby, about his plan to skip college and work on a farm. And this person had told him to forget all of it. Get an abortion. Give the baby up. Don't throw away your potential on a seventeen-year-old girl and a life that doesn't match your trajectory.
Rob Bateman was not much older than Ethan, four or five years perhaps? Yet he carried himself like a man who’d accumulated five decades of wisdom. He had opinions about everything. He volunteered them freely. And he believed, with absolute certainty, that he knew better than everyone around him.
Ben had been around people like that in business. It rarely ended well. For them. The problem with thinking you’re the smartest in the room is that, eventually, you’re going to come up against someone who really is the smartest.
Rob had described his relationship with Ethan at the reception.
He'd be nothing without me.
Kelly stirred against his shoulder. She lifted her head. He felt her wipe her face with the back of her hand. Quick. Efficient. Done crying. Moving forward.
She was tough. Tougher than her family gave her credit for.
"Something's bothering me," Ben said, unable to keep from saying what had been on his mind.
“What is it?”
"Rob told me earlier, before the ceremony, that he stopped Ethan from doing something stupid. Something career-ending." Ben kept his voice low. "He said he stopped Ethan from ruining his life."
Kelly went still. Not the stillness of someone thinking. The stillness of someone who already knew where this was going.
“I heard that, too.”
"Ethan said he went to someone older for advice," Ben continued. "Someone he trusted. And that person told him to forget about Lori and the baby. Told him he was wasting his potential."
"Rob."
Kelly had a tired but annoyed tone when she said her brother’s name. Despite not knowing the man well, he completely understood. He remembered again the exhausted yet resigned expression on Rob’s wife, Lisa’s, face.
"Could be."
"It is." Her voice had changed. The grief was still there underneath, but something harder had risen to the surface. "That sounds like exactly what Rob would say. Word for word. 'You're throwing your life away. You have too much potential.' That's his speech. I've heard it a hundred times. About my career. About my choices. About anything that doesn't fit his plan for how people should live."
Ben watched her posture change. Her spine straightened. Her hands, which had been shaking under the oak tree, were still now.
"Ethan said this person promised not to talk to Lori," Ben reminded her.
"Rob wouldn't keep that promise." Kelly's words came fast. Certain. "Not a chance. He would have decided he knew better. He always decides he knows better. He would have gone to Lori himself and told her what to do."
The crickets filled the silence between them. Somewhere at the reception, the DJ changed songs. Something with horns.
"He might have talked to Lori anyway," Kelly said. Her voice was harder now. Colder. "He may have even talked to her the day she disappeared.”
Ben didn't rush to respond. The implication was enormous.
If Rob had confronted Lori about the pregnancy, if he'd pressured her to end it or give up the baby, if that conversation had happened close to the day she died…
It didn't make Rob a killer. But it made him a person who had potentially crucial information about the last days of Lori Powell's life and had said nothing. For over a decade.
