Fifty-Two

I WAITED FOR HIM on the dock, having come straight here from our late practice at Hunters Point. I’d hoped that perhaps being on the field with the kids would make me less angry at my brother than I was.

It had not. I had been working up to this confrontation all day, from the time I’d entered the tedious portal for Wolf.com.

Jack pulled himself out of the water and then the scull, which he had on his shoulder when he saw me. He stopped where he was. I walked down to him.

“I can’t believe it took you this long to come looking for me,” he said.

“I still had real jobs to go to.”

He laid the long, thin boat down next to him. I pointed to it.

“Shame that somebody couldn’t fall out of one of these and drown.”

“Where do you want to do this?” he said. “I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”

“Hell?”

Then I added, “Right here is fine. All the privacy we need.”

“And if I do mysteriously end up in the water like our father did, I’m pretty sure I can make it safely back to the dock,” he said.

He sat down on the dock, cross-legged, and leaned back against the side of the scull. I stood over him, a few feet away. Already feeling the powerful urge to knock the smug look off his face. It was a feeling I’d largely, if not entirely, managed to keep under control our whole lives.

“Just out of curiosity,” he said, “which story did you hate more?”

The story about Ryan and Donna Kilgore and me carried the headline GOING TO THE MATTRESS, giving him and Dowd the chance to revisit the story about Ryan Morrissey’s coming to my house the night Danny had told him to resign.

“You know Donna Kilgore lied in that first statement,” I said. “You know it; Danny knows it; I know it. The New York Times eventually blew it out of the water. So did ESPN.com. They treated it like the bullshit that it was.”

Jack grinned up at me. “At Wolf.com, we prefer to let the readers, many, many of whom don’t read the Times, decide.” He whistled now. “And, oh, man, Sis, have they ever decided. Have you checked out the comments section in the last hour? I thought it would take a while for people to start weighing in. But it’s a hotter platform than Reddit. Turns out they can’t get enough of you.”

“I’d check it out, but I haven’t had my shots.”

“I actually thought Thomas would be the one to show up,” Jack said. “But it’s just like it was when we were kids. He’s still letting you fight his battles. Thomas never knew our little secret, did he, Jen? How scared you’ve always been of me.”

“You wish.”

“Bullshit.”

“The bullshitter is you,” I said. “You know Thomas doesn’t go anywhere near drugs now.”

“Do I?” he said in a singsong voice.

“You’ve done a lot of really lousy things in your life, Jack. But putting him out there as some kind of pusher might be the lousiest.”

We had gone at each other like this, often to the delight of our father, for as long as I could remember. But Jack was right about something: there was a part of him that did scare me. Even as a kid, I knew he was the meanest one of all of us. I’d never considered Danny a true rival. I’d never thought of him as being smart enough or strong enough to beat me in any kind of fair fight. And even though Thomas and I had had our share of scraps, he’d always been, always would be, my baby brother.

Jack was different. In a way, I thought, Wolf.com was inevitable with him. He had always been a gutter fighter. He would always do anything to win, especially if he was competing with me. One time he’d stolen the start of my science project, and when I complained to my father, he said, “You should have done a better job hiding it.”

So nothing had changed, not really. He was still willing to do anything to try to take me down. And when he’d gotten me down, as he’d at least temporarily done today, he was still looking to give me one more good kick to the head.

All in all, Thomas was more right than he knew about wounded wolves.

“Where’d you get the money for this website?” I asked. “I know you’re opposed on religious grounds to laying out money of your own.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that it’s here. I’d originally seen this as being a spin-off from the Tribune. So now it’s a competitor instead.” He shrugged again, more theatrically than before. “And even though you think everything’s about you, you had to see that there’s a lot more going on on the site than just you and our baby brother.”

He glanced at one of those underwater watches that looked as if it could do everything for you except check your cholesterol.

“What’s your endgame here, Jack? It can’t just be getting the newspaper back.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head slowly back and forth.

“There’s no end to this game, at least not for you.”

“And no bottom for you.”

“And in case you haven’t noticed by now,” Jack said, “this really isn’t a game with me.”

I looked past him, out at the water. There were still so many boats out there at twilight, set off against the last of the setting sun, the whole scene beautiful and peaceful, reminding me of a painting.

Things were peaceful everywhere except here, with Jack and me. Neither one of us willing to back up or back down.

“By the way?” he said. “If either one of you really is thinking about suing me, you ought to keep in mind that for the ones who are doing the suing, discovery can be a bitch.”

He stood up now.

“Bitch,” he added.

With that I took a step forward and punched him as hard as I could in the face, knocking him into the water.

As soon as I did, I heard a voice I recognized behind me, saying, “Smile.”

I turned and saw Seth Dowd pointing his phone at me.

“Still rolling,” he said.