BACK AT MY farm there was still no sign of Steve. Chevy looked lonely as she ran down the lane to greet me. She jumped happily into the truck as we set off for another search. This time I drove all the backcountry roads and even along the highway to Hawley Bay. No maroon F-150. I dropped into the police station to see if there’d been any accidents.
Nothing.
As the afternoon wore on, I started to get mad. What was he playing at? The dude walks into my life, turns it upside down and then takes off because I didn’t beg him to stay? Where the hell was he hiding out? Had he gone on a bender and decided to sleep it off in a roadside motel somewhere? Was he that close to the edge?
A sudden thought chilled me. I went into the barn where the shotgun was kept. Gone. I ran upstairs to check the ammunition box under my bed. Empty.
Shit.
Now I had to find Steve. Lake Madrid only had one pub, and I figured it was a good bet Steve had gone there sometime in the past day.
The pub was just getting ready for happy hour when I arrived. I sidled down to the dark corner of the bar where people might not notice me. When the bartender cocked one eyebrow at me, I ordered a half pint of beer. Big drinker, that’s me.
When he brought it over, I lowered my voice. “I’m looking for a friend of mine, Steve, from Calgary. Cowboy hat, built like a fire hydrant. Has he been in?”
The bartender eyed me curiously. He is new to the village, but he likes to keep his ear to the ground. In his business, it pays to know your customers. “Yeah, he was in yesterday for a bit. Already tanked up and surly as a bear.”
“Did he talk about anything? Like where he was going?”
“Not to me he didn’t. He spilled his beer and that made him even madder. He turned around and yelled, Is there anyone here who was in this shithole town back in 1985?”
I sucked in my breath. “And what happened?”
“There was a table of punks over in that corner who volunteered. He snarled at them and yelled, And old enough to remember?”
“And?”
The bartender grinned and nodded to a man who had just walked in. “And Jack Ripley there said he was. They seemed to have a lot to say to each other, so maybe Jack knows where your friend is.”
Jack Ripley owns a dairy farm outside town, and I’ve known him all my life. He hires me to help him with spring maintenance sometimes. We’ve never been real friends, but he’s one of the good guys. He’s as tough and strong as old leather, but his hair’s white. I guess he’s close to sixty. Old enough to remember 1985 perfectly.
Jack is a popular guy, and a few guys said hello as he was ordering his beer. Before he could join anyone else, I grabbed my beer and headed over.
“Jack, you got a minute?”
Jack’s eyes flickered, but he didn’t seem surprised. He nodded to a table in the corner. “That way we can talk in private.”
While I was still working out where to begin, he did it for me. “You’re here about your brother?”
I blinked. “Steve told you that?”
He nodded. “He’s mad that you won’t go talk to the O’Tooles. I told him he didn’t know the history. That it’s a lot to ask of you.”
I took a deep drink of my beer, collecting myself. “Did he ask you about the snowmobiler who died in 1985?”
He nodded. “Said it was his father. Your father.”
“Do you remember him?” I asked. “Or the accident?”
He pursed his lips. “It was a long time ago.”
More stalling. What the hell? “What do you remember? He was a friend of Tommy’s. He stayed at my grandparents’ house. What was he like?”
“Good-looking. Cocky. The life of the party, unless he’d had too much to drink.”
“Did that happen often?”
Jack nodded. “We all partied too hard in those days. We were young men looking to create some excitement. Wes had a way about him of making you dream big, like the whole world could be yours. Most of the kids had never been out of the county and couldn’t find Calgary on the map, but boy, they wanted to get on the next bus. But he was a flash in the pan, you know? He was here, he stirred things up, and then he was dead. Too much booze, too much speed, and it killed him.” He stared into his glass. “It sure took the wind out of our sails.”
I tried to picture the man who might be my father. He didn’t seem like me. But it sounded like he could make my mother laugh. It made me sad. She had hardly ever laughed. Was she thinking of him all those times she sat dreaming in the dark?
“Do I remind you of him?” I asked.
Jack Ripley studied me for a long time. I figured he was trying to work out the best answer. “Now that I’m remembering, a bit. But you’re more like your mother.”
“Did he have blue eyes?”
“It was a long time ago. But yeah. He could be your dad.”
I took a deep breath. Had I finally found my father? A stranger who’d blown into town like a whirlwind and swept a sixteen-year-old girl off her feet.
A stranger with a son of his own waiting for him in Calgary.
“What did you tell Steve?”
“More or less what I told you. But he wanted to know about the night he died. He wanted to know if I’d seen him.”
“Had you?”
Jack took another long swig. His beer was nearly empty. Normally, he only has one before he heads back to the farm. Cows don’t give you much time off. But this time he waved to the bartender for a refill for both of us.
“Rick,” he started, very slowly. “This is a lot for you. Learning who your father was. Finding out you might have a brother. These are big changes. I’m not sure it’ll help. Do you really want to know about the night he died?”
It was like a cold draft raced through the room. Maybe a ghost. I shivered. I realized I was scared. Of the secret. Of whatever it was that no one wanted me to know. But Steve had not come home after he heard it. I needed to know why.
“I want to know what Steve learned.”
He pursed his lips. Nodded. “Okay. A bunch of us were here at the Lion’s Head. Wes, Tommy, Tommy’s brother Kevin—he moved up to the Yukon some years ago—and maybe a couple of girls.”
“My mother?”
He gave me a sharp look. “She was sixteen, Rick. These were just some village girls. Kevin took them home when Wes and Tommy got into a fight.”
“A fistfight?”
Jack shrugged. “Mostly yelling. Tommy maybe threw one punch, but Wes didn’t hit back.”
“What was the fight about?”
“It was just drunken bullshit.”
“Jack!”
“Honest, Rick, it was bullshit.”
“About my mother?”
“Look, I was trying not to listen. It was over almost before it started, and then they both took off. That was the days when you could bring your sleds right up to the back door, so off they went.”
“Together? Tommy and Wes on one snowmobile?”
“Together, but Tommy had his own.”
I sat back, stunned. Tommy had been with Wes on the night he died. The night he’d crashed his snowmobile and lain undiscovered for nearly a week. Dying a slow, freezing death. An accident, or something even worse? Had Tommy caused the crash? Was this the horrible secret everyone had been keeping from me all these years? Not to protect me, not to protect my mother, but to protect Tommy?
Jack was shifting in his chair, swirling his beer around and around. He cleared his throat a few times. “There’s one other thing you should know, Rick. Only because Steve got it out of me, and better you hear it from me than from him. Tommy had his own sled, but your mother…she was waiting out back for Wes. Maybe that was what the argument was about. And she got on the back with Wes.”
I felt like the floor had opened up. I was falling through. Had my mother known too? Had she been involved? And left the father of her unborn child—my father—to die alone in the snow?
I heard my voice from very far away. “Did you tell the police any of this?”
“Yeah. Rob Hurley.”