Gregory couldn’t believe this. His mother showed more concern about her poor husband’s bump on his head than she ever showed about his father. He zip-tied the man’s semi-conscious body to one of their heavy-ass dining room chairs. The frame was made of wrought iron.
She was whining. “You can’t do this, Peter.”
It took him a while to realize she wasn’t protesting him wounding her husband.
“What did you do with Willie?”
“Heaven forbid I hurt Mickey’s mini-me.”
“I swear—”
“Tell me what you two did to my father.”
“Your father was taken and killed by a transient. You know that.”
“I know what you told me. But that’s not what I saw. And I’ve been seeing it very clearly lately in my nightmares.”
“In your nightmares. Listen to yourself, Peter. I’ve tried to help you. I’ve tried—”
“To brainwash me. To drug me.”
“It was to help you get through your nightmares.”
“I saw the man who killed him. I recognized him.”
“No, you imagined—”
“Stop it! Just shut up and stop for once!”
Even after all these years, she wanted to control the narrative. But it didn’t matter anymore. He had figured it out. After all these years, the dreams, the nightmares told the real story over and over in vivid detail. He could just never quite see the man’s face. Only the crowbar coming down on his father’s skull. The crowbar being held by an arm tattooed with a blue anchor.
“Whatever you believe, Peter, you must not take it out on a poor little boy. Where is he? What did you do with him?”
He couldn’t believe her. She hadn’t changed one bit.
“That’s what you care about right now? That’s really all you’ve ever cared about is your precious Mickey. And now, his precious offspring. I know that Carl was the man stranded on the side of the road that night.
“No, you’re wrong.”
“I know he killed my father.”
“Your imagination—”
“I couldn’t quite see his face until recently.”
“Of course not, because you’re wrong. You’re projecting—”
“But I clearly saw this.” He grabbed Carl’s arm and yanked it up. The man was fully awake, grunting in pain as the zip-tie dug deeper into his wrist.
“Oh, Peter.” The condescension...she still had it down pat. “You know how many men have that same tattoo?”
“His body was never found,” Carl said through gritted teeth. “Your father left you boys and your mother. He left.”
Gregory dropped the man’s arm and walked around behind the chair. He didn’t want to look at his face. He’d seen it too many times, shadowed in his dreams, the features blurred by his mother’s lies.
But he knew he was right.
He’d been right since he was a boy and confessed to his mother. Now, all these years later, he understood. Why she worked so hard to convince the authorities that her son had a habit of lying, making things up. A wicked and vivid imagination.
Carl shifted in the hardback chair, readjusted, sat a bit straighter. Gregory’s mother stood in the middle of the room where she faced him. Her eyes dropped to the knife now in his hand, but she didn’t appear concerned. She planned on winning this discussion. And why not? She always won. She was always right.
“If he chose to leave, why did he create a trust for me weeks before? Did you know his family had all that money?”
“Your father was a silly, weak man. He made us live in a ramshackle house.”
“So you knew. I remembered how you two argued about money all the time. Your arguments made Mickey cry. I just plugged my ears. Went off in my mind to somewhere, anywhere else.”
He watched her now. “But you didn’t know he put it in trust funds. For me. None for you. A small portion for Mickey. But not as much, because he knew you’d take good care of him. Your favorite. And you did. Anything he wanted, including medical school. But dear old dad knew you wouldn’t give a damn about me.”
“That’s not true. You always make up such lies.” But she stared at him. And for the first time, he saw her bristle at his words.
“Then Mickey was killed in Afghanistan. The remainder of his will eventually go to Will. That’s the way mine’s written. If we have any heirs. But you…you still didn’t get any.” Her nostrils flared with what? Indignation? Anger?
“Or did you discover a way to get your hands on it?”
“You’re being ridiculous. Willie will get his father’s when he turns twenty-five, just like you did. Just like Michael could have.”
Funny, she seemed to display sadness only about Mickey. Everything was still about Mickey. He and his father were always a distant second and third.
“I almost didn’t recognize this area,” Gregory said casually, waving the knife and gesturing toward the back patio doors and the woods that met the backyard.
“Interesting that you chose to live out here,” he continued. She’d even named the development Linden Estates. Mickey’s middle name. He couldn’t be distracted. Not now. “The country road is now asphalt. The forest used to come all the way up to the road. But that curve…that curve brought back a flood of memories.”
She tilted her head. The movement was slight, but he noticed it. She was trying to keep emotion from her face, but it was becoming a challenge. Still, she didn’t interrupt. Maybe she wanted to hear what he knew. What he remembered. All these years later, did her version still hold up?
“Good ole Carl bought all this land. To develop. You bulldozed bunches of trees. Piled on dirt. Built houses. That’s quite a nice pool back there.”
“Somewhere on this land that you own, all this property that you control—whether developed or still a part of the woods—somewhere close by, you buried my father.”
Her eyes lit up with as much surprise as anger.
Then suddenly, all three of them startled at a knock on the front door.
“Get rid of them,” Gregory told her. He came up close behind Carl and raised the knife. It took every ounce of restraint to not slit the man’s throat right here, right now.
Instead, he shoved Carl’s chair until the man’s belly wedged up against the table, incapacitating him even more. No one would see his zip-tied hands down below if his mother was stupid enough to invite them inside. They would think Carl was simply sitting at the table.
Except for the bump on the head.
She understood. He saw her put on her “we have guests” face before she disappeared around the corner to the entrance.
“Mrs. Ramsey,” said a woman’s voice. “I’m with the task force to find your grandson. I have a few questions I need to ask you.”
“This isn’t a good time. My husband and son just got home. We’re all exhausted. Can it wait a few minutes? Maybe twenty or thirty?
Gregory smiled in spite of himself. His clever mother was giving him a deadline. Not the person on the other side of the door.
How much of who he was—of what he had become—had he learned from her? In the past, she could destroy him in much less time than half an hour. He doubted she had any idea of what he was capable of doing.