The truck’s tires made a noise like popping corn on the hardpack as Georgie steered through an intersection headed south. Next to her, Matthew stared straight ahead, an unopened bottle of wine pinched between his knees and a small stack of financial documents bundled on his lap. He’d barely said a word since she had picked him up at the motel.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Are you mad at me for some reason?”
“Why would I be mad?” he asked. His tone said it was a challenge, not a question.
“You wouldn’t be,” she said, “because I’m amazing. But I know that look. Something’s bugging you.”
“Maybe I’m just tired,” he said. “It’s hard to get much sleep at the motel.”
“If you’re nervous about seeing my folks—don’t be. They invited you to dinner because they want to see you.”
He spared her a glance. “I’m not nervous,” he said. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
There was an edge there. She wondered how many times in her life she’d heard that tone from him. Fifty? A hundred? He was the sort of guy who bottled everything up until it exploded. It had always been that way. She knew from experience there was no way to pry it out of him. You just had to wait until he was ready to say whatever he had to say.
“Okay then,” she said, in a way she hoped let him know he wasn’t fooling her.
The neighborhood where her parents lived rode a round-topped mountain on the south end of town. The homes there were 1960s chic—cozy split-levels lining streets that ran in winding loops. The driveway to her parents’ place dropped a dozen feet off the road. As the truck’s headlights lit the front of the house she saw her mom waiting for them, framed like a portrait in the front window. It gave Georgie a sense of calm to see her. “Let me relieve you of your burden,” Laurie Porter said, taking the wine and stack of papers as they came in.
Her mom gave Matthew a hug and his face softened. Georgie could see him doing the internal calculation: whatever was bothering him, he had to set it aside and put on a good face for the parents. The smile he flashed would’ve fooled most anyone in the world. Jack Porter came out of the kitchen in an apron and took the wine from his wife. He plunked the bottle onto the counter and sliced into the foil with a knife. Georgie had gotten her height and long, birdlike bones from her dad. He grinned at them. Beneath his apron his tie was off-kilter. It looked like he’d gotten an early start on them. “You look good,” he said to Matthew. “You look like you could wrestle a grizzly bear.”
“Dad,” Georgie said. “Stop it.”
Jack Porter shrugged as if to say, I’m just saying. He poured four glasses of wine and squatted to haul a standing rib roast from the oven. The smell made Georgie suddenly ravenous. If she could have, she would’ve gone over and started tearing chunks off the meat with her fingers. She guessed Matthew felt the same. From the brief time she’d spent inside his motel room it looked like he was surviving on delivery pizza and vending machine snacks.
Her mom handed them glasses. “So,” she said, offering Matthew a toast. “You’re back.”
“I am. I’m back,” he said. They clinked glasses and Georgie saw panic cross his face, already out of things to say.
“I bet you’re pretty relieved to be out of that hellhole,” her dad said, coming to his rescue with his real-estate agent’s knack for small talk.
“Yes, sir,” he said, “but I’ve been back in the States a few months now.”
“I meant Florida,” her dad said, “and knock off the ‘sir’ stuff, would you? I’m not your lawyer. My wife is.”
Georgie’s first drink of wine was bitter and peppery, but her second went down easy. Her mom led them all to the living room, where they took places on the huge, L-shaped sectional. The windows here looked out over a sloping backyard and the city below—the town huddled in a chilly violet haze. Matthew sat on a cushion away from her, keeping the corner of the couch between them. He still wouldn’t really look at her.
“I wish you could be here under better circumstances,” her mom said. “We were all just crushed to hear the news.”
“To Dave,” her dad said, lifting his glass. He held it by the base between his thumb and forefinger as if at a wine tasting.
They toasted the memory of Matthew’s dad, and Georgie’s mom sorted through the documents he’d taken from the lake house. As she went she explained the process of settling Dave Rose’s estate. “It should be fairly simple,” she said. “I’ve already received provisional approval on an application to make you executor. Once that goes through, we’ll have nine months to prepare a full inventory of property, assets, and debts, and to declare to the court the fair market value of each. If the total worth of Dave’s possessions doesn’t exceed twenty thousand dollars—which, frankly, I think is unlikely—and no hidden heirs come forward to dispute anything, you’ll take immediate possession of everything and be free to do whatever you like with it. Really it’s just a matter of getting you declared sane and competent enough to be the legal representative.”
“Sounds simple enough,” Matthew said, though he cut a strange glance at Georgie as Laurie Porter said the words “sane and competent.”
“These financials look pretty incomplete,” her mom said. “Is this all you have?”
“Unfortunately, yeah,” he said. “Sorry about that.” He told them about the break-in at his dad’s house. Georgie noticed he left out the parts about seeing a figure on the ice, the chase, and falling into the river. Her parents seemed appropriately stunned at the story, setting their glasses down to lean forward as he described the mess inside the ransacked house.
“That’s terrifying,” her dad said. “The homeowners up there need better security.”
“I can have my law firm’s investigator run a full check for the rest of the financials,” her mom said. “Our guy’s very good. He’s a former federal agent who used to work computer fraud—busting hackers, taking apart big business transactions. Basically, if you can find it with a computer, he’ll get it. He’s no slouch at legwork either. It shouldn’t take more than a few days.”
She flipped to the final page and unfolded it, revealing the old newspaper clipping Matthew had been carrying around since finding it at the lake house. “What’s this?”
He squirmed, avoiding everybody’s eyes. “Just something that was in with the rest of my dad’s stuff,” he said. “Does it mean anything to you?”
Georgie’s dad took the clipping. “Everybody remembers the old store,” he said. “It was a real cultural hub back in the day.”
“I always heard it was an insurance thing,” her mom said. “The son took the money and built a bunch of apartments. That family makes more now than ever before.”
“We had a few of our first neighborhood association meetings in the backyard there before it burned,” her dad said. “I don’t think the story got much attention after this. That summer the news was all about the Ward boy.”
He leaned over to inspect the brief story about the missing teen at the bottom of the page.
“Carson Ward,” Georgie said. “The runaway.”
“He was no runaway,” her dad snorted. “Somebody snatched him.”
“Get out of here,” she said. “What?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “The search went on for weeks. All they ever found was the poor kid’s school backpack at the bottom of the stairs to the underpass. Down by where all the bums used to congregate? It was covered in blood, if I remember correctly.”
Georgie set her wine down. “How did I not know any of this?” There was nothing about a bloody backpack in the short story about Ward.
“We tried to keep it from you kids,” her dad said. “Didn’t want to scare you. It was such an awful business, but it was one of the last straws in finally getting funding for the footbridge.”
Her mom set the papers on the coffee table. “Jack,” she said. “Let’s not talk about it. Georgie and Matt are here, we’re trying to have a nice time.”
“You’re right,” her dad said, nodding. “No use dwelling on it now. The boy was wild. His mother was a drunk who let him be out at all hours. I’d see him zipping around on that yellow bike of his. I always used to say it was only a matter of time before something happened. Didn’t I used to say that?”
“You used to say a lot of terrible things,” her mother said, swatting him on the forearm.
“Still do,” he said. “I hope I didn’t spoil anyone’s appetite. I should cut the meat.”
They ate roast, garlic green beans, mashed potatoes with caramelized onions, and soft, buttery rolls. Georgie had to pace herself, trying not to gobble it all down at once. Matthew picked around the edges, hardly eating a thing. She and her dad talked about hunting—Jack admitting he was making it out less each fall. It used to be a thing they did together. This year, they’d gotten lucky in the Fish, Wildlife and Parks lottery and scored great tags, but he’d only joined her twice. He told the same story Georgie had told Mike Emmons about her sawing the elk in half. His teeth were already stained purple from wine, but his eyes shined with pride as he recounted it. It gave her a warm feeling she wanted to savor.
“Majestic animal,” her dad said. “Probably eight feet from nose to tail.”
“You kill stuff?” Matthew asked Georgie, not so much surprised as curious. It was the first time since she’d picked him up that evening that he seemed interested in talking to her.
She squinted at him down the barrel of one finger and dropped the hammer. “Elk fear me,” she said.
Eventually the topic of conversation turned to the war. Georgie’s mom asked Matthew questions about his failed disability claim. She seemed intrigued with the idea of filing a lawsuit, getting up from the table to scribble something onto a pad of paper and handing it to him. She said it was the name of a doctor who had worked with her firm in the past, a specialist. A woman who ran a rehabilitation clinic near Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“They’ve had a lot of success treating and reorienting people after brain injuries,” she said. “I could call down there and try to get you a spot if you’re interested.”
Matthew made a face like he was wondering what a place like that would cost. “Great,” he said. “I’ll think about that.”
Georgie’s dad hoisted his wineglass again. “Hear, hear,” he said. “Let’s sue the bastards for all they’re worth.”
“I’ll get to work right away,” her mom said. “I’ll have our investigator poke around in your dad’s stuff and we’ll send out some feelers to the VA, too. I’ll call you when I have something.”
The drive back to his motel passed in silence. Matthew sat with his eyes fixed on the windshield, just as he had on the way there. He’d left the financial docs with her mom and now held only the newspaper clipping, folded so the brief about the missing boy faced up.
“I can’t believe I never knew that kid got kidnapped,” she said, when she couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “Nobody gets kidnapped. That’s crazy.”
“How would I know? I don’t remember it,” he said. The bitterness in his voice made her switch off the radio.
“Matt,” she said. “What’s going on?”
She pulled into the motel parking lot and sat with the motor running, waiting for him to say something. Finally, he said: “I just need to get some sleep. I’ll call you, okay?”
“Sure,” she said, though she didn’t know if she believed it.
When he got out, he closed the door a little harder than he needed to.