Henry
Luke was fussy, and Piper’s dad got up from the table to walk him around so that Piper could finish eating her meal and chat with her mother.
Henry followed the older man out of the dining room of the private club. It was family night, a Wednesday evening tradition that they’d observed with Piper’s family since moving back to Florida. They exited through the grand foyer, and walked together through the gate to the beach boardwalk.
The air was humid, the sky overcast, towering cumulous clouds blocking the still-blaring early evening sun. Luke always calmed outside. Henry and Piper never parked him in front of a screen the way they’d seen so many parents do. If they were out and he got squirrelly, they walked him. If it got really bad, they left. End of story.
“Oh,” Luke said, sticking out one doughy arm, pointing at the pelicans that drifted elegant and swift as fighter planes just inches off the water. “Pelicans.”
“Smart boy,” said Piper’s dad.
Piper’s parents doted on Luke the way they doted on Piper—totally besotted, neither one of them could do any wrong. Since they’d moved down, and Luke was born, Piper’s dad had even seemed to warm toward Henry a bit.
“Like his mother,” said Henry.
Henry and his father-in-law didn’t talk much, but the relationship was respectful, each acknowledging Piper’s love for the other and behaving accordingly.
The beach was empty, far from the area’s busy public beaches, butting up against the state nature preserve. Up here on North Beach was the club, a smattering of insanely big houses, and little else. There was a peace and a quietude that Henry cherished.
They chatted—about Henry’s work, about how Paul was adjusting to retirement, Luke’s obvious intelligence and stunning beauty. Just like our Piper—and you, of course, Henry.
“It’s nice of you,” said Paul after a long silence. “To have dinner with us every Wednesday.”
It was kind of an out of the blue thing to say. They’d just been talking about the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Do I have a choice? he thought but didn’t say. When it came to Piper’s parents, Henry didn’t feel like he had that much to say about it. Especially since he didn’t have any family of his own. Just Gemma who they saw at Easter usually, and when she came down to visit. Miss Gail was still a part of their lives. Henry helped at her group home when he could, had mentored some of the boys in her care.
“It’s our pleasure,” Henry said.
It wasn’t bad, really. The club was beautiful, and the food was delicious. Paul and Gretchen were good people, kind and generous. He just always had the slight sense of being on the outside looking in. But maybe that was just him; Gretchen especially worked hard to make him feel included, appreciated.
“I never thought you were the right man for Piper,” said Paul. Luke was pulling at the older man’s glasses.
Okay. Wow. No surprise there. But not sure it needed to be said out loud, right?
“But I was wrong,” he went on. “You’re a devoted husband. A loving father. You had a rough hand dealt and still you succeeded in your life. That’s—pretty amazing.”
Henry felt himself choking up a little, looked away. Paul gently wrestled his glasses back from Luke who yelled in protest.
“Easy there, buddy. Give PopPop back his glasses,” said Henry softly.
Luke chilled. He was easy. An easy kid, happy most of the time, and not prone to melt down unless he was tired or hungry. And he probably was ready for bed. Wednesday nights were late for him.
“I just felt that needed saying,” said Paul when Henry didn’t know how to respond. “If not now, when? Right?”
“You’ve been good to me,” said Henry finally, struggling through the awkwardness. “I’m not sure I would have survived if not for your family. You’re right. She did deserve better. But here we are.”
“No, son,” said Paul, looking away. “There’s nothing better than strong, loyal, and loving. You’re all those things. And we’ll always be here for you all. That’s what family does.”
Family.
“Thank you, sir.”
Luke started to fuss again, weakly, but definitely building. The corners of his mouth were pulled down into a comical frown and he rubbed at his eyes.
“It’s past his bedtime,” said Henry.
“Best be going.”
Piper and Gretchen looking like versions of each other in colors that coordinated—Piper in a navy shift dress, Gretchen in a periwinkle sweater set—were already exiting, the valet bringing the cars around. Just as Henry was buckling Luke into the car seat, his phone buzzed. He looked down to see a text that made his stomach bottom out.
Call me. We need to talk.
Cat.
Because West had encouraged Henry to keep up his connection to Cat, keep her talking, he waited until Luke was down and Piper was in the shower, then went out to the pool deck to call her.
He walked over the pavers, down to the gate that led to their dock. Their small boat sat on a lift; they hadn’t touched it since Luke had been born and were thinking about selling—which he’d been told was the way of boats. Love them, then feel guilty about not using them, then sell.
Through the sliding doors, their great room and kitchen were visible. Across the Intracoastal, similar smallish houses, and some giant ones lined up along the seawall, interior lights glowing, palm trees lit by landscape lighting. He stood a moment, listening to the water lapping against the dock, the hull of his neighbor’s much bigger boat. A halyard clanged in the breeze, and he drew the salt air into his lungs.
Before he dialed, he thought about his father-in-law and what his words had meant. More than Henry would have thought. All the time he’d spent looking for family, and now here he was, a part of one, helping to grow it. Maybe family is more than where you come from, maybe it’s also where you’re going, what you build with the choices you make.
“Henry,” she said when she picked up. “Call off your dog.”
“My dog?”
“West, the private detective you have asking questions.”
Henry hadn’t talked to West in a while. The last he heard, he hadn’t come up with much. Most of the cases were closed, deaths declared natural, accidental, or the result of suicide. The tech guy in Fort Lauderdale was deep in debt with the wrong kind of people; his murder was a presumed organized crime hit. West had been digging around, talking to investigating officers, chatting with a landlord here, a neighbor there. So far, he hadn’t come up with anything solid to connect the deaths to Cat.
You know, Henry, there are high-risk people and low-risk people.
What does that mean?
So, take your Piper for example. A nice girl from a good family. She buckles her seat belt, doesn’t drink and drive, is careful with herself and her life. Low risk.
Okay.
Then there’s someone like—
Like me.
Okay, yeah. Your mother is murdered. You don’t know your father. You get sent into the system. You manage to find your way, to turn yourself from high risk to low risk. Another person in the aftermath of such a loss develops an addiction, PTSD, or depression. High-risk behaviors could result.
So you’re saying my half siblings might be those kind of people.
It’s a loose theory. None of them were making particularly good choices.
So not genetics. Circumstances.
Or a little of both.
“He’s not my dog,” said Henry. “He’s just a friend. I didn’t hire him if that’s what you mean.”
It was interesting that she knew about West. Not interesting. Worrisome. How? What did that mean?
“Look,” she said. “Can you meet?”
From where he stood, he could see inside the house. Piper was in the kitchen making her nightly cup of peppermint tea, hair up, sweats on. She came to the glass door and peered out. He knew he couldn’t be seen from where he stood; he lifted a hand anyway. It wasn’t a secret. She knew about Cat, that he still talked to her from time to time. She didn’t interfere, but it was one of those things—like the Thursday night poker game his colleagues organized, or his buddy Tim’s yearly Cigar-B-Q which were debauched evenings of red meat, good bourbons, and fine cigars. Every once in a while was okay; but anything that veered into the unhealthy, the dangerous, and Piper would speak up. Like West said, she was a low-risk person. Likely she was the reason Henry was, too. There was no suggestion that Cat be invited for dinner. She was not on the Christmas card list.
“We’re talking now,” he said. “What’s up?”
“There are things I want to talk about but not on the phone.”
“Okay.”
“I found him, Henry. I know who he is.”
Henry didn’t say anything. He felt a hard tug to her, a strong connection. He cared about her even though he was starting to think she might be not just a little unstable as he’d said to West, but actually diagnosable. Henry had suggested that she let all of it go, build a life, stop digging into the past. But it was clear that she couldn’t do that.
“Who is he, Cat?”
“Meet me.”
“Are you in Florida?”
“I am,” she said, and it gave him a little chill. “Not too far from you, Henry.”
Piper had planted herself on the sectional, flipped on the television. She looked small and vulnerable on the big couch, under the plush blanket. He felt a swell of protectiveness—for Piper, for Luke, for their life.
Cat—she was dangerous.
“Let’s talk one last time,” she said. “After that, I’ll leave you alone, okay? I know that’s what you want. You’re a good guy, Henry. One of the few.”
“Okay,” he said. “Where and when?”
He half lied to Piper the next day, told her that he was meeting West after work. Those forensic detectives, he said, had turned up some new information on his mother’s murder.
“Have him here,” she’d suggested on the phone. “I’ll cook.”
“I’d rather not,” he said. “I want to keep the past and the present separate. You know?”
It wasn’t fair to say that, using her words against her. She sighed, unable to argue with her own logic.
“Okay,” she said, sounding worried. “Do you want me to come? My mom can take Luke.”
“No, don’t do that,” he said on the phone, lowering his voice.
He was climbing the ranks fast in the cybersecurity firm where he worked in Tampa; he’d been promoted twice since he started three years ago. But he still sat in a cube when he was in the office.
Around him the office was bright, windows looking out onto Tampa Bay and the glittering waters. The office hummed with conversation, ringing phones, pinging emails. Usually, he was in the data center among the rows and rows of servers and wires, the hum of electricity, the dark and refrigerated space. But today there were meetings. He was happier with machines than people. His degree was in computer engineering; computers made logical sense. People were confusing. This had never stopped being true for him.
“I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”
“Henry,” Piper said. “What’s going on?”
He’d been distracted since his call with Cat, restless last night, not sleeping well in general. Piper had noticed, kept pressing him to talk. He hadn’t told her about the Miami murder, or that West had been casting around for more information on the deaths of his other half siblings. Henry had mentioned that he’d talked to Cat, but not that they’d planned to meet.
“It’s time I came clean, honey,” he said, lowering his voice to whisper. “I’m having an affair. With Dawn.”
Dawn was the grandmotherly lady who ran the office.
“Very funny. Seriously.”
“No,” he said. “This stuff—with my mother—it’s just. I don’t want it in our life. Our life now, which we’ve built together. But at the same time I need closure, I guess. It feels dark, poisonous.”
This was true without it being the whole truth.
“It’s just the past, Henry. It can’t hurt us.”
He wished that were true. “You’re right.”
Another sigh, a pause. Then, “You don’t have to do things alone.”
“I’ll invite West for dinner next week.” Henry hoped that this was concession enough. “If there’s anything important we’ll discuss it together, okay?”
He heard Luke fussing. He was her little mini-me. If she was upset, Luke always reflected that.
“Hey, little man,” he said.
“Da! Da!”
“Okay,” Piper said, resigned and turning her attention to Luke. “Do what you have to do.”
“I’ll tell Dawn you said hi.”
“Loser.”
Now he waited in the dark. The Sunshine Skyway Bridge towered, its twin sails lit yellow and white against the night riven with stars. A sliver of moon hung in the sky.
He’d parked on the south fishing pier, the site of the original bridge torn down after a 1980 disaster where a freighter crashed into the support structure. The bridge collapsed, plunging cars into the bay, an area tragedy that people still talked about.
The sun had set and a few fishermen still stood at the pier edges, but mainly he was alone, the water glittering around him.
“Maybe she won’t show,” said West, his voice tinny over the car speaker.
Cat was almost an hour late.
Henry had turned off the tracking on his phone. Piper would check his location sooner or later and he didn’t want to have to explain why he was at the fishing pier instead of Frenchy’s where he’d told her he was meeting West. At some point, she’d notice that his location services were off, but those kind of glitches were more explainable.
“I’ll give her a few more minutes,” said Henry.
“You care about her,” said West. He was parked in the dark behind Henry. He couldn’t see the older man’s vehicle.
“I understand her, I guess,” said Henry. “She seems lost to me. Looking for things in the wrong places, in the wrong way.”
“What if she’s a killer?”
“Then it’s a good thing you’re right behind me.”
“You’re not afraid of her.”
“No,” he said. “We have a chemistry.”
“Hmm,” said West skeptically. “How are you doing with that other piece?”
The forensic detectives West had told him about had in fact made a connection.
Using the DNA stored from Alice’s crime scene, they were able to make a match with some of Tom Watson’s cousins through one of the at-home DNA testing services. These found cousins had been forthcoming that Tom was a bad guy, in trouble on and off most of his life, a petty thief, and often violent against women—though he was never arrested or charged for any crimes.
It seemed more likely than ever that he was Alice’s killer.
“I’m still processing,” said Henry. He still needed to talk everything through with Piper. Everything.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Technology, right? It’s all still like sci-fi to me, some of this stuff.”
Yeah, but it was ancient, too. DNA was the language God used to program human beings. It was a source code—a list of commands to be compiled into an executable program. There was the hand you were dealt and what you did with it that defined your life.
A pair of headlights approached and a black BMW drifted into the space in front of him. It sat a moment idling, then went dark.
Cat climbed out. She was tall and slim in dark jeans, and tight T-shirt, light leather jacket as she approached Henry’s car. He keyed down the volume on the phone.
“Take a walk?” she said when he rolled down the window.
He looked down the long expanse of the pier. A road to nowhere, ending in the big waters where Tampa Bay let out into the Gulf of Mexico. He looked over at the bridge. Over three hundred people had committed suicide from the Sunshine Skyway.
“A long walk off a short pier?” he said.
She smiled but it was sad. He slipped his phone into his pocket, climbed out of the car and they started to walk, a stiff, humid breeze whipped at them, pushing her hair around wild like snakes on the head of Medusa. She tamed it with an elastic, dug her hands into her pockets.
When they’d passed the last fisherman, she came to a stop, leaned against the concrete railing.
“The last time we got together I upset you,” she said after some awkward moments passed.
He saw himself in her face, in the long nose, and the dark, deep-set eyes, in the angle of her mouth. His sister, half sister. What did it mean?
Alice was my sister, Gemma had said recently, when they talked about the new DNA discovery. But she was a stranger, too. Always to herself, always closed off from us. Left as soon as she could and never came back.
“It wasn’t just you,” he said now to Cat. “I was upset about a lot of things. Piper had left me. I just felt like I had to make a decision—between the past and the present.”
She nodded slowly. “And can they be separated?”
“I think so,” he said. “Maybe.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out an old photograph—square and creased, faded. Henry slipped his glasses from his jacket pocket, and took the photo from her.
A slim man in a black suit smoked a cigarette, his dark hair slicked back. He leaned against some kind of stone ledge, a city behind him, palm trees dark in the gray background. His eyes were lidded, smile wan. The resemblance was uncanny; Henry could be looking at a picture of himself. The date stamp read November 1980, four years before Henry was born.
“Is this him?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you get the picture?”
“From his sister. She lives in Miami. She popped up a while ago in my relative group. We had lunch.”
“Love connection?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “But she had information about him that she was willing to share. In fact, unlike Marta, she was aching to get it off her chest. Henry, he was a bad man.”
“Bad how?”
“Do you remember the Miami Slayer?”
Henry shook his head.
“In Miami in the ’80s someone was breaking into the homes of single woman, waiting for them to return, then raping, torturing, and killing them. There were seven women in total between the year of 1982 and 1990 when the perpetrator was finally caught.”
Henry didn’t say anything. He wondered how much West could hear, if he was still on the line listening; he’d never ended the call, hoped it had transferred to the phone from the Bluetooth.
The photo in his hand took on a different energy, a kind of darkness emanating from it.
“Our father, Roy Alfaro was tried and convicted, sentenced to death,” said Cat, her voice strained. “He died in prison in a yard fight in 1989 in the Union Correctional Institution waiting for execution. The same prison that held Ted Bundy.”
The information landed like a punch to the gut. Henry felt physically ill, like he had in the bar. He drew in a breath, released it, willed himself to be solid.
“All those years as a young man, hanging around Miami, raping and killing, he was donating his sperm.”
The world was spinning. “Are you sure about this?”
“I’m pretty sure, yeah,” she said. “It’s what his sister told me. And my research confirms it. There’s no DNA evidence stored for him, the technology back then wasn’t what it is today. So we can’t one hundred percent confirm paternity. But his sister was a twenty-five percent match for me. So...”
The nausea passed and it was replaced by a flood of anger.
“Are you happy, Cat? You never gave up, you dug around and finally figured it out.”
His voice rang out in the night. She looked down at her feet.
“Let me ask you,” he went on. “How does this serve us? What good does it do us?”
She looked up at him with a frown. “It’s the truth.”
“The truth is overrated.”
“You would rather live your life not knowing where you came from?”
“Actually, yes,” he said. “I’d rather not have known this, Cat. It’s toxic. It’s poison.”
He was embarrassed when angry tears trailed down his face. He thought of Piper, of Luke, of the things his father-in-law had said. He swiped at his face, turned to the water. It churned, black and deep. He should just fall into it, let it wash him away.
“I’m sorry,” said Cat. She put a tentative hand on his shoulder. “Maybe you’re right. Just forget it. You’re a good guy, Henry. Whatever dark thing lived in his DNA, it hasn’t touched you.”
That feeling, the one he’d had since he was a kid, how he wasn’t enough, that there was something deeply wrong with him. It was a tsunami inside him, rushing, swamping, raging.
“Genetics,” Cat went on when Henry stayed quiet. “As much as they know, they don’t know even more. A gene for violence doesn’t mean you’ll be violent. A gene for cancer doesn’t mean you’re destined get sick. It’s complicated.”
“Cat,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Is it you? Are you behind the deaths of our half siblings, of Marta Bennet? That guy in Fort Lauderdale.”
She leaned on the concrete railing, pushing in close to him. He didn’t shift away from her. In fact, he wanted to take her into his arms and hold her, comfort her. He loved her because they were connected. More than that. He just loved her, even though she was broken.
“A few of us are okay, you know?” she said. “Like you. You’re living an honest, hardworking life. You’re contributing something, loving people, taking care of your family.”
Low risk, that’s what West called it. You don’t drive drunk. You buckle your seat belt. You don’t lie to people or steal from them. You don’t hurt anyone. You donate to charity, volunteer for a cause.
“Some of us are not,” she continued.
A big freighter drifted toward the bridge, a marine horn sounding, announcing its arrival to port.
“Some people,” she said, shaking her head. She let go of a little laugh. “Let’s put it this way. It’s just better for everyone if they’re removed from the gene pool.”
Her voice had taken on an angry edge. Henry stared at the hard lines of her profile, her words sinking in.
“That’s eugenics, Cat,” he said.
She shrugged slowly. “I prefer to think of it as Darwinism.”
“Darwinism is organic. It’s natural selection.” She didn’t turn to look at him, just kept her eyes on the churning water. “Eugenics is something else. It’s someone making a decision, usually a very bad one, about who should procreate or not. It’s the stuff of Nazis and mad scientists trying to create a superrace. It’s state-sanctioned sterilization of the poor, the mentally ill, the criminal. It’s dark, Cat. It’s wrong.”
She turned her gaze up at the sky. He didn’t think she was going to answer him.
Then, “Sometimes nature doesn’t know what’s good for it. It needs a little help. There are a couple of us who feel this way, Henry. A couple of our half siblings.”
He stared at the hard lines of her profile, the determined set of her jaw. He could hardly believe what he was hearing.
“So—what?” he asked finally. “You’re trying to figure out which of his children are monsters? And then you’re—killing them?”
She shook her head. “I never said that.”
“Look,” he said turning to her. He took her by the shoulders and stared right into her eyes. They were black pools, cold and swirling. “You can drop this, whatever it is you’re doing. Just walk away. Start right here, right now. Be a part of our family, build a life of your own. You’re smart. You’re beautiful. It’s all right in front of you.”
She smiled, put a hand to his cheek. For a moment, her face softened.
“See, Henry? You are one of the good ones. We won’t see each other again, okay? You’re free. You know the truth about our father, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve made your choices and they’re the right ones. Enjoy your life.”
She leaned in and kissed him softly on the cheek. He reached for her hand, but her fingers slipped through his. Henry watched as she walked away, got in her car, and drove off.
He broke down right there on the pier, years of pain and sadness finally reaching a brutal crescendo. He wept great heaving sobs for Alice, his strange, unhappy mother, for the dark inheritance of his psychotic father, for his wife who deserved better, for his son who had to carry forward his ugly legacy.
For Cat, his sister, who’d let it all turn her into a monster.
After a while, West came up behind him, put a hand on his back. Henry pulled himself together, quieted. The night and the water and the salt air swirled around him.
“Let’s get you home, son,” said West. “Time to go home.”