22.
Riley
I couldn’t find my brother. When I drove into his clearing after seeing the Kyles, his car was parked next to his trailer but there was no answer when I knocked on the door. He wasn’t suicidal, he’d said, but I couldn’t stop myself from dragging a concrete block over to the trailer so I could stand on it to peer into a window. There was no sign of him inside. Of course, there was no sign of his shotgun, either, which did nothing to ease my mind. He was probably in his favorite place in the woods, but I would never be able to find that oval of grass on my own. I sat on the Airstream’s step, pulled my phone from my pocket, and tried calling him, unsurprised when he didn’t pick up.
I found a scrap of paper in my car and tucked a note between his door and the jamb. I need to talk to you. Please call. Please let me know you’re okay. I drove away without much hope of getting a response.
* * *
That night, I tossed and turned until two A.M., more awake than I’d been when I went to bed. I finally decided to get up and tackle my father’s computer. I had to see what needed saving from the hard drive before I turned it over to Christine. Maybe concentrating on that task would clear Tom and Verniece—and my worry about my brother—from my mind.
I walked barefoot down the hall to Daddy’s office and switched on his small desk lamp. The house was deathly quiet as I sat down at the computer. When I pressed the power button, the old machine let out a human-sounding gasp that broke the silence and sent a chill up my spine. The clunky monitor was slow to come to life, and once it did, I groaned. It wanted a password. Great.
In movies, people always managed to come up with the appropriate password to hack into a computer. A child’s name. An anniversary date. Something obvious. I tried every possible combination of letters and numbers I could think of without luck before heading back to bed. Maybe Jeannie would have some idea of a password he’d use, I thought as I lay awake staring at the dark ceiling. She seemed to know everything else about him. If she didn’t know what it was, I’d have to ask Danny for help. He knew everything there was to know about computers, and if anyone knew a way to get into my father’s files without a password, it would be him. How I’d get him to come back to the house, though, was another question entirely.
And of course, I’d have to find him first.
* * *
I was just waking up the following morning when Jeannie and Christine arrived. I heard their car doors slam outside, their muted voices on the front porch as they let themselves in with Jeannie’s key. In a moment, one of them would knock on my bedroom door, badgering me about my father’s cabinets or the computer or whatever. My house was not my own.
I got out of bed, brushed my teeth, then threw on my running clothes. I managed to escape down the stairs and out the front door without them seeing me, and I headed for the river at an easy jog, still yawning from my mostly sleepless night. When I reached the path along the river, I spotted five kayakers paddling south. I slowed down, then stopped altogether, standing at the railing near the river’s edge as I watched the kayaks cut through the water in a chevron shape. The lead kayak was yellow, like my sister’s had been. Weird timing, I thought, as my mind drifted back to the conversation with the Kyles.
Two sets of footprints.
I pulled my phone from my shorts pocket and dialed Danny’s number. No answer. Turning around, I started for home, running now. I went in the back door to find Jeannie rooting around in one of the kitchen cabinets. She looked up in surprise and opened her mouth to speak, but I grabbed my keys from the key rack, gave her a quick wave, and left before she could ask me anything.
* * *
Danny was still not in his trailer, but this time his car was gone as well and I guessed he was either at the store or in a bar. I sat in the sweltering heat of my car, remembering the e-mail Harry had sent me about Danny hanging out at Slick Alley these days.
I turned the key in the ignition, hoping I’d see his Subaru in the Food Lion parking lot rather than at the pool hall, for both our sakes. I jostled my car back and forth in the tight clearing, then headed back to New Bern. Fifteen minutes later, I spotted Danny’s black Subaru in the Slick Alley parking lot. The building itself was a one-story, flat-roofed rectangle of concrete that had once been painted white but now blended into the gray sky behind it. SLICK ALLEY BILLIARDS was hand painted in green letters above the door, and on the side of the building, someone had painted a picture of a busty blond woman as she bent over a pool table to take a shot. Lovely.
It was not yet eleven in the morning, but there were already ten cars in the lot. I parked between the Subaru and a green truck and got out of my car before I could change my mind. When I pushed open the front door of the building, a dozen male heads turned in my direction and I wished I was wearing something other than my running shorts and tank top. The place was like every stereotype I’d ever seen of a pool hall—murky light, smoky air, faint background music interrupted by the muffled thwak of pool balls hitting one another at the tables. A row of booths lined the left wall of the room, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw my brother in the last booth, a book in his hands and his eyes on me. He didn’t wave. Didn’t rise. I walked toward him, ignoring the looks and comments and lip smacking of the pool players as I passed them.
Danny was alone in the booth, except for a full bottle of beer and one empty, and I slid onto the bench across from him. The fake leather seat felt sticky beneath my bare thighs.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
I’d expected to tell him about my conversation with the Kyles, but knew I couldn’t do it here. I had no idea how he’d react to anything I said about Lisa. “I need your help getting into Daddy’s computer,” I said instead. “It’s password protected.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Well, I don’t know how else to get to talk to you, Danny,” I said. “You won’t use the phone I got you.”
“Why do you need to get into his computer? You should just wipe the drive clean and chuck it.”
“I have to see if there’s anything important on it before I get rid of it. I need your help. Please.”
He shook his head. “I told you. I’m not going in that house again.”
I sighed. “I’ll bring it to you, then,” I said, not looking forward to lugging the computer around with me. “It’s a big clunky old PC. You don’t need the monitor, right? Just the computer?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he gave me a flat look I couldn’t read, his blue eyes catching the faint light from the front windows. I wanted to ask him if this was how he spent his days—sitting alone in this sticky booth in this disgusting building. Did he even know these guys at the pool tables? Was there anyone here he could call a friend? Yet, that’s not what came out of my mouth at all.
“The other day, when you said those things to me about not being a good counselor, I was hurt,” I said, the words spilling out in an unexpected rush. “I worked hard for my degree, Danny, and I’m good with the kids I counsel. I know I am. Maybe you’re right that I’m out of my league when it comes to someone like … someone who’s been through what you have. But you don’t have to belittle me or cut me down the way you did.” I leaned forward to make my point. “It really upset me,” I said.
He tightened his hand around his beer and my whole body went stiff, afraid of what he was doing to do, but he only lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long swallow. When he set the bottle on the table again, he looked at me. “I’ll come to the house to help with the computer,” he said, sliding out of the booth. “You don’t need to bring it over.”
It took a moment for his words to register, and I knew this was his way of apologizing. I felt strangely euphoric as I slid out of the booth, and he waited for me before heading toward the door. He walked next to me, a shield between me and the cretins at the pool tables, and for the first time since we were kids, I felt the protective arm of my brother slip around my shoulders.
Outside, I started to ask him if he was okay to drive, but thought better of it. He seemed perfectly sober. I had the feeling his tolerance for alcohol was pretty high, and anyway, the last thirty seconds had left me with a sense of joy that I didn’t want to damage.
“Follow me?” I asked, opening my car door. I was suddenly afraid this was a ploy to get me off his back. Maybe he’d drive away from me once we got on the road and I’d be stuck trying to track him down again. But I didn’t think so. The way his arm had felt around my shoulders seemed to change everything. At least, for me it did.
* * *
Driving home, I remembered Jeannie and Christine were at the house. Oh, great. It was one thing for Danny to be there with me alone. Another for him to have to deal with those two.
I was relieved to see that Jeannie’s car was gone when we arrived and I figured they were on a lunch break. I pulled into the driveway and Danny parked on the street. We met on the lawn and walked together up the front steps, and as soon as I opened the door, I could see Christine in the dining room.
“Where have you been?” she called to me as we walked into the living room. “A collector was here and bought the lighters and compasses. Isn’t that great? But we have thousands of questions for you.” She appeared in the doorway between the dining room and living room, and when she spotted Danny, she let out a squeal. “Danny MacPherson!” she said. “Oh, my God! I haven’t seen you since you were a little boy!” She started toward him, arms outstretched, but I stepped between them before she was anywhere within touching range and she wisely stopped walking. “You are gorgeous,” she said. “Seriously. Wow.”
“I can’t do this.” Danny headed for the door, but I grabbed his hand and nearly dragged him toward the stairs.
“Later,” I snapped at Christine, shooting her a look that could melt steel.
Danny offered absolutely no resistance as I led him up the stairs, holding his hand as if he were a small child. I walked him past his old room without a word and into our father’s office, where I let go of him to shut the door and turn the lock.
“Who the hell…?”
“Jeannie Lyons’s daughter,” I said. “Christine. Do you remember her?”
He shook his head and walked straight to our father’s desk. “What’s she doing here?” he asked as he sat down at the computer.
“Remember I told you she and Jeannie are setting up an estate sale? And then Jeannie’ll list the house and the RV park for me. For us. I’m sorry she ambushed you. It’s like having two pit bulls in the house. They’re in every room every time I turn around, and they treat the house more like it’s theirs than mine.”
Danny stared at the computer screen. “You have no idea what his password might be?”
“No.”