“I’m sorry we didn’t make it, Jon. We just weren’t up to—”
“It’s not about the vigil,” Tweed interrupted. “It’s about the nomination. Marty Lang has been trying to reach you. They called me hoping I could track you down. The president wants to meet with you—today if possible. They’re doing the final vet and you must have made the short list.”
“Today? What time? I’m in Rehoboth. The soonest I can make it home will be one o’clock.”
Tweed paused a beat. “Rehoboth? What are you—never mind. They want you in the lobby of the Hay-Adams at five o’clock so that should work. Abani Gupta will pick you up and take you to the White House.”
Gupta was the lawyer who’d successfully vetted and served as the sherpa for the last two Supreme Court nominees. She was no-nonsense and smart. Sean assumed they wanted to meet him at the hotel since it was right across the street from the White House, and he could easily be shuttled through the gates, hidden behind the tinted glass of a town car.
At any other point in his life, he would have felt butterflies of excitement, the surreal honor of even being on the list. But the death of a child teaches something: your career, your accomplishments, the plaques hanging on your wall, they don’t mean shit. If he could get back the late nights he’d spent working his cases and writing briefs, the weekends preparing for oral argument, the conference calls and meetings, he’d trade it all for the chance to walk down the beach just one more time with his Abby. Before he’d questioned Emily’s decision to give up her career to stay home with the children. And he’d resented her demand that he slow down at work, that he take the job at the law firm. But now he understood. Emily had been right all along.
“I’m not sure, Jon. Let me think about it.” He powered down the phone. He watched as Emily stood expressionless in the line at the coffee shop. The boys were still going at it in the back.
“Dad, tell Jack that it’s okay to say sitting ‘Indian style.’ He says it’s racist…”
“Mom says we should say ‘crisscross-apple-sauce,’” Jack defended.
Sean twisted around and was met by Ryan passing him a bottle that had a ribbon around its neck. “This rolled from under Mom’s seat.”
Sean remembered the bottle from the night he’d found Abby. As he took the glass decanter from Ryan, the note affixed to it came loose and fluttered to the floor in the back. Sean scanned the bottle’s label, which had Japanese characters all over it but the brand was written in English. Nikka whiskey. The brand from that night.
“Oh my God, is this you, Dad?” Ryan said. Jack blurted a laugh. They were looking at the back of the note card. All Sean could see was the writing on the front, CONGRATULATIONS ON THE NEW JOB! He reached over and plucked the card out of Ryan’s hand. The boys were both giggling.
“And you give me trouble about my hair,” Ryan said.
It wasn’t a card at all, Sean realized. It was a photograph. Heat engulfed his face, accompanied by a feeling of disorientation. The photo was of fourteen-year-old Sean, drunk and unsteady, hair that hit his shoulders, sleeveless Def Leppard T-shirt. Next to him were two boys, glassy-eyed. One short and cocksure, the other a scrawny Hispanic kid. Written in messy handwriting on the white border of the photo were two words:
THEY KNOW.
CHAPTER 21
He was quiet on the drive home, but his thoughts thrashed through the possibilities. Who had placed the bottle of Nikka whiskey and photo in the SUV? Why? What did it mean? Other than telling his father—who’d seemed more intent on protecting his military career than helping his son—Sean had never spoken about that night. Not to Emily, not to anyone.
His thoughts jumped to the man in the flannel shirt who’d bumped him on the subway. They know. The man’s face then morphed into his younger self. It was the face from the photo. Not thirteen-year-old Juan, whose brown skin ruled him out, but the other boy. Sean blinked away the image of Kenny wiping the bloody blade on the grass.
But why, after all these years, would Kenny seek him out? Maybe he’d seen the news about Sean’s possible nomination to the high court. Or maybe an adversary of the president digging up dirt on the potential nominees found Kenny under some godforsaken rock. In the devastation of the past two weeks, Sean had not thought about Japan. He wasn’t worried about himself anymore, and there was something freeing about that.
But the bottle still sent a lightning bolt through his chest. Was it a coincidence that the boy who without remorse killed a storekeeper had entered the scene at the same time Abby was murdered?