Chapter 3: The Man From the River Road
My dad didn't move.
He stood at the dock railing with one hand still resting on the wood, and he stared at the older man the way you stare at something you've convinced yourself you'd never see again.
The older man took another step forward.
He was heavyset, with a white beard trimmed close and a canvas jacket that had seen too many winters.
His eyes were wet before he even opened his mouth.
"Ray," he said.
Just the one word.
Dad's jaw tightened.
His hand came off the railing slowly.
"Tommy."
I looked between them.
Tommy.
I had never heard that name in my life.
Tommy stopped about three feet away.
He pulled his cap off and held it against his chest.
"I've been trying to find you for eleven years," he said.
"Eleven years, Ray."
Dad's voice came out low and careful.
"How did you know I'd be here?"
Tommy glanced at me.
"Your son put out the word.
Didn't tell me why.
Just said you'd be at this marina on this Saturday and that if I ever wanted to say what I needed to say, this was the time."
Dad turned and looked at me.
I didn't say anything.
I had sent a few messages to some old names in an address book I'd found in a shoebox in his closet.
I hadn't expected this.
"I don't understand," Dad said.
"What word?
What are you talking about?"
The captain touched my arm gently and nodded toward the far end of the dock.
The group of people standing there hadn't moved.
Six of them.
Maybe seven.
One woman had her hand pressed to her mouth.
"Dad," I said.
"Just — come with me for a minute."
He followed me, but his eyes stayed on Tommy.
We walked the length of the dock slowly.
The morning was still cool, the water flat and grey-green, and the only sounds were the creak of the boards and the low knock of boats against their moorings.
The woman with her hand over her mouth stepped forward first.
She was in her sixties, small, with silver hair pulled back.
She looked at my father and her chin trembled.
"You don't remember me," she said.
"I was eight years old."
Dad stopped walking.
"My name is Carol Briggs now," she said.
"I was Carol Denton then.
You pulled me out of the Harmon River in October of 1987."
The dock went quiet.
Dad stared at her.
His mouth opened slightly, then closed.
"I remember," he said finally.
"I remember the red coat."
Carol made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
"My mother sewed patches on the elbows," she said.
"I was so proud of that coat.
I was devastated when they told me it was ruined."
"You were shaking so hard," Dad said.
"I kept thinking — I kept thinking I needed to get you warm before anything else."
"You stayed with me until the ambulance came," Carol said.
"You held my hand the whole time.
I asked you your name and you told me, but I was so frightened I forgot it the moment you said it.
I spent years trying to find you."
Dad looked at me.
I couldn't read his expression.
It wasn't pride exactly.
It was something quieter than that.
"How did you find me now?" he asked.
Carol looked at me again.
"Your son," she said.
I had found her name in a newspaper clipping tucked inside the same shoebox as the address book.
A brief article from a local paper, dated November 1987.
*Local man pulls child from river.
Declines to give name.* There had been a follow-up piece two weeks later with a quote from the girl's mother.
I had searched Carol Denton for three weeks before I found her married name.
Dad turned to me fully now.
"You went through my things," he said.
But there was no anger in it.
"I found the clipping," I said.
"You never told me."
He looked back at the water.
"It wasn't something I told," he said.
Behind us, Tommy cleared his throat.
May you like
"There's more, Ray," he said quietly.
"You're not the only one here with something to say."
