Chapter 5: The Name Neither of Us Wanted to Say
I drove home in silence.
I didn't turn on the radio.
I didn't stop for gas even though the light came on outside of Dayton.
I just drove, both hands on the wheel, watching the highway unspool in front of me, trying to hold the shape of what Tommy had told me without letting it collapse into something I couldn't carry.
My father had paid someone to destroy David's family.
Not because of debt.
Not because of fear.
Because he didn't want his daughter with that boy.
I had spent forty-two years grieving a loss that was manufactured.
Engineered.
By the man who used to cut my toast into triangles because he knew I liked it better that way.
When I got home, David was already on the phone.
He picked up before it rang on my end.
"You talked to Tommy," he said.
"Yes."
"Are you all right?"
"No." I sat down on the front steps without going inside.
The evening was cool and the street was quiet and everything looked exactly the same as it always had.
"David, did you know about my father?
When you called me the first time — did you already know it was him?"
A pause.
"I suspected.
Tommy confirmed it."
"How long have you suspected?"
"Since I found the payment record."
I closed my eyes.
"What payment record?"
"My father kept everything," David said.
"Every bill, every letter, every receipt.
He was that kind of man.
When my mother passed and I went through his papers, I found an envelope at the back of a filing cabinet.
Inside was a bank transfer record from 1984.
The amount, the date, the account it came from." He paused.
"It took me two years to trace the account.
When I finally did, I sat in my car in a parking lot for about an hour before I could drive home."
"It was my father's account."
"Yes."
I pressed my hand flat against the cold concrete of the step.
"He paid them three thousand dollars," David said.
"In 1984, that was enough."
"Enough to burn a house down."
"Enough to make sure I disappeared."
I thought about my father at my wedding.
Dancing with me to a song I'd chosen because it made me think of David.
Smiling at me over my new husband's shoulder.
Crying when my children were born.
Sitting at my kitchen table every Sunday for twenty years until the Sundays ran out.
I had loved him without reservation.
"David," I said.
"He's been g0ne for eleven years.
There's no one to confront.
There's no one to—"
"I know."
"So what do we do with this?"
He didn't answer right away.
When he did, his voice was careful.
"That depends on whether you want to know the last piece."
I looked up at the sky.
The first stars were coming out, faint and early.
"There's more?"
"Your father didn't act alone, Laura.
The account the money came from — it had two names on it."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"Who was the second name?"
May you like
"That's what I need to show you in person," David said.
"Because when you see it, I don't want you to be alone."
