Chapter 3 - THE COST OF KEEPING PEACE
The emergency room doctor found no new fracture.
Mom had a deep bruise, strained muscles, and enough pain that she would need a walker for several weeks. The doctor recommended observation because of her prior surgeries, but she refused to stay overnight.
“I’ve already ruined one wedding,” she said.
I was standing beside the hospital window, watching traffic move along Milwaukee’s East Side. “Claire ruined the wedding.”
Mom lowered her eyes.
“Not all of it.”
The venue had sent the guests home after forty minutes. Claire’s sister collected her belongings from the bridal suite. Frank paid the final balance for the unused reception because the contract did not care why no one ate the salmon.
I received dozens of messages.
I answered none of them.
Claire called once. I let it ring.
Mom watched the phone stop vibrating. “You should speak to her.”
“She knocked you down.”
“She had a reason to be angry.”
“That’s not the same as having a reason to hurt you.”
“No.”
Mom’s answer came too quickly, as if she had practiced agreeing with that sentence while I was looking out the window.
I turned around.
“Tell me what happened.”
She picked at the edge of the hospital blanket.
“Frank should be here.”
“Frank had four years.”
“So did I.”
I waited.
Mom looked older without her makeup. Her curled hair had flattened against one side of her head, and the mauve beads of her gown flashed absurdly beneath the fluorescent lights.
“I drove that night,” she said.
“Why did the police report say Dad was driving?”
“Because I told them he was.”
“Why?”
Her throat moved.
“I don’t know how to tell it in pieces.”
“Then don’t.”
A nurse entered with discharge papers before Mom could respond. She explained the medication schedule and asked whether someone could stay with Mom for the next forty-eight hours.
I said yes automatically.
Mom said, “Ethan has somewhere else to be.”
“No, I don’t.”
She looked toward my tuxedo jacket hanging from the chair.
The wedding band I was supposed to wear sat in its inside pocket.
By early evening, I had taken Mom back to her bungalow in Wauwatosa. The house still looked the way it had when Dad was alive: the same oak clock above the mantel, the same green recliner angled toward the Brewers games, the same photographs arranged in careful rows.
One picture was missing.
The framed image of Dad standing beside his silver sedan had been removed from the bookcase. A pale rectangle remained in the dust.
“Where is it?” I asked.
Mom was easing herself onto the couch.
“What?”
“The picture of Dad’s car.”
“I packed away some things.”
“When?”
She didn’t answer.
That was the first clue that Claire had not been the only person searching the past.
I found the storage box in the hall closet behind a stack of winter blankets. Dad’s estate papers, insurance correspondence, repair receipts, and copies of the civil claim filled three folders.
One folder had been opened recently. Its metal fastener was bent.
Inside was a diagram of the collision. Rebecca Dawson’s car had been traveling west. Dad’s sedan was eastbound. The report showed the point of impact just over Rebecca’s side of the centerline.
Below the diagram, an investigator had written:
Mercer passenger-side restraint did not deploy. Driver restraint locked. Survivors’ injury placement inconsistent with reported seating positions. Follow-up recommended.
The follow-up section was blank.
I carried the page into the living room.
“Why wasn’t this investigated?”
Mom stared at it for a long time.
“It was.”
“There’s nothing here.”
“Because Frank asked them to stop.”
I almost laughed. “Frank didn’t control the state patrol.”
“No, but the families could decide whether to keep fighting the civil case. There wasn’t enough evidence for criminal charges. The road was wet, the vehicles rolled, and both drivers were dead.”
“You were alive.”
“I was also medicated, grieving, and terrified.”
“Of what?”
Mom looked past me toward the dark television.
“Of what the truth would do to you and Claire.”
The second folder contained Rebecca’s phone records. One number appeared eleven times during the month before the crash.
My father’s office line.
Another page listed property recovered from Rebecca’s car: purse, scarf, reading glasses, and a key card from the Lakeside Inn in Oconomowoc.
The fundraiser my parents attended had been held at the same hotel.
I sat down.
“Dad knew Claire’s mother.”
Mom’s face tightened.
I remembered the strange silences at family dinners. Frank’s refusal to look at Dad’s photograph during the first joint memorial. Claire asking why her mother would have been driving toward Lake Mills when she had told Frank she was spending the evening with a friend in Madison.
The clues had always existed.
We had arranged them into the version that hurt least.
I called Frank.
He answered on the second ring.
“I’m at home,” he said.
“I found the case file.”
A long pause.
“Then you found more than I wanted you to.”
“I need you to tell me everything.”
“Not over the phone.”
“Why?”
“Because Claire took pages from that box months ago, and I need to know which version she built from them.”
I looked at Mom.
She had covered her mouth with one hand.
Frank continued.
“Come alone, Ethan. Before you talk to Claire.”
“Why?”
“Because your father and Rebecca weren’t strangers.”
I glanced again at the hotel key card listed among Rebecca’s belongings.
“What were they?”
May you like
Frank’s voice weakened.
“They were planning to leave us.”
