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“He doesn’t even know where you are,” my father says, but there’s a hint of uncertainty I can see working at him now.
“But he knows you’re here!” I cry, and my father blanches in response, blood draining from beneath his Bermuda-darkened freckles. “He’s known where you are this entire time! When he doesn’t find me in Toronto, he will scour the whole world to find me, and he’ll probably start-” I point furiously down at the dock between us “-right here!”
“He’s welcome to do so.”
That’s a new voice that I don’t recognize, one with a posh-sounding accent, like it was shaped in fancy parts of London. I turn towards the sound to see a tall, lean man standing at the other end of the dock where it connects with the island. Like my father, he’s dressed in beautiful, expensive-looking linen, his trousers and his shirt both pristine white. His hair is somewhere between grey and blonde and when he smiles broadly at me I’m confronted with a set of too-large, too-white veneers.
“You… You want him to come here?”
One of the man grabs me violently by the hair, yanking me back until I cry out. My father does nothing but watch as the man hisses, “You don’t ask questions of the boss.”
The boss in question, presumably Mr. Brigham, raises a tanned, weathered hand and the man instantly lets me go.
“No need to be so rough with our new guest,” Mr. Brigham says as he comes down the dock towards us.
When he’s close enough I think I can peg him at around fifty-five, or maybe even sixty years old. But he’s the kind of man who’s aged with health and wealth, like somebody who spends a lot of time on a yacht. His skin has aged from the sun, but overall he still looks strong, muscles cording along the forearms I can see from the way his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows.
I feel that strength for myself when he grabs my chin, turning my face this way and that. I try to pull away, but his goon is still right behind me, and I’m trapped.
“You’re even lovelier in person,” the tall man says. “Let’s get you inside, shall we? Can’t have that fine Irish skin getting burned out here.”
“Who are you?” I force out of a tight mouth.
“Your father’s never mentioned me?” He raises pale eyebrows with mock surprise. “He and I go way back. Your mother and I go way back, too.”
My father turns away, staring out at the water with his hands in his pockets.
“My… You knew my mom?”
“Never met her, of course,” he clarifies. “And I really was quite broken up about what happened to her. But that’s what happens when you play with fire and you lose.” His eyes go to my father. A chill sweeps through me, the beginnings of a suspicion piecing itself together beneath my skin, stealing the heat out of my body even as the sun shines down.
“I didn’t expect that you’d survive,” he says mildly, like he’s talking about the fate of an ant instead of a person.
He didn’t expect that I’d survive…
It’s like he knew about the crash that killed my mother.
Knew about it before it even happened.
“You,” I whisper, shock and horror giving way to numbness. It’s like there’s a pane of glass between me and everything else. “It was you.”
I still remember the flash of headlights blasting into our windshield. I always assumed that I’d just seen wrong in the chaos of that moment. Or that maybe somebody else briefly lost control of their vehicle before moving on, and that they somehow didn’t see us swerve and crash. Because they never stayed at the scene.
“Not me directly,” the man replies. “It’s been many millions of dollars since I’ve had to do any of my own dirty work like that.”
Dirty work. Running my mother and me off the road, ending her beautiful life, saddling me with a lifetime of trauma and guilt and regret…
It’s just work to him. And dirty work, too.
The pane of glass grows thicker and thicker, blurring everything. When Mr. Brigham speaks again it sounds like it comes from a thousand miles away. “But that’s what happens when you don’t pay your debts.”
My father is still looking out over the water. Like none of this concerns him anymore.
“What debts?” I say, and the words are like ash in my mouth.
“Did you know your father tried to start an illicit import business when you were a child? I was his main creditor,” Mr. Brigham says almost cheerily. “But unfortunately, business didn’t quite pan out, did it, Jack?”
My father tenses but doesn’t turn around.
