“He could have been pressured to do it,” Lydia said. “I’m telling you, Bill. He could have been forced—”
“To steal money from his employees? To finance his drug habit? And…And pay off the Mafia?”
His face was changing color again.
“Look, Mr. and Mrs. Welch—”
“Lydia.”
“Mr. Welch and Lydia,” I said. “You guys hired me to find your son.”
“Shehired you,” Bill said.
“I was hired to find your son. And that’s what I’m going to try my best to do. When I bring him back, you’ll have the answers to all your questions. But until then—and I’m saying this for your own good as well as mine—it’s best not to speculate.”
They both stared down at their plates. Lydia took a bite of her salad. Bill drank his iced tea. I ate some of the tuna. It was very good. I wished I was hungrier.
“A few times, at our house in Nantucket, I took Dylan and his cousins fishing,” Bill said quietly.
“That was sweet of you, Bill,” Lydia said. “I know Dylan so loved the attention.”
“I enjoyed those times, too,” Bill said. “Until I found out that Dylan was stealing his cousins’ fish, claiming he was the one who had caught them.”
Lydia pushed her food around on her plate, then set her fork down. She lifted her napkin and dabbed at her cheek so subtly, it took me a while to realize she was crying.
“He has always been an embarrassment,” Bill said.
“Because you never approved of him,” Lydia said.
“He never gave me any reason to approve of him.”
“You’re hisfather,” Lydia said. “That should be agood enough reason!”
I cleared my throat loudly.
The two of them went silent, as though they just remembered I was still there.
“Maybe he was just trying to impress you, Mr. Welch,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“I was just thinking,” I said. “Maybe Dylan knew that he wasn’t a fisherman. But he also knew you liked fishing. And he wanted to make you think that he was good at something that you liked. He wanted that bad enough to…uh…steal his cousins’ fish on a family vacation.”
No one said anything for several seconds, my own words hanging in the air. Why had I just said all of that? Maybe I’d been in analysis for too long.
Bill turned to me, a pained look on his face, as though he’d just been punched in the stomach but was trying to be strong about it. “Who knows why Dylan does anything?” He said it very quietly.
“It was just a thought,” I said. “And anyway, it’s none of my business.”
Lydia dabbed at her eyes and folded up her napkin. There were still mascara smears on her face, but she was no longer crying. And when she spoke, her tone was calm and measured. “The police haven’t called us, you know,” she told me. “You said they’d call and they haven’t yet, and so I just assumed they’d found another suspect.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Why?” she said. “It isn’t your fault.”
I heard hard-soled shoes clacking down the hallway. We all turned toward the sound.
“What now?” Bill said.
