“I want to see her.”

He lunged for me. He caught me by the shirt and slammed me against the hard hospital wall. Every detail of his face was plain, but mostly I saw the stranger in him, the pure and crushing hatred as the last of his faith in me fell away. “If you did this,” he said, “I will fucking kill you.”

I didn’t fight back. I let him hold me against the wall until the hatred shrank into something less total. Like pain and loss. Like something in him just died.

“You should not have to ask me,” I said, removing his hands from my shirt. “And I should not have to answer.”

He turned away. “You are not my son,” he said.

He showed me his back, and Dolf could not meet my eyes; but I refused to be made small. Not now. Not again. So I fought the overwhelming urge to explain. I stood my ground and, when my father turned, I held his eyes until he looked away. I sat on one side of the waiting area and my father sat on the other. At one point, Dolf made as if to cross the room to speak with me.

“Sit down, Dolf,” my father said.

Dolf sat.

Eventually, my father climbed to his feet. “I’m going for a walk,” he said. “I need some unspoiled air.” When the sound of his feet faded away, Dolf came to sit beside me. He was just over sixty, a hardworking man with massive hands and iron hair. Dolf had been around for as long as I could remember. My entire life. He’d started on the farm as a young man, and when my father inherited the place, he’d kept Dolf on as the number two man. They were like brothers, inseparable. It had always been my belief, in fact, that without Dolf, neither my father nor I would have survived my mother’s suicide. He’d held us together, and I could still remember the weight of his hand on my narrow shoulder in the hard days after the world vanished in a flash of smoke and thunder.

I studied his uneven face, the small blue eyes and the eyebrows dusted with white. He patted my knee and leaned his head against the wall. In profile, he looked like he’d been carved from a hunk of dried beef.

“Your father is a passionate man, Adam. He acts in the moment, but usually calms down and sees things differently. Gray Wilson was murdered and Janice saw what she saw. Now you’re back and someone’s done this to Grace. He’s worked up. He’ll get over it.”

“Do you really think words can make this right?”

“I don’t think you did anything wrong, Adam. And if your father was thinking straight, he’d see it that way, too. You need to understand that when Grace came to me, I had no idea what to do. My wife left when my own daughter was young. I knew nothing about nothing. Your father helped me. He feels responsible.” He spread his palms. “He’s a proud man, and prideful men don’t show their hurt. They lash out. They do things they eventually regret.”

“That changes nothing.”

Dolf shook his head again. “We all have regrets. You do. I do. But the older we get, the more there are to carry around. That much weight can break a man. That’s all I’m saying. Give your old man a chance. He never believed you killed that boy, but he couldn’t just ignore the things his own wife said.”

“He threw me out.”

“And he’s wanted to make it right. I can’t count the times he wanted to call you, or write you. He even asked me once if I’d drive to New York with him. He said there were things to say, and not all things should be trusted to paper.”

“Wanting is not the same as doing.”

“That’s true.”

I thought of the blank page I’d found on my father’s desk. “What stopped him?”

“Pride. And your stepmother.”

“Janice.” The name came with difficulty.

“She’s a decent woman, Adam. A loving mother. Good for your father. In spite of everything, I still believe that, just as she believes what she saw that night. I can promise that these five years have not been easy on her, either. It’s not like she had a choice. We all act on what we believe.”

“You want me to forgive him?” I asked.

“I want you to give him a chance.”

“His loyalty should be to me.”

Dolf sighed. “You’re not his only family, Adam.”

“I was his first.”

“It doesn’t work that way. Your mother was beautiful and he adored her. But things changed when she died. You changed most of all.”

“I had my reasons.”

A sudden brightness moved into Dolf’s eyes. The manner of her death hit us all hard. “He loved your mother, Adam. Marrying again was not something he did lightly. Gray Wilson’s death put him in a difficult place. He had to choose between believing you and believing his wife. Do you think that could be easy or anything but dangerous? Try to see it like that.”

“There’s no conflict today. What about now?”

“Now is… complicated. There’s the timing. The things Grace said.”

“What about you, then? Is today complicated for you?”

Dolf turned in his seat. He faced me with blunt features and a level gaze. “I believe what Grace told me, but I know you, too. So, while I don’t know what, exactly, to believe, I do think that this will all be sorted out in time.” He looked away. “Sinners usually pay for their sins.”

I studied his raw face, the chapped lips and the drooping eyes that ill-concealed the grief. “You honestly believe that?” I asked.

He looked up at the humming lights, so that a bright, gray sheen seemed to cover his eyes. His voice drifted, and was pale as smoke.

“I do,” he said. “I absolutely do.”

CHAPTER 7

Ten minutes later, the cops materialized in the door. Robin appeared subdued, while the other cop made small, eager movements. Tall and round-shouldered, he was somewhere north of fifty, in faded jeans and a red jacket. Brown hair spread thinly over a narrow forehead and sharp nose. A badge hung on his belt and small, round glasses flashed over washed-out eyes.

“Can we talk outside?” Robin asked.

Dolf sat up straighter, but said nothing. I got up and followed them out. Jamie was nowhere to be seen. The other cop held out a hand. “I’m Detective Grantham,” he said. We shook hands. “I work for the sheriff, so don’t let the clothes fool you.”

His smile broadened, but I knew better than to trust it. No smile could be real tonight. “Adam Chase,” I said.

His face went flat. “I know who you are, Mr. Chase-I’ve read the file-and I will make every effort to keep that knowledge from coloring my objectivity.”

I kept my calm, but it took some effort. No one knew a thing about me in New York. I’d grown used to it. “Are you capable of that?” I asked.

“I never knew the boy that was killed. I know he was liked, that he was football hero and all that; that he had a lot of family around here. I know that they made a lot of noise about rich men’s justice. But that was all before my time. You’re just like anybody else to me, Mr. Chase. No preconceptions.”

He gestured at Robin. “Now, Detective Alexander has told me about your relationship to the victim. None of us likes to see cases like this, but it’s important to move as quickly as possible when something like this does occur. I know that it’s late and that you’re probably upset, but I’m hoping that you can help me out.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“That’s good. That’s just fine. Now, I understand that you saw the victim today?”

“Her name is Grace.”

He smiled again, and this one had an edge on it. “Of course,” he said. “What did you and Grace talk about? How was her state of mind?”

“I don’t know how to answer that,” I said. “I don’t know her anymore. It’s been a long time. She never responded to my letters.”

Robin spoke. “You wrote to her?”

I could feel the sudden hurt in her voice.

You wrote to her, but not to me.

I turned to Robin. “I wrote to her because she was too young to understand my reasons for leaving. I needed her to understand why I was no longer there for her.”