Ransom River (33 page)

That got her dad to relax, maybe a millimeter.

“Riss’s connection is with Boone. And it’s far closer than friends or cousins or siblings.” When her parents didn’t look at her, Rory added, “You’d recognize it. They see themselves as two against the world. They always have.”

Sadly, slowly, Will nodded.

Sam said, “There’s nothing we can do about them. And”—she rubbed a hand across her eyes—“there’s nothing we
should
do.”

“Sam,” Will said.

“It’s not illegal. It’s sick. It’s sick because
they’re
sick. I’m not talking sexually. I mean they are difficult and troubled people. You know it, Will. You’ve always known it.”

Rory said, “This has been building up for a long time.”

Her nerves tightened. And then, as if bursting from deep water into the air, she realized:
Don’t be afraid.
She had done nothing wrong. How many times had she coaxed refugees to speak up, to tell the truth at an asylum hearing? She had told them it would be empowering.

Believe your own truth,
she told herself.

“When I was twelve, Boone tried to undress me and fool around.”

Sam went rigid. “What?”

“At our barbecue, over Memorial Day.”

Sam’s mouth opened. Will turned toward Rory at last. His face closed with anger.

Rory spoke slowly, forcing herself to tell the story in clear and dispassionate detail. She didn’t spare anything. She told them how she and Seth had hopped the fence near the storm drain. Sam didn’t roll her eyes and Will didn’t reprimand her. And what had she expected, disappointment over a minor bit of mischief when she was in seventh grade?

Yes. The perfect daughter had never thought it possible to show scrapes and scuffs or admit anything less than one hundred percent sunshine all the time.

“You haven’t heard the worst of it,” she said.

Will sat down on an old secondhand sofa. He said nothing.

“When I found Boone in my room, I thought he was alone. But Riss was hiding in the closet. Watching.”

“Dear God,” Sam said.

“She just stood there, absolutely silent, until I backed up and saw her.”

“Boone didn’t…”

“No. He didn’t touch me.” The memory still made her skin shrink. The closeness of his face, his smell of sweat. “One of your friends knocked on the door. That ended it.”

She saw the relief on Will’s face. She said, “Except for what Riss did next.”

She told them about Riss threatening Pepper. The little dog had been like the fourth Mackenzie, for years—a stalwart and kooky presence. The idea of Riss wanting to hurt him seemed to cut her mother deeply. Will’s face went the color of cornmeal.

“They’re dangerous,” Sam said.

“Riss has been threatening me again. And Boone’s been following me,” Rory said.

“Christ,” Will said.

“Why?” Sam said.

For a second Rory held back. Her suspicion was inchoate, almost ghostly. But it was growing: that her cousins knew about the heist. They knew their dad may have been involved. They’d grown up hearing the lore of the missing millions. They must have.

“Because they’ve realized I think they’re involved in what happened at the courthouse yesterday,” Rory said.

Instead of profanity, her parents reacted with silence.

“I told you that I thought the gunmen had an ulterior motive. That they were working with somebody or some group on the outside.”

Sam said, “Boone and Riss? That’s…”

“Preposterous,” Will said.

Rory said, “I don’t think so.”

She waited a beat. When her parents stopped squirming, she said, “It’s about Uncle Lee. And the armored car heist.”

If the silence in the shed had felt heavy before, now it seemed electric.

“That’s why I went with Seth today to talk to his dad. That’s what I’ve been checking into,” Rory said.

Shock and alarm crackled from her parents. Will looked stunned. Sam looked faint. She joined Will on the sofa. Rory took her hand. It was cold.

“I’m convinced the gunmen were after me,” Rory said. “But on its own
it makes no sense. The heist is the only thing that does. The only damned thing.”

Her parents said nothing.

“So tell me. Tell me the truth, straight up. Is it possible that Uncle Lee stole the money?”

The words hung in the air.

“The night of the meteor shower when I was nine. That van, and the drunk in the street—was it Lee?”

Her dad stood and walked to the shrouded El Camino. He put his hands on the hood and leaned on his arms and stared blankly out the shed door at the oaks shuddering in the evening breeze.

After a long silence, Sam said, “Tell her.”

For a painful few seconds, Will didn’t move. Then he walked to the workbench and sat down on a stool.

Rory held still. “Dad.”

Finally he looked at her. “Lee had lots of trouble with the law. But he never did anything violent or dangerous. Not that I ever knew of. He was always just falling for get-rich-quick schemes, and believing the wrong people, and…”

Sam sat up straighter. For a moment Rory thought this was news to her mom, that she didn’t know what Will was revealing. Then Rory realized that was impossible. Her parents were too close. And they’d lived the last thirty years together. Sam knew.

Rory felt a weight in her chest. How had her parents found out? Had they figured it out after Lee disappeared? Had the difficult truth slowly sunk in over the years? When Lee had been writing Rory postcards, had he been letting her parents in on the secret?

Will paused. As if summoning an effort to overcome decades of pain and inertia and shame, he said, “That night. It was late. Dark.”

Rory’s breathing caught.

“Lee showed up here. After the robbery. He wanted help.” He paused and looked at her with despair. “And I gave it to him.”

“L
ee turned up at the kitchen door. Middle of the night. He pounded on the kitchen window. He woke me up. And when I let him in, I saw him…”

The pain on her dad’s face was seemingly fresh, as though Lee were in the kitchen, not twenty years’ gone.

“He was injured and desperate,” Will said.

“Injured?” Rory said.

“He’d been wounded in the getaway.”

Rory could hardly inhale. “He was the getaway driver?”

Will looked at her with kindness and gentle regret, as though he hated to prick the bubble she lived in. “I don’t know. I wasn’t privy to their plans.”

She flushed.

“I just know that once the armored car guards started shooting, it all went to hell. And when it ended, Lee was the only one still standing. He managed to get back in their vehicle and drive away.”

“And he came here? To the house—to you?” Rory said.

Will nodded. Sam shifted.

“What did he say? What did you think?” Rory said.

Sam looked at her. “We were horrified.”

Rory sensed a wire stretching tight between her parents. Will clasped his hands and spoke in low, measured tones that sounded broken. Like a doctor reciting a dying patient’s list of injuries.

“Lee said nobody was supposed to get hurt. There wasn’t supposed to be any violence.”

“It was armed robbery,” Rory said.

“He said he thought it would be a victimless crime.”

Sam stood and scratched at her arms and took up pacing. “The fool.”

Will eyed her. “It’s absurd, but that’s what he said. Victimless crime. It was old money—useless, worn-out bills that were going to be shredded anyway. It wasn’t really theft, more like Dumpster diving. And that’s not a crime.”

“You’re kidding,” Rory said.

Sam shook her head. “You didn’t know Lee’s powers of reasoning. Or unreasoning. He could talk anybody into anything.”

Rory thought:
But I did know. He talked me into believing in the adventure.

Will said, “He lived in a fantasy world. But it fell apart. It fell apart in violence. And he should have seen it coming a long way off. We all should have.”

He stared at his hands. “Lee’d been…fading from our sight for years. We didn’t know who he’d gotten involved with. I should have. It was bad.”

Sam said nothing. Rory sensed that this was an old, old refrain.

“Lee turned up that night…” He rubbed his face. “Bleeding, covered in glass, shaking, begging me for help.”

“What kind of help?” Rory said.

“Every kind. Medical, to start with.”

“He’d been shot?”

“In the arm.” He absently touched his shoulder. “And gunfire had shattered the window of the car and he had glass embedded in his face. Shards in his eye. He was in agony.”

Sam said nothing. The word
agony
didn’t seem to register with her.

“I was…
shocked
doesn’t begin to cover it. I tried to get him to sit down and make sense. At first he wouldn’t tell me what he’d done. Kept saying, ‘This thing happened. I need to go.’ I wanted to drive him to the ER but he
refused. He wanted me to take care of the glass myself. I didn’t understand, and I…”

“Will,” Samantha said. Her drawl was like an undertow. “You got the first-aid kit and pulled the glass out of his face. And then you asked if he needed a lawyer.”

“You knew what he’d done?” Rory said.

Will nodded. “Of course. And he tried not to tell us at first, just weaseling around. ‘The thing.’ ‘What happened.’ But it was crystal clear that something very bad had taken place. And he was neck deep in it.”

“Did you call him a lawyer?” Rory said.

Will shook his head. “He refused. And before I could even suggest it, he said, ‘And I’m not turning myself in either.’” He paused. “Lee didn’t just need medical help, or a place to hide out while the cops drove around the boonies looking for the getaway car. He begged me for protection—for himself, and for his family.”

“Oh God,” Rory said.

“He wanted me to protect him from the cops. And he wanted to protect Amber and the kids from the whole thing.”

“Amber didn’t know?” Rory said.

Sam’s look was scathing. “Maybe, maybe not. Even when she was compos mentis, Lee didn’t take her into his confidence. They had a marriage based on…fantasy, not real life.”

Will cleared his throat. “Rory, you can’t imagine the shock. It was like the whole world just split apart at the seams. Here was my brother. My flesh and blood, the kid I’d grown up sharing a room with, this guy I loved—”

His voice broke. Rory felt a knot in her throat. Sam looked implacable.

Will coughed and went on. “I felt—torn. That’s the only word to describe it. Just ripped in half. What was I supposed to do? Let my only brother go to prison for decades? I wanted to—I wanted to…”

Sam stood up and crossed to the workbench and wrapped her arms tightly around him. He drew a rough breath and fought not to break down.
After a long moment Samantha locked hands with his. Will took a breath and wiped his eyes.

“He wanted to get away. And I helped him.”

Rory felt frozen.

“He wanted to get out of the country. He wanted to go to Mexico. He wanted me to help him get across the border,” Will said. “And I was his brother, Aurora.”

Rory understood now. The jumbled pictures from her childhood began to assemble into a coherent pattern.

“You thought I’d never figure it out,” she said.

Her mom said, “Desperation makes people strangely certain.”

“Mom. Dad. The van out back. The staggering drunk. Seth and I saw it. We saw
him.
And all these years…you said
nothing
happened.”

They seemed ready to capsize. Will said, “We couldn’t tell you. How could we? It wasn’t fair to you. It wouldn’t have been safe for you to know.”

“Mexico,” she said.

Will nodded.

“The postcards. The letters. It was more than abandonment.”

Sam’s eyes looked flat. “He abandoned his family in all kinds of ways. Long before that night.”

Will said, “Lee was crazy. I mean he was manic that night. Scared and desperate and—I’d never seen him so…single-minded about anything. ‘Get me to Mexico. I’m going. I need your help.’”

“What was his plan? To wait until the case went cold? Or until the statute of limitations ran?” Rory said.

“Plan?” Sam laughed, a brutal sound.