The Set Up (22 page)

I nod my head. “At the time all I knew was my father was waking me up in the middle of the night, telling me we had to leave. I wanted to say goodbye to you but he wouldn’t let me. When I tried to run, he scooped me up and carried me to the car, which was already packed with my things. That night he drove us to Mackinac Island, where his sister and her husband owned a bed-and-breakfast. He left me there like he said he was going to.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“We were eight, Jasper. I didn’t even know your phone number. And besides, every day I thought would be the day I’d be going home.”

He nods.

“About a month later my father returned. He was even sadder. I remember thinking even then that he seemed broken. I overheard things he told my aunt, but I had no idea what he meant when he told her he had become the black sheep of Detroit. After his initial return he went back to Detroit more than a few times, but only for a day or two at a time. Each time he came back even sadder than when he had left. Again I overheard him tell my aunt things like everyone hated him and blamed him, but I had no idea what he was talking about. One day I asked him about it and he started to cry. I never asked him again. After about the fourth trip he’d taken back to Detroit, I asked him why he didn’t have to work that much anymore. He didn’t tell me about the explosion, just told me there was no work left to go back to. Still, I didn’t give up hope. I thought every day would be the day he would have to go to work, or the day my mother would be done with her
break
, and then we would go home. Sadly, years passed, and then one day I just lost hope of ever returning.”

Jasper stands and starts to pace. I can tell he’s restless, maybe even agitated.

Feeling restless too, I stand. “Let’s walk,” I offer.

We walk along the bluff’s edge in silence for a few minutes, and then the heat of Jasper’s skin meets the warmth of mine when he reaches for my hand and holds onto it. “Finish telling me your story, Charlotte.”

Without a word about the kind gesture, I go on. “Although my father lived with us, he was never really present. My uncle was much older than my aunt and chartering the boats at the bed-and-breakfast was hard on him, so my father eagerly took that chore on. My uncle died when I was ten, and that was when the bed-and-breakfast really started failing. I was eleven when I came home from school one day and heard my aunt and my father arguing. I assumed it was about the bed-and-breakfast. They argued about it all the time. My father thought she should sell it before the bank repossessed it, but she refused. It was all she had left of my uncle and it meant everything to her. But that wasn’t what they were arguing about.” I pause, letting the memory of that horrible day eat away at me.

His hold on my hand tightens. “What were they arguing about?”

“My mother,” I blurt out. “I hadn’t thought of her in so long and they were arguing about some letter she’d sent. I burst into the room demanding to see the letter. I just knew it had to be for me. That’s when I found out where she’d gone and who she’d run off with. The letter was a single line, a request for my father to sign divorce papers that were included. No mention of me at all. No mention of where she was. Or any request to see me. Just a return address to some attorney in Canada.”

“You never saw her again?” Jasper asks.

Pain slices through me. “No. Never. Not to this day.”

“And your father?” he asks hesitantly.

A shiver runs through me and sadness fills me. “Shortly after that on a rainy, stormy day, my father took a charter boat out on Lake Huron alone. The water was choppy, the sky gray, the winds high. He should never have gone out on the water. He never returned. About a week later his boat was found shipwrecked on the Upper Peninsula, but there was no sign of him. The Coast Guard ruled his death an accidental drowning. Maybe that was his plan. To this day, I still don’t know. If he committed suicide, he didn’t leave a note. Nevertheless, I think he did it on purpose. He had a decent life insurance policy and it was left to my aunt. She put enough of it away in a college trust for me and used the rest to stop the foreclosure proceedings that were already in motion on the bed-and-breakfast.”

“What was it called?”

I blink over at him.

“The bed-and-breakfast?” he asks softly.

“The Butterfly House,” I say with a fond smile.

“So you lived with your aunt then?”

“I did.”

We walk, hands connected but eyes not seeking each other out. There’s too much pain in them. “Were you happy?”

I suck in a breath and know it’s time to finish my story. “I was . . . taken care of. My aunt did the best she could for me, but she was busy. And there weren’t many kids in the neighborhood. That left me alone most of the time and I was always seeking out company from strangers. They’d come for a week and talk to me and then they’d go, and I’d never hear from them again. I grew a little more cautious then. Once I graduated college, I went back to Mackinac for the summer but never planned to stay. I wanted to move to New York City and work for the
New Yorker
or some other big publication.”

We’re still walking, and his hand is still holding mine. “But you never did,” Jasper says, already knowing this from the research Will did on me, I’m sure.

I find comfort in his touch that I probably shouldn’t. “No. That’s when my aunt got sick and needed my help. Like I said, she loved the bed-and-breakfast and there was no way I was going to let her die anywhere but there. I worked night and day to keep that place going, and whenever I thought I couldn’t do it anymore, I thought about how she was the only person in my life who never forgot me. Never left me.”

Jasper stops and tugs me to him. His body molds to mine and he holds me tightly, whispering softly against my hair, “I never forgot you.”

Tears stream down my face and I have to choke back my sobs. With a deep breath, I push against his chest. “But that’s not the end of my story, Jasper.”

Kindness and compassion look down at me and I hate that I’m going to catapult him into the darkness of memories I’m certain he’d rather forget. “Go on, Charlotte. Tell me the rest.”

I turn around and start walking back toward our bikes.

Within moments he’s beside me.

I don’t look over at him. I hate that this is going to hurt him, but I have to tell him. “Right before my aunt died she told me something I can’t forget. Something that changed my view of my father. I had already known by then of course about the explosion at the plant and how inadequate safety procedures were cited as the cause. What I didn’t know was that my father believed that statement to be completely false.”

Jasper scowls. “What are you talking about?”

“My aunt told me my father believed the explosion wasn’t an accident. He’d told a few people at the DA’s office that were working on the case, but they assured him it was. Although he didn’t believe them, his heart was just too broken to try to prove it alone. She gave me a key to a storage unit with everything he had taken from the office that first month he returned to Detroit. The office had been damaged, but it had not burned to the ground like the plant. She made certain to warn me that she had no idea if there was truth in his belief, but she didn’t want to die and take that information with her.”

Jasper stops and faces me. “What the fuck are you saying? Someone intentionally killed my father and all those people that night and your father knew this? That someone got away with murder and no one ever knew it? Did he ever tell anyone he thought this besides your aunt?”

“Yes, I told you—he went to the DA and they dismissed him.”

“Then he never said another word about it?”

I nod.

His facial features tighten and I can see his confusion building. “You have to be shitting me.”

Tears stream down my face and I wipe them away. “I don’t know anything other than for some reason he thought the explosion wasn’t an accident.”

Jasper looks at me. “Why wouldn’t he have told anyone?”

“I told you—he was a broken man.”

Jasper scowls.

“What if my father was right?”

His brows furrow. “Fuck this,” Jasper says and storms off.

I chase after him, talking loud enough for him to hear me. “For years I lived with a man who hardly spoke to me. A man who spent all his time out in a small shed working on boats. I craved his attention. Wanted it so badly. Hated him for not giving it to me. Only to find out that he wasn’t emotionally capable of giving anyone anything because his conscience was weighted down with a belief so big, he couldn’t shoulder it. No one would be able to. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”

Jasper’s steps slow.

I can feel myself crumbling and have to just get it out. “That’s why I came back to Detroit, Jasper. To find out the truth. And to set my father’s conscience free.”

Slowly, he turns his head. “You said you weren’t here to hurt me.”

My body is shaking and my knees feel weak. “I’m not. That’s the last thing I want to do. And I’m sorry if dredging up those memories hurts you, but the truth needs to be told.”

Jasper whirls to face me. “Don’t you think it’s a little too late to be digging up the truth?”

“To be honest, it might be. But I have to do this. What if Eve’s death is somehow related?”

Alarm twists his face. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing is clear. It’s just, I’ve been thinking: why would someone kill her and dump her body at an old abandoned plant?”

“Because the murderer had no idea anyone would be there,” he says with a sarcasm in his tone that alerts me he, too, wonders why.

“I don’t think so, and neither do you.”

His breath hisses out with so much anger it makes me cringe. “Listen to me: I’m not looking to rewrite the past. Nothing you find out can change anything. It’s a little too late for that. And I’m damned sure not looking to play detective. Let the real ones do their job.”

“Right! Like they did twenty years ago?”

He shakes his head. “You’re talking about my entire life. Don’t you even see that?”

“I do, but I need to do this—for my father.”

Disgust clear in his expression, he says, “I’ll see you back at the car. Once I take you home, I never want to see you again.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll find my own way home,” I tell him, feeling angry that he won’t at least explore the possibility that the explosion was intentional, but at the same time having expected this type of reaction.

With his fists balling at his sides, more words of anger pour out from his mouth. “Charlotte, don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

“I’m not. I’m making it easier for you. Just go.”

“Charlotte!” he yells. “Come with me. Now.”

I shake my head. “No, I won’t.”

“Charlotte!”

Unable to keep hearing the hatred in his voice, I stop and say, “I’m not going any where with you.”

He stares at me.

I stare back and can see the hatred in his eyes.

“Do whatever the hell you want.”

My voice lowers. “You promised me, Jasper. You promised.”

With a shake of his head, he storms away. Without even turning back, he hops on his bike and takes off.

When he’s out of sight, I make my way over to the bluff and let my feet dangle off the side.

Truth and lies.

Past, present, and future.

I’d laid it all out under the sun and the sky, and it turned out just the way I knew it would.

There never was any other way, though.

That . . . I’d known all along.

IDLING

Jasper

THE SPEEDOMETER READS
40, 50, 60.

MacArthur Bridge is just around the bend.

This is too much to think about and my mind is a fucking mess. I biked back to my car like a madman. Fumed and cursed the entire way, but I started to feel drained of my anger by the time I put my bike back on my car.

Now I’m driving toward home and I’m on the phone with Will, hoping he agrees with me. Sees things my way. He doesn’t. In fact, he sounds a little annoyed with me. “Why not be open to the possibility that it might not have been an accident?” he asks.

“Because, that means no one bothered to serve justice for over twenty years! Don’t you get it?”