The Most Dangerous Thing

“I thought you were in AA,” Gwen says stupidly. It’s easier to focus on this small detail than the larger one, the buzz of words from Tim, the details that don’t track. Two glasses. Cheat. Golf date. That robe.

“I was,” McKey says. “Then I realized I’m not an alcoholic, that I was just a little unnerved by some episodes before the holidays. I can drink in moderation.”

“Yeah, two glasses is really moderate,” Tim says. “Look, let’s not drag this out. His phone is here. We heard it ring.”

“He stopped by earlier today. I didn’t realize he left it here. This is awkward. I’m entertaining.”

“I bet you are,” Tim says, holding his phone out at arm’s length. Gwen understands. He can’t read the screen close up without reading glasses. “Here’s Vivian’s number-I wonder if I can set up a conference call among our three phones.”

Sean comes into the living room, fully dressed. Gwen wants to laugh at the silliness of it, this odd little moment straight out of a bedroom farce. Sean proper and composed, as if the fact of his clothing, his combed hair, proves he’s innocent. Yet she’s sad for him, too. Oh, Sean. I wish you had told me what you were thinking. Because I would have talked you out of it. Not out of jealousy, although she admits to herself that she is jealous, that she does feel as if McKey has seized something that was hers. But mainly she’s sad because he’s done something he can never take back. And she knows he’ll want to take it back, whatever the outcome, even if there is no outcome. Her father may be right about people being too honest. But the problem with cheating is that you can never be spared that knowledge about yourself, whether you tell or not.

“We forgot our prop,” she says to Tim, not wanting to think about what’s happening here and now.

“That’s okay. We won’t need it. We might all need alcohol, though.” McKey has no intention of playing the hostess, so Gwen goes to the kitchen, finds it stocked with wine and beer and a healthy array of whiskey, although no food. She brings a selection to the table, with a choice of glasses. She herself selects bourbon. She’s not driving in any sense of the word. Let Tim take the wheel.

“Over the past twenty-four hours, Gwen and I, separately and together, have learned a lot of things that change everything about what we thought we knew about the night of the hurricane.” Tim is in his professional mode. “First-and this is going to be hard to hear, Sean-Gwen’s father says that Chicken George was probably alive when they got to him, but our father killed him, beat him to death with a flashlight. And our father told Mom as much the night he died.”

Sean shakes his head. “If that’s so, it would have been reported at the time. There weren’t so many bodies dumped in Leakin Park that such a thing would have gone overlooked.”

“It didn’t. But the body was out there for a very long time, much longer than anyone could have guessed, washed into a culvert. It was months before it was found, but it happens that there is an open case from the winter of 1980.” Tim looks at McKey. “Was it hard, going back and seeing him there, or had the stream already washed him away?”

Gwen understands that Tim is testing McKey. There’s no reason to believe that she took the guitar, but the accusation might shake something loose.

“I didn’t go back.”

“Someone did. I found the guitar in my family’s attic today. And it’s hard for me to imagine Go-Go going back by himself, to see the body of the man who allegedly molested him.”

Gwen sees Sean’s head snap up at the adverb allegedly . McKey has no reaction, and that’s reaction enough.

But all she says is: “I don’t know why Go-Go did what he did. He’s dead, so I’ll guess we’ll never know.”

“Want to know something interesting about Go-Go’s death, Mickey? A few months ago, an old priest from our parish asked Go-Go to be a character witness for him. A former student had come forward, said he had recovered memories of sexual abuse, seemed to be interested in shaking cash out of the archdiocese or even the priest himself, who comes from a well-to-do family and has pockets deep enough to be attractive to someone angling for a quickie settlement. Go-Go agreed to be his character witness. Then he abruptly backed out, wouldn’t even answer phone calls from the person trying to set up the deposition. Why would he do that?”

“Why do you keep asking me about Go-Go, what he did? He’s not my brother.”

Gwen realizes that McKey is even smarter than she ever knew, careful not to say anything. She has not made a single assertion so far, other than insisting that she didn’t take the guitar, and she may be telling the truth. But she knows Go-Go wasn’t molested by Chicken George.

“Go-Go did tell Father Andrew that he wanted to do this for him because years ago he was molested by two high school boys, but he lied and blamed it on someone else. The weird thing is, based on what he told Father Andrew, he was molested by the older kids in 1980. So what really happened the night of the hurricane? What did you see? Why was Chicken George chasing you, trying to grab you? You, Mickey, not Go-Go. He tried to grab you- and you pushed him.”

“Only because I was closer to him. Go-Go was faster. I went to the cabin. I saw Chicken George touching Go- Go. He chased us.”

“I think you took the guitar that night and that’s why he chased you. It never made sense for him to run after you with it, as you said.”

McKey smiles. Why is she smiling? “Suit yourself. But, as you recall, your brother and I agreed on what happened. What little boy would tell such a story if it wasn’t true? As for the high school boys-I don’t know what that’s about. Maybe Go-Go thought that was more credible. Maybe Go-Go liked sex with men.”

Sean has been listening intently, trying to catch up. He is uncomfortable, Gwen knows, with having the least information of anyone in the group, and now he breaks in. “That’s ridiculous. Go-Go wasn’t gay.”

“I’m not saying he was.” McKey’s tone, when talking to Sean, is earnest, sweet. She’s trying to create teams. With only four of them, they can go two-on-two. “I’m just playing Tim’s game. He’s making stuff up. I’m making stuff up, to show him how ridiculous it is. Look, I’m truly sorry about your dads. It can’t be fun, finding out your fathers are killers. It was easier on everyone when we thought this was an accident.”

“Rick was there, too,” Tim says, even as Gwen tries to parse McKey’s grammar, her tenses. It was easier on everyone- She already knew this part. She knows about what Tim Senior did. Yet Go-Go didn’t even tell his brothers. Why would he confide in McKey? Because she’s as responsible as he is for whatever happened.

“Yes. Well, Rick wasn’t my father. It’s different. Still, they did what they did. Don’t make this about me.”

“Go-Go told Father Andrew-”

“According to Father Andrew. And who knows what Go-Go would say on any given day?”

Something tugs at Gwen’s memory. Tim said something about picking pockets. She hears a squeal of brakes, a woman’s laugh. She is standing on the steps of the private detective’s office. No, it’s not that moment. It was something from earlier in their conversation, something about her methods, which even she found deplorable.

“You went to AA to spy on Go-Go, just like the private detective’s operative did. No, not spy, because obviously he saw you and knew you were there. You wanted him to see you, wanted him to know you were watching him. You wanted to make sure that he didn’t talk in AA, the way he did to Father Andrew. Why did you care, McKey? What secret did you need Go-Go to keep? Chicken George’s death? Something else?”

McKey drops her eyes to her lap and picks at the embroidery on her robe. It’s pretty, feminine, the kind of thing that Tally used to wear. In fact, it’s a dead ringer for an old robe of Tally’s that was in Gwen’s dress-up box. They played dress-up on the rare days they spent indoors, and McKey, who lived in overalls and cutoffs, always chose the frilly, girly items.

Gwen thinks about the cabin, the night of the storm. Why would McKey and Go-Go have gone there together? It has never made sense, McKey stumbling on him there, two of them winding up there independently. No one went there alone-except Sean and Gwen, and she didn’t want to go anymore because she thought someone was watching them. Tim said straight out that he tried to watch them only once, in the Halloran basement. So if someone was watching-

“Did you spy on us, in the woods. You and Go-Go? Did you watch us?”

McKey’s posture is defiant, but she won’t meet Gwen’s eyes. “It was an accident. We went there to play and you were… already playing. Anyone would do what we did.”

“But it wasn’t just the one time, was it? You went back. You went back again and again. You went back the night of the storm, but we weren’t there.” No, she and Sean were in her bedroom, trying to figure out how much