ankle, and he said it was a bit swollen again.
“But I don’t need you here anymore,” he said. “I’m closing the place for the rest of the season. Soon as Hank’s released, he and Betty are going. Bob’s taking off end of the day. Leonard Colebert’s family is due here today to pick up his things. And there’s a lot of stuff to deal with, of course. Insurance, for one thing.”
“Well, at least you don’t have to worry anymore about finding a way to get the Wickenses out of your house.”
Dad gave me a tired smile. “No Wickenses. No house. No problem.”
I found Bob Spooner down by the water, sitting in his boat, just looking out over the lake.
“How was the tractor?” I asked.
“Fast,” he said.
“I was serious, what I said last night,” I said.
“About what?”
“About going fishing. Are you packing up yet?”
“Not till the end of the day. I might even hang in until tomorrow. Are you serious? After all that’s happened? You want to go out one last time?”
“Yeah,” I said. “If you don’t mind. Something a bit restful, for a change.”
“Sure.”
“In an hour?”
Bob said sure, again.
The parade, we heard later, went off without a hitch. Stuart Lethbridge and the rest of the Fifty Lakes Gay and Lesbian Coalition failed to show. Turns out Stuart couldn’t get anyone to run the comics shop, and Saturday being his busiest day, he couldn’t afford to close.
May and Jeffrey were going back to the city in Lawrence’s Jag. They’d given statements to the police, and Lawrence had let them know that they’d be staying at his place, at least for a while.
Lawrence had finished packing all his stuff and tossed it into the trunk. Jeffrey, still holding on to what was now his entire
“You take care,” I said. “Lawrence will look after you.”
Jeffrey was dazed and tired. “I know,” he said. “I like him.”
“I like him, too,” I said. I shook Jeffrey’s hand, then went over to say goodbye to May.
She gave me a hug. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry about your father,” I said. For any pain she felt, I really was.
“I had no idea,” she said. “Not that he’d killed two men in my life. Sabotaged my jobs. And then he allowed us to be locked up. Would he have killed us? My own father? Would he have killed me and his grandson?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But if he couldn’t have brought himself to do it, I think Charlene would have.”
She looked like she was going to cry. She gave me a kiss, thanked me again, and got into the Jag.
“Thanks,” I said to Lawrence as he opened his door.
He put his arms around me, patted my back, and whispered into my ear, “The shit you get into. I do declare.”
As they drove up the hill and disappeared around the bend, I noticed Orville Thorne standing not far away.
“I owe you,” I said.
He gave me a half smile. “I may not be cut out for this,” he said. “Maybe I should think about doing something else.”
“Well,” I said, “you were there for me when I needed it most, and I thank you. When you’re in the city, I want you to come by. My wife Sarah, my kids Paul and Angie, they’d be honored to meet you.”
“I’d like that,” he said.
“How are you and Lana?” I asked.
Orville sighed tiredly. “We talked a lot last night. She’s not my aunt, she’s not my mother, but she loves me as much as either.”
“Hold on to that.”
“I wish,” he said, working to get the words out, “that I had had a chance to meet your mother.”
“Our mother,” I said.
He nodded. His eyes were wet.
“I’ll do what I can to tell you everything about her that I can.”
He smiled sadly. “I’d appreciate that. And, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“About what I said before, when I found out, about you being my half brother, what I called you.”
“Oh, the asshole thing?” I said. “Don’t worry. You wouldn’t be the first one in the family to make that assessment.”
“All set?” Bob Spooner asked. He was already in the boat, doing an inventory of the lures in his tackle box, when I walked out onto the dock.
“Ready,” I said. I untied the bow, got in, took the middle seat, and Bob unhooked the stern. He pushed the boat out with an oar, lowered the prop into the water, and started the motor. Shouting over it, he said, “I thought I’d take us where we went the other day.”
Rather than shout back, I gave him a thumbs-up. There was almost no breeze, no chop on the water, and hardly any other boats out. It was nearing the end of the season. It was an overcast day, but little chance of rain. The sound of water rushing against the metal hull was therapeutic.
We were in our spot in about five minutes, and Bob killed the outboard. He handed me a pole, to which he’d already attached a lure.
“You can pick something different if you want,” he said.
“No, that’s good,” I said. “Besides, it’s not about the fishing. It’s about being out here.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Bob said. “There’s no more beautiful spot on Earth.”
“Tell me again how long you’ve been coming up here?”
“Thirty-two years. Never missed a summer.”
I cast out between some weeds. “Amazing. And the lake, it’s as beautiful up here as it was when you first came up?”
“Pretty much. Just hope it stays that way as long as I’m coming up here.” Bob cast out, reeled in slowly, then repeated the process.
“At least,” I said, “we won’t be seeing a huge fishing resort going in. At least not from Leonard. But you never know, there may be another developer just around the corner.”
Bob nodded without looking at me. “Yeah, well, that’s true. But it was still an awful thing, what happened to Leonard. I’ll never forget it as long as I live, Zack, I’m tellin’ you.”
I reeled in, then cast out again. I asked the question I’d been wanting to ask since the night before.
“So, Bob,” I said, “what really happened when you and Leonard went on your hike?”
“Hmm?” he said, pretending not to hear, glancing down into his tackle box.
“When you were out with Leonard Colebert. I was wondering, maybe you could tell me what really happened.”
Bob stopped reeling in for a moment and looked at me. “What are you talking about, Zack? You know what happened. For Christ’s sake, you were out there. You saw what happened to him. Jesus.”
We were quiet for a moment, the only sound the lapping of the waves against the metal hull.
“There was no bear,” I said. “Certainly not where Morton Dewart was concerned. Timmy Wickens admitted that to me. But not with Leonard Colebert either.”
Bob Spooner, both hands on the pole, looked at me.
“I swear to God, Zack, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bob said.
“I guess the first thing was, why didn’t the bear eat him?” I asked.
“Christ, you want me to make excuses for a bear? Leonard was running away, he fell down the side of a hill,
