No answer came, but I imagined Eleanor’s voice anyway. Not sentimental. She was never sentimental when truth would do.
Then don’t be cruel. Be clear.
That evening, Dennis called.
“The wire cleared at four seventeen,” he said. “Three point two million into Kyle and Melissa’s joint account.”
I closed my eyes.
“Within two hours,” Dennis continued, “two hundred forty thousand went to a commercial lender tied to the restaurant group. Forty-eight minutes after that, four hundred thirty thousand wired to Westside Venture Partners.”
“Pruitt.”
“Yes.”
“So he’s paid.”
“Looks like principal plus whatever premium they owed. Another hundred fifty thousand went to a property management company in Fort Lauderdale. Deposit, first month, maybe additional security on a waterfront rental.”
“They’re already moving.”
“In their minds, yes.”
I thanked him and hung up.
So Kyle was safe from Garrett Pruitt, at least physically. That mattered. It mattered more than I wanted it to. Anger does not erase fatherhood. Betrayal does not cancel the instinct to check whether your child is breathing.
I poured two fingers of bourbon and sat by the fire with the formal notice Frank had drafted.
Outside, wind rubbed branches against the roof. Inside, every object seemed to ask whether I remembered.
Eleanor’s gardening gloves lay on the entry shelf, stiff and faded. Her handwriting labeled jars in the pantry. A quilt her mother made hung over the back of the sofa. On the mantel, a photograph showed Kyle at ten, holding up a fish barely larger than his hand while I knelt beside him laughing. He had missing front teeth in that picture. His ears stuck out. His face shone with unfiltered joy.
I wondered when joy had become appetite.
Maybe that was unfair. Maybe adulthood simply stripped Kyle down to the habits we had taught him. Eleanor and I gave him love, yes. But I had also softened too many landings. Paid too many bills. Solved too many problems before they matured into lessons. I had mistaken rescue for devotion. Perhaps many fathers do.
Generosity without accountability teaches gratitude only to the already grateful. To everyone else, it teaches expectation.
I went to bed before ten.
I did not sleep much.
At five Thursday morning, I rose in darkness.
The cabin was cold, and I took my time building the fire. I showered, shaved carefully, and opened the cedar closet in the bedroom. The charcoal suit hung beneath a plastic cover, untouched for years. I had worn it arguing before the state appellate court in 2009 in a case involving lake access rights, adverse possession, and a developer who thought intimidation could substitute for clean title. We won unanimously.
