Sixteen

Bonnie would have found out about the LeDrews' intention to sue me soon enough. One of her colleagues would probably text to offer sympathies, or she'd spot an item about it when she went scrolling through news on her phone. But it turned out to be Rachel who broke the news for Bonnie at the dinner table.

"The Drew people are mean," she said.

"I'm sorry, what?" Bonnie said, the words coming out garbled as she chewed a bite of pork chop. "What are drew people?"

"The people whose kid tried to blow up Dad's school," Rachel said, moving some peas around her plate with her fork.

"The LeDrews, you mean," Bonnie said. "Why are they mean?"

"Because they want to take Dad's money."

Bonnie looked at me. "What's she talking about?"

"Where'd you hear about this?" I asked Rachel.

"Mrs. Tibaldi saw it on the news."

Bonnie was still looking at me, awaiting an explanation. "It's nothing," I said. "A frivolous lawsuit."

"That's why you texted me," she said, the tumblers falling into place. "Why didn't you tell me when I got home?"

"Your day wasn't much better. I figured it could wait. I'll tell you all about it later."

I didn't want to get into it in front of Rachel, who looked more than a little troubled.

"Everything is sad here," she said, moving a pea around her plate with a fork.

"Sweetheart, what do you mean?" Bonnie asked her.

I should have thought it was obvious.

"Everybody's mad about everything," our daughter said. "Everybody's mad at Dad and trying to blow him up, and you guys are always mad at each other. That's what I mean. Everybody's mad."

"That's not true," Bonnie said, a hint of defensiveness in her voice.

Rachel said, "Remember when I fell on my scooter?"

When she was five we got her a Radio Flyer scooter. A skateboard-like platform with a tall handlebar that she could grip onto as she powered herself along the sidewalk, one leg on the base, the other pumping away. She'd no doubt tumbled off it a number of times, but Bonnie and I both knew the incident she was referring to. She was propelling herself on the sidewalk, on our side of the street, when some jackass more intent at looking at his phone than the road wandered across the street and scraped up against the curb only a few feet from Rachel.

It scared her half to death and she let go of the scooter and tumbled onto the hard cement of the sidewalk, scraping her elbow and knee. The jackass kept on going.

"It wasn't my fault," Rachel recollected, eyeing her mother, "and you didn't get mad and you got me chocolate peanut butter ice cream with pretzels."

Bonnie managed a smile. "I remember."

"But Daddy almost got blown up and you didn't get him ice cream or anything."

Bonnie's face fell. She eyed me for a second, then looked away guiltily. I instantly felt badly for her. She didn't deserve that.

Some wineglasses that sat close together on an upper shelf began tinkling as they jiggled against each other. Another truck rumbling past.

"Those goddamn trucks," Bonnie said, then got up from the table and left the room.

I found her upstairs later, sitting on the edge of our bed, dabbing her eye with a tissue. I sat down next to her. Neither of us spoke for a minute. I finally went first.

"That wasn't fair," I said. "She doesn't understand."

"Maybe she does," Bonnie said. "All too well." A pause, and then, "I'm sorry."

I reached down and took her hand. "Don't apologize. This is what I do. I jump into things I shouldn't, make things more tense around here."

Another period of silence. This time, Bonnie broke it. "Her teacher called me today."

I waited.

"We might have sent her back too soon. She described Rachel as sullen."

"Sullen. Well, this household underwent a traumatic incident this week. Maybe we're getting off lightly with sullen."

"She said it's not new. Rachel is distracted lately, unfocused. Not finishing her exercises. She said she seems... kind of flat." Bonnie pressed her lips together, as though debating whether to say what she was really thinking. "I think it's rubbing off from us."

I considered her words. "It's been a little tense lately." I drew in a breath. "I take the blame for that."

"That's not what I'm say—"

I raised a hand. "No, I've tried to be the good guy once too often. Going the extra mile with students and getting bitten in the ass for it. Thinking I can solve everyone's problems. You know how they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I've been on that road for a while now, and I need to find an exit ramp."

"Being kind isn't a failing."

"It is when it comes at the expense of those closest to you."

Bonnie said, "We're all products of our upbringing."

A reference, I knew, to my parents, who sought perfection in their kids while rarely achieving it themselves. My elder by eight years sister, Alicia, who left home when I was ten, fled because she'd grown weary of trying, without success, to please them. Wise enough to know it was hopeless, she fled to Europe, met a man, and never came back. She lived in Brussels. The burden to be flawless fell to me when she left, and I wasn't up to it.

All of which made me think we had to be better for Rachel. And that meant I couldn't draw this household into another crisis.

I was going to have to find a way to deal with my blackmailer on my own.

I suggested Bonnie run herself a hot bath and see if a long soak would relieve some of the day's tensions. She didn't need much persuading.

"If I slide under, don't rescue me," she said.

That gave me time to do what I needed to do. Before darkness fell, I wanted to take some pictures of the boat. I would need them for any online ad I would post.

I had decided, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I needed to pull that ten thousand dollars together. Did that mean I was going to pay my blackmailer? It meant that I knew I might have to. But it did not mean that I was prepared for him to get away with it. I was trying to come up with a plan. Maybe I was going to have to find out who might really have abused him. Persuade him he had the wrong guy, but if he'd let me, help him determine the identity of the true culprit.

Fuck, I just didn't know.

There was still enough light to get a few decent snaps. The boat wasn't some fancy cabin cruiser or speedboat, but it still ran me close to seventeen thousand when I bought it more than ten years earlier. An eighteen-footer with a fifty-horsepower Mercury outboard motor strapped to the transom. A fishing boat, primarily, but it was fun to take Bonnie and Rachel cruising around Candlewood Lake, up north of Danbury, when we weren't sitting still trying to hook into some smallmouth bass.

The boat and the trailer it sat on were usually left at a marina on the lake, but I had brought it back home a few weeks ago to give it its annual going-over. Clean it out, change the oil in the Merc, that kind of thing.

I got out my phone and was preparing to take several shots when someone said, "Hey, Richard."

Our neighbor Jack. He'd stepped out front, as he often did just before the sun dropped beyond the horizon, for a smoke. His wife, Jill, didn't like him to smoke in the house. She didn't like him smoking, period, but she'd given up years ago trying to get him to quit.

"Hey, Jack," I said.

"How you doing?"

"Good," I lied as he started walking over. "Good as can be expected, anyway."

I fired off a couple of shots. That caught Jack's attention. He was shrewd enough to put the pieces together.

"Selling the boat?"

"Thinking about it," I said. I decided to try out some of the excuses I'd eventually use on Bonnie when and if the boat disappeared from the driveway. "We don't get up to the lake as often as we used to. And Rachel, she's not all that interested in fishing. Neither is Bonnie, for that matter."

"You've kept it in good shape," he said, taking a walk around it.

He took one last long draw on his cigarette, walked to the street and tossed it into a storm drain, and then came back and surveyed the boat again, hands in his pockets.

"What are you asking for it?"

"I... I'm not sure yet. I was going to go online and see what a rig like this with the trailer is going for. I paid around seventeen for everything, but that was ten years ago, so, I'm not sure."

He nodded slowly. "Thing is, as it turns out, I've been thinking about getting something like this. I retire this year, and I'm going to have to find some way to fill the time. I used to go fishing with my dad when I was a kid." He smiled, the memory washing over him. "I'd always wanted to do that with my own boys, but somehow it never happened. It was work, work, work for me. Now maybe I could make it up to my grandkids. Take them fishing the way my dad took me."

"I'm hoping to get ten thou."

Jack turned his head slowly to look at me. "Hmm." A pause. "That seems fair. You sure you couldn't get more for it from someone else?"

"Ten thousand now would be preferable than holding out for, say, twelve thousand two weeks from now."

"Something to think about," he said.

"I'm going to post some ads tonight. See what happens."

Jack was thinking, nodding very slowly. He seemed to be on the edge of a decision.

"I'd have one request, if you didn't find it too out of the ordinary," I said.

"What would that be?"

"Only if you're interested, and no pressure, but if you are, you think you could pay me in cash?"

Jack studied me for a moment, trying to read between the lines. "Cash."

I forced a smile. "I mean, I know a check from you isn't going to bounce or anything." I uttered a short, nervous laugh. "It's just, well, it would be convenient, that's all."

I wasn't good at this.

Jack asked, "Is everything okay?"

I nodded, maybe a little too quickly. "You've got my cell number, right?" I asked. He nodded. "Text me if you decide you want it."

Jack said a goodbye and went back into his house. I was taking a few more shots when a Honda Civic came to a stop at the foot of the driveway. There was a young guy behind the wheel.

"Excuse me," he said. "I'm looking for Randall Street?"

I walked over to him, pointed. "Head that way, take the second right, it's the next left."

"Thanks." He gave me a longer look. "Hey, aren't you that teacher, Mr. Boyle?"

I sighed. "Yeah."

He extended a hand out the window. There was an envelope in it. I took it without thinking.

"You've been served," he said, then powered up the window and drove off.