19. Detours Are the Only Way Home

Detours Are the Only Way Home

"Cece and Joe," Sam says. "Fuck. Of course."

"It may start to explain some things," I say.

"It may ?"

We are hiking back toward the main grounds and the car, the wind and the cold burning my cheeks, my skin.

Sam pulls out his phone, starts searching. "Cece Salinger and her husband of thirty-one years finalize their divorce."

He looks up at me.

"That was eight months ago. Timing lines up," he says. "Joe probably talked Dad into selling to his girlfriend—"

"When has someone talked Dad into anything?"

"The point is, it would also explain why Dad was off these past couple of months, especially if Uncle Joe kept the relationship from him. Pretty terrible betrayal after everything Dad tried to do for him."

I look at Sam, wondering which betrayal he is talking about: Joe convincing our father to sell the company to someone he was involved with? Or Joe being involved with Cece in the first place? Either way, it feels like a big jump—and maybe the wrong jump. Because even if Paul (and Tommy) are correct about Uncle Joe and Cece being involved, who says my father wasn't aware? What kind of deep history would my father have needed to have had with her for Uncle Joe to keep that from him?

We walk over another hill, the parking lot appearing in the distance. Sam holds out his hands for the keys.

"None of that tells us who was on the cliff with Dad that night," I say.

"Not yet. But if Joe and Cece kept this from Dad, you've got to ask yourself what they are keeping from us now."

"Except then why would Cece volunteer that she heard from Dad the night that he died? Wouldn't that encourage us to do exactly what we are doing? Ask more questions about her as opposed to fewer?"

He shakes his head, like I'm refusing to see what's right in front of me.

"Maybe she just knew we'd get here either way," he says.

"That doesn't follow, Sam. And it doesn't follow from what I felt when I looked at her."

"Which is?"

I think of the sadness I saw in her eyes that she had missed those calls. Especially when they were the last chance.

"She really cared about Dad."

"Both things can exist."

He opens the car door and gets in.

I don't want to rile Sam up further, so I get in the car too, closing the door behind myself. And I refrain from saying what I'm also thinking: If both things do exist, how compromised did that leave our father?

Sam puts his hands on the steering wheel, the ignition off.

"I'm not trying to play the game of who knew Dad better," he says. "I'm really not. But, working with him every day, I do think that Tommy and I understood something about Dad that maybe you didn't."

"Which is?"

"This company was everything to him."

"I don't think it's that simple."

"Well, it's not a lot more complicated," he says. "Everyone who was around him saw it. The joy when he was on a project site, his singular focus when there was a new property opening. Even when he was just in the office… All I'm saying is, you can feel it. When someone comes alive. That's when Dad would always feel the most alive."

I stare at Sam, feeling weird suddenly. Had I missed it entirely, what Sam had somehow been able to see?

Sam's hands are tight on the steering wheel. The car still in park.

"He's not wrong about the other thing, either," Sam says. "Tommy…"

"What other thing?"

"I haven't been myself lately," he says. "You want to know why?"

"If I say no, will it hurt your feelings?"

"Very funny. I have something I want to show you."

"No thank you."

"It's a bit of a detour if I'm being honest."

"This is getting worse."

Which is when he turns on the ignition and puts the car in drive.

We cross over the Hudson River and drive for a little over an hour until we hit the city of Kingston.

Upper Kingston. Which looks more than a little like it belongs in a movie set, especially with the winter lights, the holiday decorations still up.

Kingston was the first capital of New York State, and the architecture is locked into that history with this incredible mix of colonial stone cottages, colorful buildings, wrought iron balconies. The world of it so interesting and unique despite the fact that I was driven here against my will.

As soon as we pass through the town center, everything around us gets more rural again—shuttered farm stands, weeping willows, and RVs taking over the landscape.

Sam pulls over to the side of the road beside a wide-open farm, donning fruit orchards and tree-lined hilltops. A silver crest over the driveway entrance reads FITZGERALD-GROVE STONE FRUIT.

"Why are we stopping?" I ask.

Sam motions out the windshield. "This was originally where Dad wanted to build The Acres," he says. "The Fitzgerald farm."

"Okay…"

"Two hundred and eighty acres, the most beautiful sugar maple trees, three different kinds of orchard fruit. Apples, peaches, cherries. And when I tell you it's the best peach you've ever tasted, I'm not lying."

"What's happening right now?"

"I'm the one who found the farm. After months of looking at eighty farms up and down the Hudson Valley," he says, "I came up here to try and secure the sale of the property and the family wasn't particularly interested, which is typical at first, but most of the time they come around when they hear how Dad organizes his property buys. Eighty percent of the land is preserved, guaranteed. We keep a small working farm on-site, which they can manage if they want. And, of course, they can stay in their house. We build out five acres for them to have forever. So they aren't being asked to leave or relocate. Plus, they have more money than a lifetime of tending to the whole place could give them."

He pauses.

"Their daughter, who lived on property, she's a lawyer and she came around fairly quickly, but she had other siblings who just really weren't into it, so ultimately the family declined. But that's how we got to know each other."

"I'm not following."

"Taylor. I'm talking about Taylor. This is her family's farm."

I turn to look at him. "Your ex-girlfriend?"

"That's not even the craziest part. We'd met before that. Taylor and me. We met back when I was coaching baseball up at Hotchkiss. The school rules were that all the coaches also had to teach a class, so I was teaching this science elective on the psychology of sports. Which basically was me explaining to a bunch of juniors how to stay mentally tough on and off the field."

I smile at him.

"Anyway, Taylor's niece was in my class. Scholarship student, super bright. Taylor came up all the time to see her. And I don't know how to explain it exactly… I just… she had me from the start. But I wasn't going to be the creepy teacher hitting on one of my kids' aunts, so I didn't do anything about it. And then we met again, years later, in a completely different capacity. What are the odds of that?"

"I imagine not high."

"Exactly."

He heads toward the driveway.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to show you the property. It's gorgeous. There's a lake."

"Sam."

"It's really more like a pond."

"This is creepy."

"Why? Taylor and I are on great terms. And she's not here anyway. She's at work. She's a family lawyer. Absolutely brilliant and so cool." He looks at the clock on his dashboard. "She's still in court."

He turns toward me, an idea springing into his eyes, like a piece of inspiration.

"You want to meet her?"

"Sam…"

"Let's meet her."

We head downtown, the snow kicking up again.

We drive past the Senate House and the Ulster County Courthouse, Sam pulling past the main drag—bread stores and bookstores and coffee shops—before turning onto a quieter road where he parks in front of a gray brick house, a small gold plaque reading FITZGERALD LAW LLC, which is my only indication that this is a law office.

Sam gets out of the car. "You want the best doughnut you've ever had?" he asks.

"What are we doing here?"

"She'll be out of court any minute. Hopefully I'll beat her back here. Just wait there in case."

He motions to the steps in front of the house.

"In the snow?"

"Don't be a baby. It's barely coming down."

Sam disappears down the street. And I get out of the car and have a seat on the steps, taking in the street around me. There is another law office, a church, a group of adorable kids biking by, out of school for the day.

I move onto a higher step, protected by the overhang, and start going through my phone messages. Jack left a short message and texted a few times. He told me he was on the way to the restaurant, checked in to see how it was going, asked what time I'd be home.

I'd really like to talk

That feels like a knife through my chest, knowing we need that and not wanting to need that.

I start to write back when I get an email alert. It's one of the two forensic pathologists. More accurately, it's his assistant, letting me know that his boss is testifying at a trial in Seattle through the end of the week. That he'll try to get back to me then.

Then, as quickly as he is gone, Sam is back, carrying a bag of fresh doughnuts and three orange drinks.

He takes a seat next to me, hands me a doughnut and one of the drinks. "Mango tea," he says. "Taylor dunks her doughnut in it."

"That sounds gross."

"Really?" he says. "Lettuce and tomato? Not even cheese?"

I give him a smile and take one of the teas.

"No way," she says.

We both look up to see a woman walking toward us from the direction of the courthouse.

Taylor. She is fresh-faced and pretty—and also a bit ruffled. Her wet hair is pulled back into a bun, her large puffer coat falling off her shoulder, a ton of loose papers in her arms despite her leather messenger bag.

Sam breaks into a wide smile, his face lighting up.

"I was just thinking about you, Samuel," she says.

"What were you thinking?"

"Not that I'd find you sitting on the steps."

She takes him in and I see her start to process. Sam sitting there in front of her, what that means. But it's hard to focus in on her reaction when all I feel is what's happening to Sam, to my brother. We haven't spent much time apart for the last seventy-two hours, and yet this is the first time I've seen him with anything approaching the kind of smile plastered to his face. With that kind of joy.

He stands up to properly greet her, his face flushed, his eyes bright. His shoulders pulled back. Like he wants, above all, to do one thing: impress her.

"We just came from The Acres…" he says.

"So not so far?" she says.

"No, not so far."

"Not that close, either, though," she says.

She puts her papers in her bag, reaching out, touching the side of his face.

"Is everything okay?"

Then she looks down, they both do, as if noticing for the first time that someone else is sitting there.

I wave up at her. "Hi. Sorry to eavesdrop. I'm the sister."

"Ah. The normal one." She smiles at me, warm and genuine. "Well, this is long overdue…"

Sam opens the bag of warm doughnuts, holds it out for her. "I thought that I'd deliver a little sustenance."

"Oh man, thank you," she says. "It's like you knew how much I needed this today."

She pulls a doughnut out of the bag, drops it straight in the tea, and swirls it around, taking a large bite.

"My case is going south," she says. "Opposing counsel is on the way over to pillage. City people, you know."

"Aren't you one of them now?" Sam asks.

That stops her midbite. "Yeah, I guess I am."

She looks at Sam with—for some reason—an apologetic shrug. Then she moves closer to him.

"I'm so sorry about your father, Samuel. I wanted to reach out as soon as I heard that you lost him, but I also… didn't want to reach out."

He looks at her, and for a moment it seems like he is going to tell her the thing that he hasn't wanted me to tell anyone. That he suspects he didn't just lose him, but rather that he was taken.

Except Sam bites that back, forces a smile.

"Thank you for wanting to," he says. "And for not."

She nods. And they share a look, a long look, that I need to turn away from. Because my brother is wearing it all on his face. Call it vulnerability, call it longing. He is wearing what she means to him everywhere. Maybe it's too much for Taylor too, because she clears her throat, breaks the moment.

"I really do need to get inside," she says.

"Okay—"

I stand up, trying to make this exit easier. An exit Sam clearly isn't ready for. And which Taylor seems to need.

"It was nice meeting you," I say.

She leans over, puts her hand on my shoulder. "You too," she says, her voice suddenly low and entirely between us.

"Careful with him," she says.

She says it so softly and so quickly that for a minute I think I've misheard her. But I know I haven't. I want to ask what she means by that—does she mean that she thinks Sam is fragile and so I should be careful with him? Or does she mean that Sam is tricky and I should be careful dealing with him? Or, perhaps, she means both.

Before I can ask, she has turned away from me. She is looking at Sam again.

"I'll miss you," she says.

Then she kisses him on the cheek.

And, like that, she is gone.