Brent’s eyes narrowed. “How do we know you haven’t already spent it?”
“You’re just going to have to trust me.”
“I’m still trusting your ass for nine hundred and fifty thousand. Just give me the fucking fifty grand.”
“No. Who do you think you are, Brent? Coming into my mother’s house, looking for money.”
He rose, threatening. “It’s Sarah’s money. Give it to me!”
“I said no.”
Brent wobbled toward him. “Give me the fucking money, man, or I’ll-”
Ryan silenced him with a steely glare. “Or what, Brent?”
Brent knew better than to take on Ryan drunk. Still, he had a crazed look in his eyes, as if the eight empty beers on the table were merely a footnote to a full day binge. “Or,” he said with a slur, “I may be forced to hit a pregnant woman.”
Something snapped in Ryan. He lunged forward and grabbed him by the throat, knocking him to the floor. “I told you I’d kill you, Brent! You ever touched her again, I’d fucking kill you!”
Brent wriggled and clawed, trying to break Ryan’s grip around his throat. His face was turning blue. Ryan squeezed harder, spurred by the memory of stitching up his own sister after the blows from her husband. He should have settled the score then, but Sarah begged him not to.
“Ry-an,” Brent was wheezing, barely conscious. His eyes were bulging.
Ryan stopped, suddenly realizing what he was doing.
Brent pushed him off and rolled on his side, coughing and gasping for air. “You coulda killed me, you crazy bastard.”
Ryan was shaking. He could have killed him.
Brent rose slowly, whining pathetically, a drunk on a crying jag. “I want my money. I need it, bad. Please, Ryan, I gotta have it.”
Ryan’s hands were shaking. Since the funeral, all anyone talked about was money. Liz would divorce him for it. Brent would beat his sister for it. And Amy — who the hell knew what she was up to.
“You want it?” he said bitterly. “Fine. I’ll give you the damn money. Wait here.” He stormed out of the room and raced upstairs, gobbling up two and three steps at a time. He yanked down the ladder to the attic and climbed up. He went straight to the old dresser and shoved it aside. In seconds he popped the floorboard and grabbed a bundle of bills — a few thousand, easy, but he didn’t even count it. He scurried back down the ladder and ran downstairs. He was huffing like a sprinter as he raced past the living room, then stopped short. He suddenly had an idea. It was as if Liz, Amy and now Brent in the same day had brought everything to a head. His father’s betrayal. The greed all around him.
He called out to the kitchen. “Come get your money, Brent. It’s all here.”
Brent hustled eagerly into the living room. He stopped cold at the sight across the dimly lit room. Ryan was standing beside the fireplace. He had a stack of bills in one hand. A long, burning matchstick was in the other. An open can of lighter fluid rested on the mantel.
Brent’s voice shook. “What — what you doing?”
“Easy come, easy go.” He brought the match to the stack of bills, lighting the corner.
“No!”
The bills burst into flames, thoroughly soaked with lighter fluid. Ryan tossed them into the fireplace. Brent rushed forward. Ryan grabbed the fireplace poker, cocking it like a baseball bat. “Not another step, Brent!”
He stopped in his tracks, his face filled with anguish. The money was burning, but Ryan looked deadly serious. He was nearly in tears. “Ryan, man. Please don’t burn it.”
Ash fluttered up from the fireplace. The bills burned quickly. Ryan didn’t budge. “You lay a hand on Sarah, I’ll burn it all. I swear, I will burn every last bill.”
“Okay, man. Just be cool, okay?”
“It’s the rule,” he said, as if to remind himself as much as Brent. “No one gets the money. No one tells anyone else about the money. Not until we find out who paid it to my father and why.”
Brent backed away slowly. “Okay, my friend. You’re the man. You make the rules. I’m going home now. Just don’t burn any more of that money. That’s fair, right? You and me just pretend like this little episode never happened.”
Ryan kept the poker cocked, ready to crack Brent’s skull if he had to.
Brent stepped backward to the door. “No problem here. If you say that’s the rule, that’s the rule. I’ll just go home and tell Sarah we gotta play by the rules, that’s all.”
“Get the hell out of my sight, Brent.”
Brent gave an awkward nod, then hurried out the door. Ryan went to the front window and watched him pull away. He glanced back at the fireplace. The money was a glowing pile of smoldering ash. Thousands of dollars. Gone. Strangely, he felt good about that. He glanced up the staircase, toward the attic. There was still plenty more to fight over.
Or plenty more to burn.
He checked the clock on the end table. Mom wouldn’t be home for another hour. He stoked the ash with a shot of lighter fluid, then threw on some kindling and a dry, split log. As the fire hissed and flames reached upward, he closed the screen and started up the stairs.
16
At 9:00 P.M., Amy had a date. With Taylor.
The Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado was the largest planetarium between Chicago and Los Angeles. All summer long, Fiske sponsored Friday night programs in astronomy, followed by public viewings at the observatory. The evening programs were way over Taylor’s head, more on the level of college students than a four-year-old girl. She had loved the Wednesday morning family matinees, however, learning how runaway slaves had used the Big Dipper to find freedom, and taking a tour of the solar system with a make-believe robot. The simulated displays inside the dome were impressive enough, but Amy had promised to take her to the observatory for a look at the real nighttime sky. Tonight was the night.
They spent more than an hour at the Sommers Bausch Observatory, viewing double stars and galaxies through a sixteen-inch telescope. The big hit, however, was simply viewing Saturn and its rings through a much smaller telescope on the deck. Taylor was full of questions. Her mother had all the answers. Forty hours of graduate study in physics and infrared astronomy hadn’t gone completely to waste.
“This is so cool,” said Taylor.
“You like astronomy?”
“Only if I get to stay up late every night.”
Amy smiled. It sounded like something Amy would have said to her own mother years ago. Taylor had interest, no doubt, but she didn’t show the passion for astronomy that Amy had shown as a kid. Then again, ever since she’d started working at the law firm, Amy hadn’t given her the same level of encouragement her own mother had given her. There just wasn’t time.
She had tried not to show it in front of her daughter, but her focus had been elsewhere most of the night. She was thinking about Ryan, though not about the money. Something he’d said at the restaurant had stuck in her mind. She found it intriguing how he wished he had known his father better, thinking it might help him better understand himself. She knew that exact feeling, the eerie sense that you are what your parents were, the fear of making the same mistakes they’d made. In Amy’s case, the same deadly mistake.
Amy walked toward the edge of the observation deck, toward a little two-and-a-half-inch telescope. She pointed it due overhead, where Lyra passed Boulder on summer evenings. She quickly found Vega, the brightest and most prominent star in the constellation. Just below, she knew, was the Ring Nebula — the star she had lingered over on that summer night her mother had passed away. The one that was dying, like her childhood dreams and everything her mother had encouraged her to do.
She hadn’t taken a good look at the Ring Nebula since that night. She didn’t have to. Modern astronomers didn’t gaze into the sky to do their studies. They aimed the telescope and let their instruments do the looking. Not that Amy didn’t enjoy looking at the stars. She did. It was just this one, in particular, she couldn’t bring herself to look at.