“Well, there’s one more person in our party.”
Amber waved her hand dismissively. “Sean told me to just go ahead and order. I’m not sure if he’ll be eating anything or not.” She tapped the menu and told me, “The Reuben’s good.”
I hadn’t even had a chance to look over the menu. “Well, I’m a cheeseburger guy at heart,” I replied. Then to Nan, “Give it the works, except-”
“Hold the mustard and pickles,” Amber interrupted.
“Yes. Hold the mustard and pickles.”
Nan wrote it down.
“I’ll go for the Reuben,” Amber told her.
“Fries or chips?” The question was directed at both of us.
“Fries,” I said.
“Fries for me too,” Amber told her.
Nan left for the kitchen, scribbling notes to herself as if her life, or at least her job, depended on correctly writing down word-for-word our rather unremarkable order.
Amber watched me expectantly. I braced myself and took a sip of my coffee.
Wow.
Nice.
“Well?”
Though I wasn’t a big fan of flavored coffee, this wasn’t bad. “I like it,” I replied. “Air roasted. Mexican beans. They added undertones of caramel, a hint of butterscotch. Graceful acidity, respectable body.”
She smiled. “It’s called Highlander Grog. There’s a roaster down in Watertown. Berres Brothers. They do mostly internet orders. This is the only local place that uses their coffee.”
A thought.
“That’s why you suggested we meet here.”
She held up her hands in fake surrender. “You got me.”
Sean entered the front door, stowed his snowmobile helmet and gloves in one of the wooden cubicles just inside the entryway. Thank goodness.
Amber tried some of her coffee. “I can hardly believe you knew the country of origin from just one sip.”
Sean was weaving between the tables on his way toward us.
“Maybe I was making that up,” I said.
“I doubt that.”
Then Sean arrived.
21
My brother had grown a thick beard since the last time I saw him. Wild brown hair. Dark retrospective eyes. Decades of fishing and hunting trips had left the skin around his eyes tough and weathered. He’d always seemed like the kind of guy who would’ve been at home in frontier times forging his way west through the untamed wilderness.
We’ve seen each other twice in the last three years-once at my wedding and once at Christie’s funeral. He likes to bowl, volunteers with the Jaycees, enjoys relaxing in his jon boat with a six-pack of ice-cold Old Style, and we never talk on the phone because we never seem to have anything to say.
“Good to see you, Pat.” He shook my hand. Brisk. Firm.
“You too.”
“Hey, Amber,” he said with a quick look in her direction.
“Hello, sweetie.”
Sean was two years older than I was and had been married once before. His wife left him, though, eight years ago, taking their son with her. She’d moved to Phoenix and only let Andy visit Sean for a few weeks every summer. Andy was nine now. Sean preferred not speaking about that part of his life, and I knew better than to bring it up.
He took a seat beside Amber, then drew in a heavy breath. “I gotta say: terrible thing, though. You having to come in under these circumstances.”
There was no good way to reply to that. “It’s heartbreaking what happened.”
“I knew ’em, Pat. Donnie and his wife.” He shifted his gaze to the window. “And Lizzie.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“We used to go out muskie fishing on Tomahawk Lake, Donnie and I.”
I noticed that he was referring to Donnie in the past tense. “How long have you known him?” I tried to frame my question in the present tense.
“Eight, ten years, I guess. I just can’t see him doing something like that. Not Donnie.”
Whether or not Donnie had anything to do with the killings, Sean’s words didn’t surprise me. Over the years, every killer, every rapist, every arsonist I’ve caught has been friends with somebody, trusted by somebody, loved by somebody. Then, after the facts came out about the crimes, those people are shocked and dismayed. Family members, lovers, friends, none of them can believe what the offender did.
For a moment I thought about pointing this out to Sean, telling him that you can never really know someone, not really; that at times every one of us acts in ways that are inconceivable to others and, in retrospect, unthinkable to ourselves; that, in essence, no one lives up to his own convictions or aspirations. But from past experience I realized that bringing any of that up at the moment wasn’t going to help.
“We really don’t know who’s responsible for the murders,” I said as tactfully as I could. “Until we find Donnie, it’s best to avoid assuming too much. He might be all right. There’s still a lot to figure out.”
Sean looked at me oddly. “Aren’t most domestic homicides committed by husbands and lovers?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s missing.”
“Yes, he is.”
“The logical conclusion is it’s him.”
“We lack confirmatory evidence, and the logical conclusion when you lack evidence is to suspend judgment.” The words had a cold and impatient professionalism to them, and I immediately regretted saying them. I tried to tone things down. “I’m just trying to say I think it’s a little early to conclude anything.”
He looked like he was going to respond, but held back.
When Nan arrived with our food, Sean went ahead and ordered a bratwurst. Soon she brought that too, and the conversation during the meal felt stiff and forced, the past-both my history with Sean and my history with his wife-weighing down every word.
It hadn’t been an affair, at least not a physical one, but you can sleep with someone and never fall in love with her, and you can fall in love with someone without ever sleeping with her. From what I’ve seen, the second scenario is a lot harder to get over than the first.
And a lot harder to know how to deal with.
I’ve heard people throw around the term “emotional affair,” so maybe that’s what we’d had, but I’m not even sure what the phrase means. How many text messages or phone calls or smiles or secrets do you have to share before you’re having an emotional affair?
And is it something you should even admit? Do you go up to your brother and say, “Hey, five years ago I fell in love with your wife. But don’t worry, we never actually slept together”?
As far as I knew, Sean had no idea what had happened, and as time wore on, I could think of fewer and fewer reasons to bring it up. Contrary to the popular mantra of pop psychologists, I’ve always thought that when you apologize it shouldn’t be for your own benefit but for that of the other person. I don’t think you should ask someone to forgive you just so you can get something off your chest or quiet your guilty conscience. If an apology isn’t in the other person’s best interests, it’s not serving to reconcile anything. It’s just a subtle form of selfishness.
And in this case, I couldn’t see how my true confessions would serve Sean. After all, he’d had one marriage fall apart, and I would never forgive myself if I were the cause of his second one disintegrating.
But in truth, Amber wasn’t the only issue that stood between Sean and me.
My gaze shifted from her to the deer heads on the wall, and as Amber tried to navigate Sean and me through the conversation, I became lost in my thoughts.
Because a deer was what caused the rift between me and my brother.
Or maybe there was no deer at all.
22
It happened twenty years ago on New Year’s Eve when I was seventeen.
We were driving home from Amy Lassiter’s party.
A stark and cold and moonlit night.
Sean was behind the wheel and I’d closed my eyes, exhausted from cross-country skiing most of the afternoon.