“Then why disappear?”
Lucas looked toward the suitcase.
“Because she was afraid.”
“Of what?”
He said nothing.
I stopped.
“Lucas.”
“My mother asked Marianne the same question.”
“And?”
“Marianne gave her a name.”
I waited.
The hesitation on his face frightened me more than anything else had.
“What name?”
Douglas whispered it.
“Thomas Carter.”
I laughed from sheer confusion.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“That makes even less sense.”
My father had died when I was twenty-four.
A heart attack while repairing the fence behind our house.
He had been gentle, quiet, almost painfully predictable.
He made pancakes every Saturday.
Read mystery novels in his recliner.
Fell asleep during the evening news.
He had adored Douglas.
More than my mother did.
Sometimes, when Douglas left our house, my father would grin at me and say, “That boy is going to figure it out eventually.”
“What does my father have to do with any of this?”
