Never Fear by Scott Frost

Author:Scott Frost
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

24

Danny’s grandmother met us at the hospital where Danny was admitted for observation. He had said nothing as we drove him there. Was he talking about my father or the River Killer when he said, “He’s alive”? I called Harrison and told him what had happened and that I would stay with Lacy for the rest of the night in her dorm.

On the drive back to UCLA I told Lacy as much as I knew of my half brother’s life. But the details were those a cop would know, not a sister—age, occupation, and time of death on the concrete banks of what Angelenos call a river.

The only detail I understood as a sister was that we shared a father who had vanished from both of our lives, and that something was left incomplete in each of us. In the last few hours, maybe only in the last moments, of John’s life he may have unraveled that mystery. That he had thought of me when he did would be as close as I would ever get to knowing him.

I left out the details of the investigation that pointed to the possibility that her grandfather was a killer. That he was a troubled man was as much as I was willing to say about him. I think she may have guessed much of it anyway.

For Lacy, an only child, to suddenly find herself connected to another person by blood was like turning a page in a book only to discover the next page was blank. The promise of something more had been filled and then lost all at once. And the questions she was left with were no substitute for the possibilities that had been so close.

Lacy’s roommate stayed with a friend and I spent the night in the small dorm room, lying just a few feet from my daughter. For a brief moment it felt like she was a small child again, and the events of the world outside were unable to touch us. But the feeling didn’t last— couldn’t. Just before drifting off, Lacy said something that had dogged me since I first saw my brother’s face in the refrigerated vault at the coroner’s.

“I wonder how much he was like you,” she said softly.

“He looked like your grandfather,” I said, knowing that wasn’t really what she was asking.

“He was an investigator. You’re a cop. Your lives have been lived as if they were leading directly to this,” Lacy said.

I stared into the darkness and knew she was right, or partly right. But what my daughter didn’t understand, and what I knew, was that the moment this was really leading to hadn’t yet happened.

What sleep I had reminded me of the nights spent on boats with the roll of the ocean sweeping me in and out of dreams and leaving me more exhausted than before I had slept. Shortly before six I slipped out of bed and kissed Lacy on the side of the head before leaving.

It was already warm when I stepped outside.

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