“Mom?”
Karen looked up. Samantha was in the doorway, in her oversize Michigan T-shirt and panties. “Mom, what’s going on? What are you doing here sitting in the dark?”
Karen brushed away the tear. “I don’t know, baby.”
“Mom, what’s happening?” Sam came over to the desk and knelt next to her. “What are you doing at Dad’s desk? You can’t tell me it’s nothing—something’s been bothering you for over two weeks.” She put her hand on Karen’s shoulder. “It’s about Dad, isn’t it? I know it. That detective was here again. Now there’s a car outside down the street. What the hell’s going on, Mom? Look at you—you’re in here crying. Those people are bothering us again, aren’t they, Mom?”
Karen nodded, drawing in a breath. “They sent another note,” she said, wiping the wetness out of her eyes. “I just want you to have a day to yourself we’ll all be proud of, honey. You deserve that. And then go on that trip.”
“And then what happens, Mom? What the hell has Dad done? You can tell me, Mom. I’m not six.”
How? How could she tell her? Tell her all? It would be like stealing her daughter’s innocence in a way, the warm memory she carried of her father. They had mourned him, laid him to rest. Learned to live without him. Damn you, Charlie, Karen seethed. Why are you making me do this now?
She cuddled Sam by the waist and took a breath. “Daddy may have done some things, Sam. He may have run some people’s money. Bad people, honey. Offshore. Illegally. I don’t know who they were. All I know is now they want it.”
“Want what, Mom?”
“Money that’s unaccounted for, honey. That Daddy may have lost. That’s the message they wanted you to pass along to me.”
“What do you mean, they want it, Mom? He’s dead.”
Karen brought her daughter to her lap and squeezed her, the way she did when she was little, even drawing in a breath of Sam’s familiar fresh-scrubbed scent. She shuddered against what she was about to say.
“Yes, honey, he’s dead.” Karen nodded against her.
“There’s stuff you’re not telling me, isn’t there? I know, Mom. Lately you’re always down there rifling through his old things. Now you’re here, in the middle of the night, in his office, in front of his computer. Daddy wouldn’t do something wrong. He was a good man. I saw the way he worked. I saw the way the two of you were with each other. He’s not here to defend himself, so it’s up to us. He would never have done anything that would cause us harm. He may have been your husband, Mom, but he was our dad. I knew him, too.”
“Yes, baby, you’re right.” Karen hugged her. “It is up to us.” She stroked Sam’s hair as her daughter folded into her.
It’s up to us that this has to end. Whatever it was these people wanted from her. Sam had a life to live. They all did. What was this nightmare going to do—follow them forever?
Would you really want to know, baby, if I told you? What he’d done. Would you really want your memories and love destroyed? Like mine. Wouldn’t it just be better, simply to love him, to remember him as you do? Taking you to skating practice, helping you with your math. Being there in your heart, as he was now?
“This is scaring me a little, Mom,” Sam said, pulling close.
“Don’t let it, honey.” Karen kissed her hair. But inside, she said to herself, It scares me, too.
Damn you, Charlie. Why did I ever have to see your face on that screen?
Look at what you’ve done.
The day finally came for the kids to leave. Karen helped pack up their bags and drove them to JFK, where they connected with her folks, who had come up the day before, at the British Air terminal.
She parked the car and went inside with them to check in, where she met up with Sid and Joan. Everyone was excited. Karen hugged Sam with everything she had and told her to take care of her brother. “I don’t want him to be listening to his iPod and get carried off by a pack of lions.”
“It’s a portable DVR, Mom. And in his case more likely a pack of baboons.”
“Funny.” Alex scrunched his face, elbowing her. He’d always had to be dragged a little to go on this trip, always moping about large bugs and contracting malaria.
“C’mon, guys …” Karen gave them both a big hug. “I love you both. You know that. You have a blast. And be in touch.”
“We can’t be in touch, Mom,” Alex reminded her. “We’re in the bush. We’re on safari.”
“Well, pictures then,” she said. “I expect lots and lots of pictures. Y’hear?”
“Yeah, we hear.” Alex smiled sheepishly.
The kids both put their arms around her and gave her a real hug. Karen couldn’t help it—tears welled in her eyes.
Alex snorted. “Here goes Mom.”
Karen wiped them away. “Cut it out.”
She hugged her parents, too, and then she watched them go off, waving as they headed to security—Alex in a Syracuse baseball cap with his backpack containing his car magazines, Sam in a pair of sweatpants with her iPod, waving a last time. Karen barely held it together.
She thought of the warning she had just received and of Charles’s e-mail. And how she wanted her kids to be safe—so what was she doing, sending them to Africa? Back in her car, she sat for a moment in the garage before turning on the ignition. She pressed her face against the steering wheel and cried, happy that her kids were gone but at the same time feeling very alone, knowing that the time had finally come.
The time to face him.
It’s up to us, right?
That night Karen sat over Charles’s computer.
There was no more fear, no more question of what she had to do. Only the resolve that she now felt to face it.
The thought occurred that she should call Ty. In the past weeks, she had grown close to him, feelings stirring in her, feelings mixed in with the confusion over what was happening with Charles, that seemed better to deny. And she’d never given Ty an answer about what she was prepared to do with what he’d found.
She logged on to her e-mail account.
KFried111. A name Charlie would recognize in an instant.
She was giving him her answer.
It’s just the two of us now, Charlie. And the truth.
What could she possibly say? Every time she thought about it, everything came back. The anguish of losing him. The shock of seeing him again on the screen. Finding the passport, the money. The realization that he wasn’t dead but had abandoned her. Her daughter’s fear after she’d been accosted in her car.
Everything came back, but Ty was right. It wasn’t going to go away.
People had died.
Hesitantly, she typed in the address. Oilman0716. Karen had done it several times before, but this time there was no turning back. She wondered, with a faint smile, what he would think, how his world would change, what door she was opening, a door maybe better off shut.
Not any longer, Charlie.
Karen