Page 6 of The Night We Lost Him

Not that Sam and I are any more similar. Sam, who is standing in front of me now. Sam who, since that car accident, has been (how did my father put it?) seeking. He coached baseball at a boarding school in Connecticut, moved to Bristol for an assistant job at ESPN, wound his way back to New York City and our father’s company, working alongside Tommy.

For reasons I’m not unsympathetic to, the look that he is wearing now—suspicious, unhappy—isn’t that far off from how his face has looked the other times that I’ve seen him since his baseball career ended.

What isn’t clear to me, just yet, is why he is so beside himself. Is it really because he thinks something happened to our father? Or is he searching for something else?

“The point is,” Sam says, “he left me and Tommy in charge.”

He shrugs. And I can see he is surprised that our father left the company to him as well as Tommy. A little surprised, and a little proud. He shouldn’t be. My father would never have picked one son over the other. That’s not who he was. If I were the least bit interested, he would have figured out a way to include all of us.

“That’s great, Sam,” I say.

“Sure. I mean, he’s keeping Uncle Joe in the top job for consistency,” he says. “It’s a logical choice, but Uncle Joe is just in there for a finite period. Fourteen months. Just to keep investors calm, keep the operations steady. This was all specified by Dad. Then Tommy and I will run it together.”

“So what’s the problem? Isn’t that what you want?”

“Ask me when Dad discussed this all with us? His plans for the company, the details…”

“When?”

“Eight days before he died.”

I must wear my surprise on my face because Sam leans into it. “Strange, isn’t it?” he says.

“Or a coincidence.”

“A pretty strange coincidence.”

I meet his eyes. “Sam, I just…”

“You just what?”

“I get that this is really tough. It’s tough for me too. But just because you have a feeling…”

“It’s more than a feeling,” he says. “If you want to try and push back on the timing with the will stuff, chalk it up to a coincidence, fine. I can’t prove it’s more than that yet. But that doesn’t change the fact that Dad had been acting weird.”

“Define ‘weird.’ ”

“Distracted, absent. Coming into the office less. You know how close to the vest Dad held everything, but he wasn’t himself.”

He looks at me like that seals it. But all it seals for me is that my brother has convinced himself that something was going on with our father. Something that, if he’s right, I knew nothing about. It nearly breaks something open in me to think that I didn’t know. To think why I didn’t know. And I start to feel it, a drumbeat pulsing in my head, the skin growing tighter and hotter behind my ears.

“You still haven’t said one thing that contradicts what happened on the cliff that night,” I say.

He nods. “Except for the one thing I don’t need to say to you.”

I look away, the drumbeat getting louder. Windbreak was my father’s favorite place. It was his private refuge. He knew it like the back of his hand. And rainy night or not, too much bourbon to drink or not, moonless sky or not, would he really forget where the rocks started? Where they ended?

“Would you just do me a favor?” Sam says. “I’m flying out to Windbreak tomorrow to look around. To meet with the caretaker and the local police. See what I can figure out about what exactly happened that night.”

“What’s the favor?”

“Come with me.”

I laugh out loud, before I can stop myself. “To California? No. You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’m not.”

He isn’t. And I start to double-down on my rejection of this plan when I see it in his eyes, those familiar eyes: his supreme discomfort to be standing here in front of me, asking me to be there for him. It stops me cold, partially because it’s the first time I’ve seen that color on him—the first time he’s been vulnerable with me. But also because of how it alters his face: the lines around the eyes creasing, his brow tightening up. Suddenly, like a magic trick, it feels like I’m standing in front of my father.

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