Page 80 of The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn
I had not needed Roman to pick Wyatt up. The trip to Crescent City was about thirty miles up 101, so it was a little more than an hour, round trip. If not for choir, I wouldn’t have been able to make it, no matter how long my meeting with the sheriff took. But I had an extra ninety minutes, and the meeting itself was only about half an hour—just the lineup (which Durbin described as a ‘formality’) and an update on the case.
Over the course of the past two weeks, they had arrested all four of the hired goons. Three of them confessed, and they identified the fourth (none of the four were Finn’s ex’s brother). Then the sheriff’s ‘cyber defense team’—which looked from where I’d sat like a guy stuck in a corner of the room with some fancier computer gear than everybody else—had followed an internet trail from the site where the goons had gotten the job to the computer on which the person who’d hired them had posted the job.
Darryl Manfred’s personal laptop.
So I stood in a room, faced a two-way mirror, and pointed out number 2 as the man who’d trespassed on my property and made threats. I still didn’t understand how a lineup identification was necessary in the situation, but I wasn’t the sheriff.
Also, it was extremely satisfying to stare that man down in a lineup and point him out to a bunch of cops. Even if he couldn’t see me.
I’d expected a big reaction from Wyatt. This arrest, and the investigation that led to it, would likely resolve the insurancecompany’s reservations about paying out for the flood. We were back on track, back on the plan. Things were looking up—and stably so, after so long in turmoil. But my kid’s reaction to the news had been “Oh. Cool.” And then silence.
So I didn’t go straight to Roman’s. Instead I pointed the Golf toward the spot that had become Wyatt’s and my quiet place: Hidden Beach.
Now we were sitting on the sand, scrunched into our hoodies against a brisk September sea breeze, and Wyatt hadn’t said more than a handful of words since he’d climbed into the car.
In response to my latest plea, he sighed and asked, “What happens now?”
That was the kind of question you ask when things went wrong, I thought. Not when they went right. Pointing that out wouldn’t serve any purpose I could see, so I didn’t.
“Now we’ll have the money we need to keep with our plan. We get the Sea-Mist cleaned up and fixed up, and we open it again. Hopefully by next spring.”
He didn’t answer, just stared at the waves washing onto beach. A sandpiper was chasing and being chased by the foamy edge of the surf, hurrying out to poke around in the freshly washed sand before the water rolled up again.
“You seem bummed about this, bud. I thought you wanted to get the motel up and running.”
“I thought I did, too,” he finally said—and with those five words kicked a dent in my chest.
“Would you rather we sell?” I asked, working to keep my voice level. The thought of selling made my stomach hurt. I hadn’t been positive I wanted to keep the place when we’d first got here, but since then I’d been fighting for it every goddamned day. I was invested.
But I was more invested in my kid’s happiness. “Wyatt. Bud, you’ve got to talk to me. Please.”
“I don’t know how to say it.”
“Say it the way it’s in your head.”
“It’s ... I can’t, Mom. I think it’s none of my business.”
“Wyatt, I don’t understand how that can be. We’re talking about our life. You and me. Ofcourseit’s your business.”
He finally turned and looked me in the eye. His eyes shone with unshed tears. “I might have to say something bad about Dad.”
Again, I couldn’t imagine what that could be, and I didn’t try. I hooked my arm around my son and pulled him close. He rested his head on my shoulder.
“You can say anything to me,” I told him with my lips in his hair. “I just ask that you be as kind as you can.”
“Sometimes ... sometimes it was hard to be Dad’s kid.”
Alarm bells sounded in my head, but I made sure not to react strongly or start spinning doomsday scenarios out loud. “Why?” I asked.
“I’m not like he was. I tried to love the things he loved, I wanted to go out with him as much as he’d let me, but I didn’t really like all the climbing and kayaking and stuff. It was fun sometimes, but it’s all he wanted to do, and he was really intense about it. And ... and I ... ... I don’t think he cared about what I wanted to do.”
Wyatt was a theater kid in his soul. He loved to sing and dance and perform. While he was still wearing diapers, he knew all the songs to all the Disney movies and acted them out in spectacular productions in our TV room. I’d seen the kinds of things he gravitated to and enjoyed, but I’d also believed he sincerely liked his father’s outdoor activities—maybe not equally, but substantially.
Yes, I knew Micah didn’t care about the theater stuff. Getting him to a school play had been a production of its own. I’d never faulted him for not liking what Wyatt liked; we all havepreferences and tastes, and that simply wasn’t Micah’s. He hadn’t had much time for my interests, either. I adapted to that particular quirk of his.
But I’d believed he’d kept it hidden better from our kid.
“Sometimes it felt ... a little ... like Dad didn’t care that much about me unless I was doing things he liked to do.”
