Page 80 of Poison Wood

“Is that an eagle?” I say.

“Yep. He’s waiting for his breakfast.” He shuts the hatch and stands up. “There.”

The large green fish feeder grinds to life, and I jump. Tiny pellets shoot from it into the water. The dogs bark as bream splash on the surface, eating the food. And the eagle strikes. It dives down and scoops up a bream and flies off.

“Holy shit.”

My dad laughs. “He knows when the buffet opens. Even when the time changes, he’s on time.”

“Wow.”

“Sign of a smart hunter.”

The phrase hits wrong with me. Everything leads me back to Poison Wood. There was a smart hunter on those grounds. Smart or lucky. But the luck ran out.

My father starts back for the house, and I walk beside him.

“Why’d you open it?” I say.

He glances at me. “I was going to tell you about that.”

“Not an answer,” I say, walking behind him into the house.

My phone chirps, and it’s Grant, telling me he has to leave town for a bit today and hoping we can get together when he comes back. He’ll be in Riverbend a few more days for work. I tell him that’d be nice. I debate adding more but leave it at that. It’s simple, and it’s the truth.

“I like that smile,” my father says as we enter the kitchen.

It’s warm inside, and a fire crackles in the small brick fireplace by the breakfast table. A note rests on a plate at his spot. Debby saying she’s at the barn, feeding the horses.

He pulls out a chair and sits. Then he looks up at me. “May not be smiling in a minute, though.”

“What does that mean?”

“Miami has been on my radar recently.”

I sit next to him. My smile indeed gone.

“Laura Sanders reached out to me.”

My heart rate spikes. “What?”

“She called me.”

“When?”

“A few days before that package arrived for you.” He rubs his five-o’clock shadow. “How did she get my cell phone number?”

“It’s not as hard as you think, Dad. What did she say?”

“That she had mailed something important to the house. She said it was about Poison Wood and she would explain it all to you.”

I take a minute to respond. Just like I held back information from Dom, it seems my father was doing the same thing to me. Lying by omission. “Why didn’t you call me immediately?”

“I was going to,” he says. He pulls his robe tighter over his chest, over the scar. “The package came that day, and I wanted to see what the hell was in it. I didn’t know who Laura Sanders was, but when she mentioned that school, I had to open it. Then I saw it was a ... pregnancy test, and it looked old, and all I could think was it was yours, from high school.”

“Mine? Dad, it wasn’t mine.”

“There was a note with it.”