Page 62 of The Night We Lost Him

“Right now?” she said. “Some more pie.”

Detours Are the Only Way Home

“Cece and Joe,” Sam says. “Fuck. Of course.”

“It may start to explain some things,” I say.

“It may?”

We are hiking back toward the main grounds and the car, the wind and the cold burning my cheeks, my skin.

Sam pulls out his phone, starts searching. “Cece Salinger and her husband of thirty-one years finalize their divorce.”

He looks up at me.

“That was eight months ago. Timing lines up,” he says. “Joe probably talked Dad into selling to his girlfriend—”

“When has someone talked Dad into anything?”

“The point is, it would also explain why Dad was off these past couple of months, especially if Uncle Joe kept the relationship from him. Pretty terrible betrayal after everything Dad tried to do for him.”

I look at Sam, wondering which betrayal he is talking about: Joe convincing our father to sell the company to someone he was involved with? Or Joe being involved with Cece in the first place? Either way, it feels like a big jump—and maybe the wrong jump. Because even if Paul (and Tommy) are correct about Uncle Joe and Cece being involved, who says my father wasn’t aware? What kind of deep history would my father have needed to have had with her for Uncle Joe to keep that from him?

We walk over another hill, the parking lot appearing in the distance. Sam holds out his hands for the keys.

“None of that tells us who was on the cliff with Dad that night,” I say.

“Not yet. But if Joe and Cece kept this from Dad, you’ve got to ask yourself what they are keeping from us now.”

“Except then why would Cece volunteer that she heard from Dad the night that he died? Wouldn’t that encourage us to do exactly what we are doing? Ask more questions about her as opposed to fewer?”

He shakes his head, like I’m refusing to see what’s right in front of me.

“Maybe she just knew we’d get here either way,” he says.

“That doesn’t follow, Sam. And it doesn’t follow from what I felt when I looked at her.”

“Which is?”

I think of the sadness I saw in her eyes that she had missed those calls. Especially when they were the last chance.

“She really cared about Dad.”

“Both things can exist.”

He opens the car door and gets in.

I don’t want to rile Sam up further, so I get in the car too, closing the door behind myself. And I refrain from saying what I’m also thinking: If both things do exist, how compromised did that leave our father?

Sam puts his hands on the steering wheel, the ignition off.

“I’m not trying to play the game of who knew Dad better,” he says. “I’m really not. But, working with him every day, I do think that Tommy and I understood something about Dad that maybe you didn’t.”

“Which is?”

“This company was everything to him.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple.”