Page 82 of What Boys Learn

“I’ll talk to him about it, Abby. Now, if you don’t mind.” He gestured toward the closed office door, behind which Benjamin was waiting. “We’ll cover all of it, and if you have any other concerns, I’ll be ready to listen. Come back in three hours.”

I studied him again—the sweaty, floppy hair and rumpled shirt. The atypical jeans, one leg marked with a black grease stain. He looked like a man pulled in too many directions. I was responsible for that, as one of the people pulling. Thank goodness we’d already dispensed with the idea of him spending a full day out with Benjamin.

“Can’t I help you with anything? Walk your dog, at least?”

Curtis looked baffled.

I reminded him. “Sammy. Your dog?”

“Oh,” he sighed. “I made the tough decision to turn him over to my ex-wife and my daughter, as long as I was within hailing distance of Green Bay.”

Green Bay? I thought he’d only driven to Fond du Lac. No wonder he was exhausted.

“Is that where she lives now, your ex-wife?”

He sidestepped the question. “I’ll be traveling too much this year and next. Father. Book tour. Sammy’s better off.”

He nodded—subject closed—but the fatigue on his face was plain.

“I hope you get some leisure time soon,” I said.

“Yes, but I never like to leave things unfinished. I’ll make the most of the time Benjamin and I have left.”

He closed the door.

I’d just pulled into the Starbucks nearest Curtis’s office, to pass the time before I was due to pick up Benjamin again, when my phone rang. I half expected to see Curtis’s name on the caller ID, asking me to return early to retrieve my son. Maybe he’d come to the conclusion that he was too busy and tired for such a long session, after all.

Instead, it was Willa.

“Hi,” I said. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. Did you hear the news?”

“No,” I said, my mind going to the darkest place. Another victim. But Willa’s tone was too bubbly for that.

“They’ve found the killer.”

“They’ve arrested him?”

“They don’t have to.” She squealed with barely contained excitement. “He’s already dead. He crashed his car, and police found stuff inside. Zip ties and blindfolds, his phone, with compromising photos of Isabella and Sidney. Wait, I’ll hold the phone up to the radio.”

The voices were too garbled to be decipherable. I waited for Willa to come back.

“He wasn’t a high school student, was he?” I asked her.

“No. Twenties.”

“Local?”

“No. Out of state.”

The older man. Not from Pleasant Park, not even from Illinois.

“Any mention of the kind of car he was driving?”

“An MG.”

Vintage car.Tappets.