Over the Falls

by Rebecca Hodge

  He rolled his eyes. “Same as offering that reward. Money does it every time.”

  He was right, of course. Money was at the root of all of this—Sawyer’s disappearance, Carl’s interest, all of it.

  “So, we’re headed for this Staunton guy next?” Josh tapped the address into his phone. “Head back to the highway and keep going west. We should be there in an hour and a half.”

  We arrived at James Staunton’s house without any trouble—paved roads with neat street signs every step of the way, with no bouncing down narrow gravel tracks. I rolled down my window and inhaled the smell of the firs. The final miles of our drive paralleled a narrow tumbling river I could glimpse occasionally through the trees. Most of the houses we passed had canoe or kayak racks out front. The river was probably the reason they’d built here.

  Staunton’s house was small and simple, perched on the steep pitch of the mountainside, with an entire wall of glass overlooking the river. Despite the fact there were neighbors down the way, this house felt just as isolated as our previous stop. Trees closed in on all sides except the one facing the water. No yard. No flower beds. No children’s play equipment.

  Also, no sign of life. There was no car or truck, and the house looked locked tight. I parked and got out. Josh and Tellico followed. Nothing happened when I knocked on the front door, so we walked around back. A deck there held a grill, a small table, and one chair. I pressed my face to the sliding glass door and cupped my hands so I could see through the glare. Josh came up beside me and did the same.

  The house was a single room—living, dining, kitchen—sparsely furnished with comfortable-looking sofas and chairs. An alcove held a bed, and a door nearby probably led to a bathroom. The kitchen counters were clean. A glass coffee pot was upside down on the drainboard. Whoever lived here could have left ten minutes ago or ten days ago.

  “No one around.” Disappointment echoed in my voice. I could easily picture Sawyer living in this house.

  “Nope.”

  “Let’s go look at the river.”

  We followed steep steps down to the riverbank. We were trespassing, but I wasn’t leaving without learning who lived here. Tellico lapped thirstily from the water’s edge and sniffed along the base of several large spruce trees. There was no one in sight.

  The river was calm here, but I suspected that was deceptive. The road had been steep. There was no doubt whitewater lay below us as the river plunged downhill.

  That was confirmed by the paddling gear that lined the bank. A long wooden rack, homemade, stood at the base of the path. It held a canoe, three river kayaks, and a short freestyle playboat, with a gap wide enough for an additional boat. Whoever lived here was a paddler.

  A small shed stood at the far end of the rack. Inside were paddles, vests, helmets, and boat maintenance gear, all hanging from pegboard in neat rows. I ran my hand down the line of paddles and found an ultra-short one. I hefted it. Composite. Custom-designed. It had to be Sawyer’s. We were in the right place.

  Josh stepped closer to look over my shoulder. “Why are you staring at a paddle?”

  “It’s the kind your father used at the Games. He always liked this kind for tricks.”

  I vividly recalled a high-water weekend on the Nantahala, Sawyer practicing the rapids over and over with a paddle like this one, repeating the run until he was satisfied he’d got it right. We spent that night in a small cabin on the riverbank, the windows open to the mountain air and the sound of the water. We snuggled in bed and itemized all the things we liked and didn’t like about the cabin, refining our image of how our own house would look one day. That night, I couldn’t conceive of anything that would tear us apart.

  I felt Josh’s eyes on me and put the paddle back in its clip, worried he had seen more on my face than I would have liked. “It’s his. Your father’s. He’s using the James Staunton name.”

  Josh cleared his throat. “It bothers you. Being around his stuff. I was the reason you two never got married.”

  I gave him an emphatic headshake. “Not you. Not your fault. It was about your father and me. And it was a long time ago.” It felt like yesterday.

  “So, just because it was a long time ago, does that mean it doesn’t matter?”

  I busied myself latching the shed and didn’t try to come up with an answer. Of course it mattered. Anything with the power to shred my heart this way mattered.

  Josh persisted. “Doesn’t it make you mad that he ran away again yesterday? I mean, at first he didn’t even admit who he was.”

  I headed for the stairs. “Mad? Yes, of course, I’m mad. Aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. Big time.”

  “So, we’ll both tell him that when we see him.” I took the first two stairs in a single stride, then stopped and twisted to look at Josh. “But the main thing we need to do is find your mom. That’s why we’re here, remember? That’s what we have to do to get rid of Carl. Let’s go back up and wait a while. See if he comes home.”

  That sounded good, and I did hope Sawyer knew something about Del, but the truth was, I had barely given her a single thought since the moment I first glimpsed Sawyer. It was him I was after now, and at last we were getting closer.

  We climbed toward the house in silence and settled ourselves on the front steps. Tellico explored the edge of the clearing, then sprawled at Josh’s feet.

  “Do you want anything to eat?” We had plenty of food in the truck.

  “No.”

  “It could be a while.”

  “Don’t care.”

  I expected Josh to pull out his phone and start in on one of his games, but he sat still and stared down the driveway, his hands in his lap. He sat still and simply waited. Waited to meet a father he didn’t know. A father who was far too skilled at running away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Josh

  Bryn and I sat on the front steps of James’s house for a long time. At least a few hours, but it felt a lot longer. Tellico took a nap. Bryn checked some stuff on her phone. I just sat, the sun warm on my face, the wooden stair numbing my butt. The only noise was from big black-and-white jaybirds hopping from branch to branch in the nearby trees, screeching at each other. That, and the sound of the river below us.

  My arm still hurt from where Carl’s guy had twisted it, and when I thought about Carl saying he would hurt me, I got mad and sick to my stomach. But scary as Carl was, I wasn’t thinking much about him. He wasn’t the one coming home to this house.

  My father’s house.

  I liked this house, all neat and precise inside. I’d liked watching James—Sawyer—Dad—do kayak tricks before I knew who he was. Did that make me a traitor? Would Mom be angry if she knew I was sitting here, waiting for him to come home? I halfway hoped he would hurry up and halfway hoped he would never show.

  The rumble of a truck coming closer filtered through the trees at last, and my insides gave a jerking twist. It might not be him. It might be a package delivery truck. Or somebody lost. Someone, anyone but my dad.

  An old black SUV came into view, dented and rusty in big odd-shaped patches. A short blue kayak was tied to the roof, exactly like the one I’d seen Dad use at the Games. The SUV pulled partway into the clearing and stopped, as if the driver had just seen Bryn’s truck and couldn’t decide what to do. I could see pale yellow hair and a man’s blurred white face through the windshield, but I couldn’t tell for sure who it was.

  He just sat there. Not moving forward to park. Not backing up to leave. I waited for Bryn to do something, but she sat perfectly still, neither of them willing to budge. I’m not sure Bryn was even breathing. This was the guy she’d wanted to marry, so maybe she was feeling as mixed up as I was.

  A long few minutes passed, then the SUV rolled forward. Slowly, like even the tires and the engine didn’t want to come any closer. It parked beside Bryn’s truck. The door opened. There was another long pause, then the driver got out.

  Dad.

  He came right up to th
e stairs, but he didn’t look straight at either one of us, just bent for a quick second to give Tellico a pat. “I figured you’d find me.” From his voice, he didn’t sound very happy about it. “Come inside. We need to talk.”

  He tried to slide his key into the door lock, but his hand shook so hard it took him three tries to line it up. He got it in at last, swung the door open, and stumbled a little as he stepped in.

  He left the door open, and we followed. He went straight to a bar that was built in on one side of the big room and grabbed three glasses. He still didn’t look at her. He still didn’t look at me. “Bryn, you want your usual?”

  “Just water.” Impatient. Fierce. As pissed off as when she talked about Carl.

  He filled the glasses. Water, water, and straight tequila. He held out the water glasses to Bryn and me and gestured toward the bar stools at the kitchen island. “Sit down. I’ll fix some sandwiches.”

  Sandwiches? Like we’d come by just to eat and say hello? I hadn’t been sure what to expect, but not this. I mean, yeah, it was way past lunch, but shouldn’t people be yelling at each other?

  Dad grabbed his glass and the half-full tequila bottle, went into the kitchen, and set them on his side of the island. Bryn gave my shoulder a squeeze, nodded, and moved over to sit on one of the stools. She was pale and unsteady, which was pretty much how I felt too. I went and sat beside her. The air in the room pressed down hard, and I wanted to be outside again, where I could breathe. I wanted to be anywhere but here.

  “Where’s Del? Did she find you? Is she okay?” At least Bryn wasn’t buying the everything’s-normal-let’s-have-lunch game. Her face was stiff like a mask, and her voice was pretend calm and faking nice.

  Dad lined up plates, a package of brown bread, sliced turkey, mayo, and tomato along the counter in front of us, an excuse to take his time answering, an excuse to keep his attention anywhere but on us. “I found her. A buddy called and told me she was going around to the bars in town, looking for me. She’s at a rehab center, and I just came from there. Visiting her. She’s …” He stumbled to a halt. “They’re trying to help her.”

  He knows where Mom is. She’s not dead on the street somewhere. Relief hit me so hard I rocked backward a little. A whole long list of horrible possibilities disappeared as soon as he said she was alive.

  But then Dad gave Bryn one of those not-in-front-of-the-kid looks I was way too good at recognizing, maybe the first time he’d looked straight at her. That kind of look meant I’d need to dig for more, but right at that moment it was enough just to know she was here. Someone was taking care of her. When Michael’s dad went to rehab, he was a whole lot better for a real long time after, so maybe it would work for Mom too.

  “Can I see her?” I squeaked it out.

  “Yes. I can take you.” But the answer was slow in coming, and Dad gave Bryn another sharp don’t-ask-more look that made me wonder again what he wasn’t saying.

  Silence settled in. A silence so thick you could spoon it up and taste it. A silence that wrapped around me and squeezed, getting tighter and tighter. I set my water glass on the counter, and the clunk it made sounded too loud in the quiet.

  The noise made Dad jump. He pulled out six slices of bread, then paused, looking at Bryn. “Are you still vegetarian?”

  She nodded. She looked like she was still thinking hard about what he’d said about Mom. The way he’d said it. All he didn’t say.

  Dad put two bread slices back, got some hummus and carrots out of the fridge and crackers from a cupboard and made a plate for Bryn. He set it in front of her, but she didn’t even glance at it. He went back to making sandwiches for him and me. “I figured someone would come looking for her. Wasn’t sure it would be you.” He glanced at Bryn. “And it never occurred to me it might be you, Josh.”

  He turned and stared straight at me. It was the first time he’d looked at me and the first time he’d said my name, and some of the twist in my stomach eased off. He searched my face inch by inch, and I examined him the same way. This was my dad. Maybe if I repeated that sentence a few times, it would feel real.

  He cleared his throat, the noise a harsh rattle, and it looked like now he was the one having trouble pulling in air. I wanted to be mad at him, but he looked so sad it was hard for me to hang on to it.

  “Josh, I’m sorry I ran. At the Games. When I saw you …” He blinked hard, swallowed, and downed the rest of his drink, way more than a shot.

  The smell of alcohol came at me in waves, like when Mom came home from a bar. He set his glass down and turned back to the stupid sandwiches. He stared at them for a minute, and his face sort of crumpled into itself, like he didn’t know what to do next. “You used to hate crusts. Do I still cut them off?”

  That pissed me off, like the anger had been lying there after all, waiting for an excuse. It flared up fast and spewed out in a rush. “I’m not a baby anymore. If you’d stuck around, you’d know that.”

  He flinched. He cut one of the sandwiches in half—crusts on—and slid it in front of me. He poured another drink. Took another huge gulp.

  Bryn’s hands grabbed hold of the edge of the counter in front of her. “What happened, Sawyer? Why did you leave? Pretend to be dead? How did you end up here?”

  “Yeah, Dad. Why?” I meant to hurl the question at him like a spear, but it came out sounding sad.

  He emptied his glass, set it down on the counter with a shaking hand. He picked up the bottle and turned it around and around in his hands, staring out the window toward the river. “I screwed up, Bryn. Well, you already know I screwed up …” He gave her a quick glance, like explaining only to her was all that mattered. “But this was even worse than the stuff you know about.” He shook his head, drank straight from the bottle this time. He wobbled a little on his feet. “Do you remember Carl Griffith? That jerk who was with Del the night we found that wreck?”

  Bryn snorted. “He’s part of the reason we’re here. Del stole drugs from him. He followed Josh to my place, followed us here. He’s making all sorts of threats. Insists that we find her.”

  “That explains a few things. Sounds like Carl hasn’t changed. Well, that night of the wreck, he stole a bunch of money from that car.”

  “He told me.”

  “It set him up in style, but after a few years, he was low on cash, and he started wondering about a safe deposit key he found with the money. The bank name was on the key, and he tracked the box number to the specific branch and discovered I was the manager there.”

  Bryn nodded like this wasn’t news to her, but I hadn’t heard anything about a bank before. I stayed quiet, listening hard. I pushed my plate away. Bryn hadn’t touched her food, and Dad was ignoring his sandwich and just drinking.

  “Carl cornered me after work one day. Wanted me to open the deposit box and give him whatever was in it. He didn’t want to step into the bank himself and get on camera. He argued it wasn’t really robbery since the owner was that dead guy, and if nobody had emptied the box by then, they probably wouldn’t. Claimed if I didn’t do it, he’d tell the cops I’d left that accident. I laughed at him—it wouldn’t help me at work if something like that came out, but I didn’t think there would be real consequences. The guy was dead when we found him. I certainly wasn’t about to rob a deposit box just to keep that quiet.”

  A robbery? Dad and a robbery? I wasn’t sure what he meant about a box. I glanced at Bryn. She was frowning but still not looking surprised.

  Dad sighed. Took another swig of tequila and made a face like it burned. “Laughing at him was a mistake. He got dead serious and started making all sorts of threats. Against Del. Against Josh. Against you, Bryn. Describing what he’d have his men do to you. In detail. Him and his men.” He closed his eyes. “I believed him. I believed he’d do it. It shook me up bad. I hadn’t decided what to do, but I took the key.”

  He set down the bottle. Picked up his sandwich. Set it down. Picked the bottle back up. Bryn waited. I tried to stay invisible.


  “The box had been paid up in advance for five years, but the rental had only a few months to go. No one had accessed it since before the wreck more than two years earlier. I wasn’t thinking straight, I admit it—I started thinking maybe it was better to just do it and get rid of Carl than to refuse and risk letting him hurt people.”

  He looked at Bryn as if he hoped for some sign of understanding, but she was made of concrete. No sympathy there.

  Dad’s jaw locked tight for a minute. “Bottom line, I opened the box one night when everyone else was gone. No cameras in the vault itself, and I had every right to go in and out. Carl kept saying he needed fifty thousand dollars to kick off some new scheme, and I figured I could at least check and see whether it was even possible that much was in there.”

  He paused. Bryn shifted on her stool. Leaned forward. She must not have heard this part before. “And?” she asked. “What did you find?”

  Dad took a deep-down breath. “It was the largest size box, and it was packed solid with cash. Hundred dollar bills. When I eventually counted it all, more than two million dollars. I’d never seen so much money in one place before. The sight of that much cash, right there, just waiting for me to take it, sucked something right out of me. It made me hungry. It made me crave everything that money could buy. Del would quit whining about cash and give me some peace. I could buy my own plane. College for Josh would be a snap.”

  Money? Dad left us because of money? I stared at Bryn. I thought I was the one who understood money was what made things happen, but she just shook her head sadly, still not looking all that surprised.

  Two million dollars. I tried to imagine that much cash. All the credit card bills paid. A new computer. Summer camp. Mom wouldn’t even have to keep her job at the Kroger.

  “So, you decided to grab all that money and disappear? Abandon your wife and son?” Bryn snapped it, not cutting him any slack.

  “No. No, that’s not it. At least not at first. I thought, okay, maybe if I gave Carl what he expected, the fifty thousand, maybe even a little more, and I didn’t tell him about the rest, then that would leave the extra for us. I wasn’t planning on leaving.” Another gulp finished the bottle. “But when I gave Carl his share, he started laughing at me. He said now I was a thief, and we’d be partners. He started talking about all sorts of other wild schemes. Crazy stuff. Robbing the Brink’s truck, breaking into the vault—things that could have gotten me killed. If I had stayed, I would have been trapped. And none of you would ever have been safe.”