North Country(44)

My heart spikes at the idea of having Emery in my private space, near my bed. I guess our conversation isn’t over yet.

But first I have to survive this one.

Dad’s boots scuff the floor as he eases in. “So, you know Hank Murphy.” It’s not a question, and my father’s voice drips with accusation. I’m sure he’s been stewing since witnessing that scene, thinking the worst about me.

“No, I don’t know him,” I snap, unable to control my temper. “I’ve never met the guy.”

“He obviously knows you.”

“Obviously.”

“You watch your fucking tone with me.” He stabs the air in front of him with his index finger. “I warned you about bringing trouble back to this family.”

This is getting out of control fast. I raise my hands in a sign of surrender. “I’m sorry.”

The move seems to catch him off guard.

A few beats of silence hang between us while we each take calming breaths.

“Did you tell Mom?” I ask quietly.

“Not yet. I have no idea what to tell her.” He leans against Jay’s truck, folding his arms. “What the hell was that about back there, because it didn’t look like a friendly welcome. And don’t you dare feed me the same bullshit you tried feeding her.” He nods toward the ceiling. “I won’t buy it. Neither will she, mind you. She’s way smarter than all of us. But I think I deserve an honest answer.”

“You’re right. You do.” This is a conversation I was hoping to avoid but tonight has ensured that’s not happening. There’s no point dancing around it either. “Mom always talks about that night like it was a one-off thing.” At the end of many letters, she would sign “Love always, Mom” and then add a variation of “I know it was a terrible mistake” or “Wrong place, wrong time. We’ll all get through this”—always an affirmation that Jay and I weren’t bad people; we’d just gotten caught up in a bad night, dragged along by a poor choice for a friend. She clung to that belief like a life raft in rapid waters. She needed it to survive. “But it wasn’t a one-off for Jay. He was in it, Dad.”

His brow furrows. “In what?”

I rest my elbows on a stack of boxes. “Drugs … guns … stolen shit?” I shrug. “I don’t know. But it was never about being in the wrong place at the wrong time that night. Not with Jay. He was in it with Ian, and they’d been doing it for a while.” I pause as my father digests the truth of what I learned years ago—Jay’d been stealing and dealing for a lot longer than anyone knew. Or at least, longer than any of us knew.

It turns out my brother was no better than a dirty Murphy.

Dad is quiet, but the look on his face isn’t shock. It’s more like resignation. “What’s this got to do with you and Hank?”

Good question. “It sounds like Ian and Jay had a stash. Probably the money they were making off whatever they were doing, or something they took that they were waiting to offload.” If they were rendezvousing with planes carrying drugs and guns on midnight runs, they were involved with some serious players. “Hank seems to know about it but doesn’t know where it was, and for some reason, he thinks Jay told me.”

“Did he?”

I pause to give my father a look of incredulity. “Don’t you think I would have told the cops? Or my lawyer?” Maybe it could have shaved a few years off my sentence. “Hell, I would have told Dorsey when he started threatening me about it.” I gesture at my ribs for impact.

Shock fills his eyes as he puts two and two together. “That guy knew about it too?”

“It sure as hell wasn’t random.” Though that’s what everyone believed, because I let them believe it. I pace as I unload the story—the months Travis Dorsey invested, first as an old friend of Jay’s and a curious inmate, and then when that wasn’t proving fruitful, as a threat—in the dining hall, in the yard, in the showers. He let slip that he knew Ian and Hank well, and that Hank was looking for this supposed treasure too .

It finally came to a head the day Dorsey drove that lengthy shiv through my ribs, puncturing my lung. I guess he figured he’d take me down and scare me into spilling secrets while I was on my knees, laboring for breath.

But he made a grave mistake.

“Dorsey had a picture of Emery and Isla at Christmas. It was one Mom sent in her letters. I don’t know how he got hold of it. Lifted it from my cell, I guess.” From under my pillow. It was my favorite one of Emery, her smile genuine as she kissed the chubby-cheeked toddler in her arms. “He pulled that picture out of his pocket and started talking about how he was gettin’ out soon and was going to drive up to Cold River to meet them.” But the glint in that fucker’s beady little eyes told me he had intentions, and the guy was in prison for sexual assault. “That’s why I did what I did.”

I study my hands. Now they wear scrapes and cuts from working outdoors. That night, they wore the blood of a man who threatened a woman I’ll never stop loving. “I would have killed him if the guards hadn’t stopped me.” It took five of them to pull me off.

I finally dare meet my father’s gaze again, and his returning stare is unreadable.

Does he see his son?

Or a monster?