Chapter 3 - Travis Had an Answer Too Quickly
I returned to Travis’s house the next morning without Owen.
He was staying with me for the night.
Travis opened the door with swelling along his jaw and an expression that told me he had spent hours preparing for this conversation.
I put one half of the broken boat on the kitchen island.
“What is it?”
His eyes touched the exposed blue paint.
Just for a second.
Then he shrugged.
“Wood.”
“Try again.”
He sighed as if I were exhausting him.
“Dad, Claire’s old lake house was full of painted scrap. Owen probably got it from there.”
“No. He got it from a locked box behind your workbench.”
That stopped him.
Not dramatically.
A tiny pause.
But I saw it.
Then he changed direction.
“Fine. I found some wreckage after Claire’s accident.”
My throat tightened.
“You found wreckage?”
“Months later. Along the shoreline.”
“And never told me?”
“I didn’t think you needed another piece of that night sitting on your mantel.”
The answer almost worked.
That was what frightened me.
It sounded reasonable.
Grief makes people do strange things.
Maybe Travis had found a piece of Claire’s boat and hidden it because he couldn’t throw it away.
Maybe the red streak came from a dock.
Maybe Natalie’s reaction was about reopening old grief.
Then Owen wandered into the kitchen behind me.
I hadn’t heard my sister bring him from the car.
He saw Travis.
Immediately stopped.
Travis’s face changed.
“Owen, go wait outside.”
But Owen looked at me instead.
Then pointed toward the broken boat.
“That’s not what Dad told Natalie.”
Silence.
Travis went completely still.
I crouched.
“What did he tell her?”
Owen swallowed.
“He said he should’ve burned it that night.”
Not months later.
That night.
May you like
And Claire’s boat had not even been officially recovered until two days after she died.
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