Chapter 4 - Natalie Knew Which Mark I Meant
Travis told me Owen had misunderstood.
Natalie said the same thing.
So I stopped asking about the wood.
Instead, that afternoon, I asked Natalie something different.
She was standing in the foyer, one side of her face still pink from my slap.
I placed the broken boat piece on the console.
“Do you know what caused this?”
I didn’t point at anything.
Natalie looked down.
Her eyes went directly to the red streak.
“Probably the dock.”
My heart kicked.
“What dock?”
She realized it immediately.
I had never said the red mark came from a dock.
I had not even asked about the red mark.
I had asked what caused this.
Natalie folded her arms.
“Come on, Harold. You’re staring at the paint like it means something.”
“Does it?”
“No.”
“Then why did you know which mark I meant?”
Her expression hardened.
For a second neither of us spoke.
Then she laughed.
Too lightly.
“Claire’s accident happened around boats. Red paint gets on things.”
I stared at her.
“That’s interesting.”
“What is?”
“Because according to the investigation, Claire’s boat struck an unpainted timber piling.”
Natalie’s smile disappeared.
I hadn’t remembered that detail until that morning.
But apparently she remembered something else.
Something never written in the version our family had been given.
She stepped closer and lowered her voice.
“You need to stop digging into a night that already destroyed enough people.”
I looked at her.
“Who else did it destroy, Natalie?”
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she glanced toward the staircase.
Toward Travis.
That was the first time I wondered whether my son was protecting her—
May you like
or whether she was protecting him.
---
