Chapter 4: Tea in the Study

Don Brancato's study was on the second floor of the lake house, with a window that looked straight down at the dock.

I had done my homework at the long desk in that room from the age of nine.

Now I sat in the leather chair across from it, in a borrowed sweater, with a cup of tea going cold in my hands.

The old man leaned on his brass-headed cane and listened to all of it.

I told him about the kayak, the photos, the bracelet and the shove.

I told him what Cesare said while I was sinking.

He did not interrupt once.

When I stopped, he looked at the water for a long moment.

"The swim test," he said. "My grandfather's habit. Cousins used to dunk the new husbands in that lake."

"They didn't dunk me. They left me."

"I know what they did."

His voice was gentle, and I knew that gentle voice.

It was the one he used when he had already decided something and was waiting for me to catch up.

"I told them for years that you couldn't swim," I said. "Nobody listened."

"I forgot," he said. "That was careless of me."

"Careless," I said.

"It was a bad week in a bad year, and I should have remembered."

He let that sit, and then he did not say what I wanted him to say, which was that he would punish his son.

He did not say anyone would answer for it at all.

What he said was, "Come to dinner on Saturday."

"Why?"

"Because your father's chair has stood empty at my table for fourteen years, and I want to see someone in it before I die."

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