I'm the Only One Going in Blind novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Pier

The pier at Lorain is a long concrete arm that runs out into the lake to a small white lighthouse.

At five on a Thursday morning in November there was nobody on it but my father.

He sat on an overturned bucket at the far end, with two rods propped on the rail and a thermos between his boots.

He heard me coming for a hundred yards and did not turn around.

I stopped beside him.

"Sit," he said.

There was a second bucket.

I sat, and he poured coffee into the thermos lid and handed it to me without looking.

The lake was black, and the lighthouse lamp swung over it every few seconds.

We watched the lines for a while.

I was thirty minutes into the cold before he spoke.

"I taught you to fish on this pier."

"I remember."

"You were six. You caught a perch, and you cried because it was looking at you."

"I remember that too."

He nodded at the water.

"Your brother never liked it out here," he said. "He liked the shop, the bikes, the quiet. I didn't know what to say to him, so I let Lacey talk for him. It was easy."

"Dad."

"Let me say it, Dean. I'm not good at it, and I've been running it over since Sunday."

I shut up.

He turned his cup in his big scarred hands, a machinist's hands, thick at the knuckles.

"In September I came in early from the garage on a Sunday," he said. "Your mother was at church. Lacey was kneeling on the floor in the front room with the piano bench open."

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