Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Ben wrapped his arms around Kelly, pulling her close so she could rest her head on his chest. She'd leaned into him without a word, his chin resting on the top of her head. He could feel each of her breaths slowing down gradually until her entire body was relaxed against him. They weren’t in any hurry.
If she wanted to, they could stay like this for hours, while the willow branches swayed around them like a curtain no one could see through.
The reception was still going. He could hear it but barely. Mostly, he heard the symphony of crickets and the rustling of leaves. There was also a voice in his head he was trying to ignore, but was failing badly.
Because Ben couldn’t turn off his brain.
Rob's voice. Loud. Confident. Completely sure of itself, the way Rob's voice always was.
He was ready to blow his entire future, and I was able to get him to see reason.
Ben turned the words over. Examined them from different angles. Held them up against what Ethan had said under the oak tree.
Ethan had gone to someone older for advice.
Someone he trusted. He'd told this person about Lori, about the baby, about his plan to skip college and work on a farm.
And this person had told him to forget all of it.
Get an abortion. Give the baby up. Don't throw away your potential on a seventeen-year-old girl and a life that doesn't match your trajectory.
Rob Bateman was not much older than Ethan, four or five years perhaps? Yet he carried himself like a man who’d accumulated five decades of wisdom. He had opinions about everything. He volunteered them freely. And he believed, with absolute certainty, that he knew better than everyone around him.
Ben had been around people like that in business. It rarely ended well. For them. The problem with thinking you’re the smartest in the room is that, eventually, you’re going to come up against someone who really is the smartest.
Rob had described his relationship with Ethan at the reception.
He'd be nothing without me.
Kelly stirred against his shoulder. She lifted her head. He felt her wipe her face with the back of her hand. Quick. Efficient. Done crying. Moving forward.
She was tough. Tougher than her family gave her credit for.
"Something's bothering me," Ben said, unable to keep from saying what had been on his mind.
“What is it?”
"Rob told me earlier, before the ceremony, that he stopped Ethan from doing something stupid. Something career-ending." Ben kept his voice low. "He said he stopped Ethan from ruining his life."
Kelly went still. Not the stillness of someone thinking. The stillness of someone who already knew where this was going.
“I heard that, too.”
"Ethan said he went to someone older for advice," Ben continued. "Someone he trusted. And that person told him to forget about Lori and the baby. Told him he was wasting his potential."
"Rob."
Kelly had a tired but annoyed tone when she said her brother’s name. Despite not knowing the man well, he completely understood. He remembered again the exhausted yet resigned expression on Rob’s wife, Lisa’s, face.
"Could be."
"It is." Her voice had changed. The grief was still there underneath, but something harder had risen to the surface.
"That sounds like exactly what Rob would say.
Word for word. 'You're throwing your life away.
You have too much potential.' That's his speech.
I've heard it a hundred times. About my career.
About my choices. About anything that doesn't fit his plan for how people should live. "
Ben watched her posture change. Her spine straightened. Her hands, which had been shaking under the oak tree, were still now.
"Ethan said this person promised not to talk to Lori," Ben reminded her.
"Rob wouldn't keep that promise." Kelly's words came fast. Certain. "Not a chance. He would have decided he knew better. He always decides he knows better. He would have gone to Lori himself and told her what to do."
The crickets filled the silence between them. Somewhere at the reception, the DJ changed songs. Something with horns.
"He might have talked to Lori anyway," Kelly said. Her voice was harder now. Colder. "He may have even talked to her the day she disappeared.”
Ben didn't rush to respond. The implication was enormous.
If Rob had confronted Lori about the pregnancy, if he'd pressured her to end it or give up the baby, if that conversation had happened close to the day she died…
It didn't make Rob a killer. But it made him a person who had potentially crucial information about the last days of Lori Powell's life and had said nothing. For over a decade.
"We need to confirm it," Ben said. “Before we talk to your brother, we need to ask Ethan if it was Rob."
"Yes." Kelly stood. The willow branches brushed her shoulders as she rose.
"And if it is, I'm going to kick my brother's ass from here to New York City and back again.
It would be just like him to talk to Lori and then not tell anyone after she died.
He'd bury it. He'd convince himself it wasn't relevant.
That it had nothing to do with what happened to her. "
"He might have convinced himself he was protecting Ethan."
"He was protecting himself," Kelly muttered. "That's all Rob ever protects."
"Let's go find Ethan," he said.
They hurried back to the reception, but the back table was empty. Ethan's beer bottle sat where he'd left it, condensation running down the glass in thin lines, but the chair was pushed back at an angle.
Ben scanned the crowd, but Ethan was nowhere in sight.
"I don't see either of them," Ben said.
Kelly had been scanning in the opposite direction. She turned back to him, her face tight.
"Me neither. We’ll ask Lisa.”
Kelly’s mother and Lisa were standing together near the dessert table.
Mrs. Bateman was holding a plate with a slice of wedding cake she hadn't touched, her lips pressed into the thin line that Ben had learned meant she was displeased about something.
Rob's wife stood beside her, nodding along with the patient attentiveness of a woman who had perfected the art of listening without hearing.
Kelly made straight for them. Ben followed half a step behind.
"Mom, have you seen Ethan Walters?" Kelly asked. No preamble. No warming up.
Her mother's expression shifted from general displeasure to specific displeasure. The thin line became thinner, a white ring around her mouth
"Yes, and he was very rude," Mrs. Bateman said, her voice carrying the clipped indignation of someone cataloging offenses for future reference.
"He came up to us and said he needed to talk to Rob.
He was very abrupt. I tried to chat with him about his campaign, but he completely ignored me.
Just turned his back and walked away with Rob.
I'll have to think twice about voting for him. "
Ben's pulse picked up at the information. Ethan had come looking for Rob. Specifically. Urgently. Right after his conversation with Ben and Kelly under the oak tree.
Which meant Ethan had done the same math they had. He'd gone back to the reception, thought about what Kelly's questions implied, and reached the same conclusion. The unnamed advisor. Someone older. The person who had told him to abandon Lori and the baby.
Rob.
And Ethan had gone to confront him.
Ben glanced at Kelly. She was already looking at him. Her eyes were wide, and the color had drained from her face in a way that had nothing to do with the warm amber lighting. She'd reached the same place he had, maybe faster.
"Where did they go?" Ben asked. He kept his voice steady. Calm. The voice he'd used in boardrooms when deals were falling apart, and panic was not an option.
Mrs. Bateman looked at him with mild surprise, as if she hadn't expected the question to come from him. She opened her mouth to respond, but Rob's wife spoke first.
"Ethan said he needed to show Rob something in his car." She gestured toward the parking lot beyond the garden's edge. Her tone was casual. Unbothered. She had no reason to think anything was wrong. "They went that way. Maybe ten minutes ago?"
A lot could happen in ten minutes.
"Something in his car?” Kelly repeated.
"That's what he said." Lisa shrugged. "I thought it was odd, but you know Rob. He'll talk to anyone about anything."
The explanation made no sense. Nobody dragged someone away from a wedding reception to show them something in a car unless the something was important enough to override basic social convention. Or unless the real purpose of the trip had nothing to do with a car at all.
"Thank you," Ben said to Lisa.
“Where are you two going?”
Mrs. Bateman sounded absolutely vexed that they weren’t staying to chat, but they’d catch up with her later. He needed to make sure that whatever discussion Ethan and Rob had stayed friendly and civil.
They crossed the reception floor in a straight line, cutting between tables, sidestepping a waiter carrying a tray of champagne flutes. Guests laughed. Danced. Clinked glasses. The wedding continued around them, oblivious and warm.
They pushed through the garden gate. The gravel path to the parking lot stretched ahead, lit by a single lamp at the far end. The music dropped to a murmur behind them. Ahead, the parking lot was a grid of dark shapes under scattered lights.
They walked fast. Then faster as they searched for the two men. Ben's dress shoes scraped against the gravel. Kelly's heels clicked beside him, a rapid staccato that matched his heartbeat.
Ethan was a man who had questions. For Rob.
He was a man who had loved a girl. Who had lost her. Who had spent eleven years not knowing why.
They reached the edge of the gravel. The parking lot opened before them, dim and quiet. Ben squinted against the darkness, searching for movement. For voices. For anything.
He found it.