Chapter 36
Four Years Ago
They were eating in South Pointe Park, at Frank’s favorite steak house. It was just the two of them having dinner, but Frank rented out the back room anyway. The back room with the best views of that special piece of Miami oceanfront.
They were having a birthday dinner—seventy-six for Frank, seventy-one for Nicholas.
These were numbers they didn’t want to acknowledge, but also were happy to acknowledge.
It was several months belated for Nicholas.
He had spent his actual birthday with Bailey, the week of her high school graduation.
She and Hannah had taken him to their favorite restaurant in the Castro for risotto and Sweetwater oysters and the best lemon cake he’d ever tasted in his life.
And soon he would be with them again—the family heading to Hawaii for Christmas, for Bailey’s break.
Nicholas would get to be with Bailey for a whole week. He’d have a whole week of getting to watch Bailey being Bailey. It was crazy how much joy that brought him, just watching Bailey be Bailey. It was crazy for him to know that kind of joy again.
Nicholas was filling Frank in on all of it, on Bailey’s graduation. On the Hawaii plans. Frank laughing that she was trying to make Nicholas go surfing with him; Frank laughing that Nicholas was going to try and do it.
And Nicholas could see it—how happy Frank was for him. About all of it.
“I’m talking too much. Which I guess is just a way of saying thank you. Thank you for letting me call in that favor.”
“Favor?”
Frank looked at him, confused. And Nicholas could see him pulling it up in his memory—that moment all those years ago, two nights before Nicholas reported to prison, when Frank promised him he’d make it up to him.
He’d make it up to Nicholas that he was going to prison for Frank. That he was taking that impossible hit.
But now Frank only shook his head.
“That’s not the favor…”
“No?”
“No. I’d never let your family be hurt. Not on my watch. You deserve safety for your family. You’re a good man.”
“I don’t know that either of us should be talking about what a good man is,” Nicholas said.
“That’s true too.”
Frank smiled at him, but Nicholas felt something twist up inside him. Maybe because Nicholas was leaving something out. They had been at dinner for several hours and Nicholas still hadn’t mentioned that Owen had reached out to him.
That went against the agreement they made when Frank said he would protect Hannah and Bailey.
Nicholas had promised to let Frank know if Owen contacted him (or if he knew that Owen contacted Hannah or Bailey).
He insisted that he’d let Frank know immediately.
But here they were and he didn’t fill Frank in on the note that Owen left waiting for him in that hotel room in San Francisco.
If something happens to you, they’ll be in danger.
Why? Why was he holding this information back from Frank? It certainly wasn’t out of any loyalty to Owen. No, that wasn’t it. Which gave Nicholas pause: Was it that he wasn’t convinced that Owen was wrong?
He flinched against it, the answer that sprung to his mind before he could stop it.
He wasn’t convinced. And, if that was the case, if even a small piece of Nicholas believed that Owen was correct, that Hannah and Bailey were potentially in danger—what did that mean?
What did that mean about what actually happened to Kate?
What did that mean about Frank’s involvement?
“So, you need to tell me, Frank.”
Frank looked at Nicholas, confused.
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me the truth,” Nicholas said. “When did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That someone in the organization was behind it,” Nicholas said. “Someone was behind what happened to Kate, weren’t they?”
“Nick, I would never hurt your kids.”
Frank shook his head. And he saw in Frank’s eyes that Frank meant that. It was what carried them along all these years—that Frank did, in fact, mean that. So why did Nicholas know suddenly, with a blistering clarity, that this wasn’t the whole truth? Was it just Owen reaching out to him?
No. But Nicholas’s reaction to Owen’s note did spark it. It sparked something that Nicholas knew—the thing we know about lifelong friends if we pay close enough attention to what they are saying. And what they leave out.
Frank had readily agreed to help Hannah and Bailey. How was that not the favor? How did that not make them even? Because they could never be even. That was what Nicholas knew for sure now. That was what a part of him knew all along. A part of him apparently knew before Frank even did.
“What happened, Frank?”
Frank looked down at his coffee, and for a moment Nicholas got to believe that he was wrong.
What a relief it would be, to be wrong! But then Frank looked up.
And it was like Nicholas could see it coming off Frank’s skin—which was reddening and splotchy.
He could see what Frank had been keeping in, all this time. What he was finally letting out.
“Let me be clear,” he said. “It had nothing to do with your decision to pull back from work. Or with any issues that arose from that. It was nothing punitive.” He paused. “It had to do with Kate.”
Nicholas felt it, a hitch in his throat. Even at the sound of it now—Frank even saying his daughter’s name now.
“Once your son-in-law became involved with your work, with setting up that encryption system, Kate got nervous,” Frank continued. “She was nervous Owen could be implicated, even if you kept him in the dark. She was nervous about his culpability.”
“How the hell would you know that?”
“She started asking questions at work,” Frank said. “She was asking questions in a way that was raising flags.”
“Bullshit. She would have come to me.”
“Nick, she walked into the US attorney’s office and asked an AUSA point-blank if you were under investigation in some way. Which put you on their radar in a new way. And a friend inside the AUSA’s office… he alerted us.”
This stopped Nicholas cold. The new layers of information were shuffling around in his head, trying to find a way to click in. To make sense.
Kate was nervous. She was nervous about what Nicholas had pulled Owen into—nervous enough that she felt she couldn’t ask Nicholas himself.
That she couldn’t trust his response. What did that say about how his daughter was feeling about him, in the end?
What did that say about the fear she was holding inside about her husband’s safety?
The fear that Nicholas was the cause of?
“So you knew?”
“Not me directly. But one of my lieutenants, yes.”
“You want me to believe that no one let you know what was going on? Give me a fucking break, Frank.”
“It’s the truth, Nick.”
“No one did anything without you knowing it.”
“I didn’t authorize it. I swear to God. And the lieutenants who were involved with this, they are no longer walking on this earth… needless to say, perhaps, but…” He paused. “They were handled as soon as I was made aware.”
Nicholas remembered something about that.
He was in jail, and he remembered learning that two high-level lieutenants in the organization were taken out.
Two lieutenants who Nicholas had represented at trial years earlier.
They had been tried for burglary and extortion. Nicholas had gotten them cleared.
This was why he thought that Frank had mentioned their ending to him—in the way that Frank relayed these things.
The cleaned-up language: they were no longer with the organization.
Due to insubordination. How many years after Kate’s death did Frank share this?
Five years, close to six. Was that how long before Frank knew?
“Someone authorized it, Frank. What happened to my daughter. Someone had to authorize it. These men wouldn’t have done this without the explicit blessing of someone in the family.”
Frank looked at him, and Nicholas saw it—the way we see things in the people we know best—or, at least, that we’ve known the longest. Even the things (especially the things) that we wish we could unsee.
“She was just a kid herself, Nick…” He shakes his head. “She just authorized them to scare Kate, not to hurt her. Certainly not to kill her.”
“Quinn?”
Nicholas asked it as a question. But he had his answer. He started to think that maybe he always had the answer. The way we know things before we are willing to know them. The way we feel the preliminary pain we aren’t ready to acknowledge yet.
“We don’t control what our children do. I don’t need to tell you that. And Quinn… she wasn’t thinking clearly. She was too wrapped up in her own pain. Her own anger. Her fears that our family was being threatened.”
Nicholas nodded. He didn’t doubt that. As though that was what mattered now.
All that mattered was this: Kate was walking down the street, eager to get home to her daughter, and then, silence.
Because of how Nicholas led his life. Because of whom he’d invited into it.
That was the point. That was the only point.
“Nick, I promise you on my own children, I did not know then. I didn’t know for a long time. I’ve spent my life sorry about that.”
“Not good enough.”
“I know.”
“I don’t care what you know.”
Nicholas got up to leave.
“We’re done.”