Page 72 of Thin Ice

"So maybe he'd want to hear from you."

Alex shook his head. "I can't just call him out of nowhere after six years, Liam. I never reached out. Not once. I just let them turn him into a—" He stopped. "I let them erase him. And I went along with it."

"You were a kid."

"I was old enough to know better."

"Maybe. But you're not a kid now. And you're sitting in the same spot he was sitting in six years ago, and I bet he remembers what that felt like."

Alex picked up his cup and put it down again without drinking.

"What if he's angry?"

"He might be."

"What if he doesn't want to talk to me?"

"Then he'll tell you that, and you'll know. But what if he does? What if he's been waiting six years for someone in your family to call?"

Alex was quiet. The space heater ticked. Jerry's radio played something country through the wall.

"He's the only person in the world who knows what this feels like," I said. "From the inside. Not from watching it happen to someone else. From inside it."

He looked at me. His eyes were tired, and his coveralls had grease on the chest and he was sitting in a marina shop holding a coffee cup with both hands, and he looked nothing like a Harrington and everything like a person who needed to hear one voice that understood.

"I'll think about it," he said.

"Tomorrow."

"Liam."

"Call him, Alex. What's the worst that happens?"

"He tells me to go to hell."

"He won't."

He held the cup. Steam rising between us.

"Okay," he said. "Tomorrow."

We kept busy for the rest of the day, sharing small moments here and there when Jerry wasn't around. It was nice. Nice just to know that he was okay, and he was here with me. I knew he wasn't really okay, but at least he had something. And that something was me, and now this job. It wasn't a lot, but it's what I survived on — he'd have to get used to it.

Jerry paid us at the door, two folds of twenties counted out of the cash drawer with a licked thumb. Alex put his in his pocket. I put mine in mine.

"Same time, day after tomorrow?" Jerry said.

"Same time," Alex said.

We walked home along the lake road in the dark. Both of us smelling like diesel. Cash in our pockets. The south-shore lights low along the water.

I reached for his hand. He took it. Our fingers laced together in the cold, and we walked the rest of the way like that.

Chapter 20: Alex

Ifound his number at eight o'clock, sitting on Liam's bed with my phone and a name I hadn't spoken out loud in six years.

James Harrington. Portland, Oregon. I found him through LinkedIn, which felt absurd and entirely correct for a Harrington. His profile was sparse. Program director at something called the Cascadia Housing Alliance. A small photo of him at a desk, older than I remembered. Same jaw. Same eyes.