Брайан Фриман - Funeral for a Friend

“I told you it was complicated.”

“I can’t believe I acted like such a fool,” Cat said.

“You didn’t. Believe me. This was my problem.”

Cat sat down next to him again. “What did you do when you found out who she was?”

“I watched her. That’s all. I got to know her from a distance. I’d sit outside her house on the weekends when I had time. Or I’d follow her to the high school where she worked. I just wanted to get a sense of who she was. I thought about introducing myself, but I wasn’t ready to do that. And I was pretty sure that she wasn’t ready, either. A part of me was angry, too. How could she have given me up?”

“Because she loved you,” Cat said. “Because she wanted a better life for you. That’s why I did it.”

“I know. But understanding it isn’t the same thing as forgiving it. I spent some time with a therapist, trying to figure out how to forgive my mother. She told me the same thing. That sometimes letting a child go is an act of love.”

“Don’t think the guilt ever goes away,” Cat told him. “It doesn’t.”

He said nothing. His face was dark with his memories.

“One day that summer, early in August, I saw a man show up at her door. After he left, Andrea went outside and sat on the front steps, and I could tell she was very upset. Crying. I didn’t like seeing her that way. I wanted to know this man and what he’d said to her. So I tracked him down by the car he was driving, and I located the motel where he was staying. He was a journalist. His name was Ned Baer.”

Brayden’s fists clenched, and then he released them. He sat in silence for a little while.

“I found out what Baer was doing in town — that he was researching the rape accusation against Devin Card. You can’t imagine what a thunder-

bolt that was for me. Suddenly, everything made sense. I realized that Andrea was the one behind the accusation. That she’d been raped . That was how she got pregnant. That was how I came into the world. I was born of violence. And Devin Card was my father. I didn’t know what to do. I was so furious. I needed to know more. I broke into Andrea’s house when she and Stride were away, so I could find out what happened. I found a box she’d hid, with pictures of her and me, and I realized she loved me. Despite what had been done to her, she loved me. I was going to pieces, Cat. My whole identity had been stripped away from me. And I felt so bad for my mother, for what she’d been through. I bought her something — a suncatcher — and left it for her anonymously with a note. Forgive every sin . I knew, somehow I just knew, that she blamed herself for letting me go. I didn’t want her to do that. But I also couldn’t come forward. Not when I knew she was so desperate to keep what had happened a secret.”

“What happened next?” Cat asked.

“I took out all my rage on Devin Card. I was obsessed with what he’d done to her. It killed me to see him stand up there and deny the accusation, when I knew it was true. When I could prove it! That drove me crazy. One night, I followed him, and when he was alone, I jumped him and beat the hell out of him. I almost told him who I was, too. But I already had what I really wanted. His blood . To confirm everything. I had this idea that I could force Card to drop out of the race, just like Andrea wanted, if he knew there was a way to prove what he’d done. But instead, I got the paternity test back, and it was negative. Devin wasn’t my father. I didn’t understand. It made no sense. Andrea was my mother, but if Devin didn’t assault her, who was my father? How could she have been wrong about that?”

“What did you do?”

“I broke into Ned Baer’s hotel room,” Devin said. “All I really wanted was to see what information he’d discovered about the party and the rape, because somehow he’d been able to find Andrea when no one else had. I thought I could find a clue to figure out what had really happened. So I began going through his papers, everything he’d collected. That’s when I realized he knew things he shouldn’t have known. Before he came to Duluth, on his very first page of notes, he’d written down the date when Andrea was raped. How could he possibly know that? No one did — not even Andrea. He had a yearbook, and he’d only circled girls who looked like her. How did he know what she looked like? But what really sealed it was a picture I found of him. I could see myself in his face. There was just enough resemblance that I knew . So I took a tissue from the motel wastebasket, and I ran another test. This time, it came back positive. Ned Baer was my father. He’s the one who raped my mother.”

“Oh, Brayden. I’m so sorry.”

“I needed to confront him. I couldn’t think about anything else. Imagine him doing what he did years ago — and then coming back to torment my mother all over again. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. So I called him. I lied and said I had information about the party for his article. We arranged to meet that night.”

“Here at the Deeps,” Cat said.

Brayden nodded. “Yes. I got here first and waited for him in the woods. It was such a hot, hot night, absolutely broiling. I watched as he got here and drank beer and went diving in the creek. He kept checking his watch, wondering where I was, but somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to go out and talk to him. And then just when I finally decided I was ready, someone else showed up.”

“Stride.”

“Yes. I watched Stride confront him. Ned was such a son of a bitch. Arrogant. A vicious liar, a rapist, and he thought no one knew. Stride was trying to talk him out of exposing Andrea, but Ned didn’t care about that at all. It didn’t matter whose lives he destroyed. After Stride left, I came out of the woods. Ned was pretty drunk at that point. But when I told him who I was, when I told him what I knew , he sobered up fast. At first, he didn’t believe it, but I told him about the paternity test. It was a shock. He didn’t care that I was his son. That wasn’t important to him at all. He cared that I could prove what he’d done. I could ruin his whole life. And I was going to. I told him that. I was going to make sure everyone knew what kind of a man he was.”

“What did he do?” Cat asked.

“He pulled out a gun. Pointed it in my face. He was going to shoot me and dump my body somewhere. That was how much he cared about me.”

“What happened?”

“We struggled.” Brayden took a deep breath before going on. “We wrestled over the gun. In the fight, he got shot in the head.”

“So it was self-defense,” Cat said. “He was trying to kill you, and you killed him. Nobody can blame you for that.”

Brayden stood up on the rocks. He stared over the cliff’s edge at the roiling waters below them. “I don’t know, Cat. Was it really self-defense? I was bigger than he was. Stronger than he was. He was drunk. I should have been able to take the gun away from him without a fight. But I wanted him dead. I wanted revenge for my mother. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but when it was over, I stared at the body at my feet, and I didn’t feel a thing. Actually, no, that’s not true. I was glad . I felt like I’d finally done something to help Andrea. I’d kept her secret, and I’d made sure the man who raped her was gone.”

Cat got up from the rocks, too. “Then what?”

“I was going to take the body away, but I saw headlights. Someone else was coming. So I grabbed the gun and hid in the woods again. This man came over to the rocks — I had no idea who he was — and he found Ned’s body. I figured he’d call the police. But he didn’t. He took away the body. He dragged it back to his car and drove away. I didn’t understand why, but I didn’t care. All I knew was that he’d solved a problem for me. I found Ned’s car parked off Seven Bridges Road and broke inside; I took his laptop, his notes. Then I went over to his motel room that night and cleared it out. I didn’t want anyone to know what he’d discovered. I didn’t want anything that would point the police to Andrea. I figured they’d find the body soon enough, but they never did. Ned vanished. He was gone. The story went out a few days later that the police believed he’d drowned in the Deeps and his body was lost in the lake. Until a few days ago, that was what everyone thought. We were safe. Both of us, me and Andrea. But then it came back to life again.”