the only one quiet, reserved, his face more like a man on the rack than a man on an adventure. Jean is watchful and anxious, but that’s normal behavior for her.
When the last hot dog has been roasted, the last marshmallow burned, a silence falls, all of them sitting around the warmth of the fire. And that’s when Jean says, very quietly, “Jo, Allie, Braden has something to tell you.”
His eyes widen; he jerks upright in the chair. Phee feels the way his breath snags on something sharp in his throat. Feels the mood of the group shift to watchful, uncertain. Len glances at her, a small warning, but she shrugs her shoulders at him. This isn’t her doing, at least not directly.
“It’s better this way, Braden,” Jean says. “Trust me. Trust them. Get it over with. Spit it out.”
He pales visibly at those words.
“What?” Jo asks. She looks shaken, glancing from face to face around the circle as if she’ll read an answer written somewhere.
Jo’s hands dart to her face, and he shakes his head. “Not that, Jo. Not how he died. Something else. It’s going to hurt you, both you and Allie.”
He takes another breath. “When Mitch came out here to talk to me, that night, he wanted to tell me something. He had a confession.”
Jo stares at him, lips parted, eyes dark. “Trey.” A statement, not a question.
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t, until now. Just always wondered. It’s the only thing I could think of that would bring him out here.”
“What about Trey?” Allie asks.
“Your mom and your uncle Mitch were . . . Trey is, was, your half-brother, Allie.”
She stares at her father with her mouth gaping open, then closes it with a sharp snap. “Mom? You’re kidding, right? I mean, Mom wouldn’t even tell a fib. How could she ever . . .” Allie’s eyes travel from Braden to Jo and back again, and her words fade into confusion.
“For real?”
“I’m so sorry,” Braden says.
“What are you sorry for?” Jo snaps. “You’re not the one who was having an affair.”
“It happened because of the cello—”
“An excuse,” Jo says. “If it wasn’t that, she’d have found something else. I remember the way those two looked at each other. Let me guess—when he went off on his fishing trips, he didn’t go alone.”
“Seriously?” Allie asks again. “I kinda thought Mom was, like, perfect. Always right.”
“The last thing I want to do is tarnish her memory—”
“It helps,” Allie says, “that she wasn’t perfect.”
“See?” Jean says. “They’re stronger than you think.”
“I’m not done yet,” he says grimly. “I sat out here all night, in the place that it happened, hoping it would all come back. It didn’t. But reason doesn’t take me to a good place.” He pauses. “Mitch came up here to ask me to divorce Lilian so they could be together.”
“Bastard,” Jo says, then adds, “God rest his soul.”
“So I put that together with this other tiny little flash. I keep seeing him sitting out here by the fire, right where Dennis is sitting now. And I punched him.”
“Sounds like he deserved it,” Dennis says. Len looks thoughtful, listening.
“You’re not putting the pieces together.” Braden raises his voice for emphasis. “Mitch comes out here to tell me he’s been with my wife, that he’s the father of my son. He was a threat to my family and my music. I hated him, in that moment. Enough to kill him.” He waits, letting his words sink in.
“Whatever happened out here was so horrific, my own brain has protected me from remembering. Phee here thinks it was so intense that my brain has also protected me by taking away the use of my hands. Do the math. Two men alone, one of them in a murderous rage, and the other one ends up dead. What do you all think happened?”
“You couldn’t,” Allie breathes. “You wouldn’t.”
“We know I hit him. And then he drowned.”
“He had a heart attack,” Jo protests. “That’s what the autopsy showed. It was a time bomb waiting to happen, they said.”
“And maybe that bomb wouldn’t have gone off if he hadn’t fallen through the ice into shockingly cold water. How do you think that happened, Jo? An outdoorsman like Mitch? He knew better than to walk on the ice this time of year.”
She’s weeping now, softly. “He was drunk.”
“Not that drunk, Jo. I think we all need to face the