Page 73 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

Amelia smiled. “Yes, very good. Like I said, you have nothing to worry about.”

Sadie was crying now, her nose turning bright red. Her teary gaze jumped back to Ben.

It occurred to me in that moment that maybe the reason Sadie had been so desperate when the police came for her son was because she hadn’tknownwhere Ben was that night. It would certainly explain the unbridled look of surprise and relief on her face now. Maybe she’d been afraid that hewasinvolved somehow, the way I was about Johnny.

Ben’s eyes were on his mother, and he looked almost puzzled, as if he, too, thought her reaction was strange. The boy-turned-almost-man looked frail and sick, his freckles darker on his skin than I remembered. Again, I had to ask myself what exactly Autumn had seen in him. But then I remembered what Sadie said about small townsand limited options. This kid would probably be running that diner in twenty years with his own kid on the high school soccer team. Autumn was the one who’d gotten out. Almost, anyway.

Ben glanced back at me before he walked Sadie to her car, and Amelia stood at my side, watching them.

“He was out of town the weekend Johnny died,” she said. “If you were wondering.”

I turned to look at her, my hands so tightly clenched in the pockets of my jacket that my knuckles ached.

“He was gone for four days,” she added.

The soccer tournament in Redding, I realized. Amelia had mentioned it when she explained why she hadn’t been in town when Johnny tried to call her. If the team had been gone for a game, Ben would have been with them. My mind tried to find a way around it, unable to let go of the last thread I had hold of. If Ben was gone, he couldn’t have killed Johnny.

“Sometimes the hardest kind of deaths to accept are ones like this, James,” Amelia said. “Accidents are the worst kinds of losses.”

She set a hand on my arm, gently squeezing before she went back inside, and I swallowed down the lump in my throat. I didn’t know if there was a world where I could believe that, after everything, it was anaccidentthat killed my brother. A stupid fucking accident.

There was a kind of cruel irony in that.

Ben opened the door to his truck down the street, and before I’d even decided to, I was walking toward him. When he saw me, he drew back like he was afraid of me.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

He hesitated, wetting his lips. “Okay.”

“What happened at Johnny’s that night?”

Ben searched my eyes, his dark brows coming together. “What?”

“The night you were there with Autumn. Rhett said he heard someone arguing.”

He looked up and down the street nervously.

“I need to know, Ben.”

“I…” He twisted the ring of keys in his hand, mouth opening and closing. “Johnny thought…”

“What?” My voice rose.

“He thought he was my dad.” Ben spit it out all at once, immediately going flush.

I stared at him.

“He told me a few months before that.”

So, Micah was right. Johnny believed that Ben was his son. And when Sadie had refused to give him evidence, he’d most likely gone to Ben.

“And was he?” I asked.

Ben exhaled. “I don’t know for sure. I mean, I always kind of wondered, but my mom always said it was a fling with a logger. When I started really pressing her about it, she kind of stopped telling that story. When I asked her about Johnny, she just said…”

“What?” I whispered.

“She would just answer with,You don’t want him to be your dad, Ben. Believe me.”