He paused and rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers, like he was trying to massage the memories away. I glanced over at Ethan. He gave me a little wink, which normally I would have thought was completely inappropriate, but it wasn’t. It was reassuring.
I said, “Go on, Kenny.”
He seemed to have gotten completely lost in his thoughts, and I knew what was happening. I wasn’t sure if he’d had a hand in Mr. Harwick’s drowning or not, or even if he knew who did, but one thing was certain: It must have tapped in to some locked-away reservoir of emotion deep inside him.
“My mom was devastated. He had bought a huge insurance policy a couple of months before, and he drowned the day it took effect. She got a big payout, enough to pay for me to go to school and for her to live comfortably for the rest of her life. And then the cops got suspicious. They said she must have talked him into getting the life insurance policy and killed him for the money. Eventually they dropped it because there was no proof, but my mom was never the same. One day she made a big pile in the backyard of all his stuff and every photo of him and set it on fire. She stopped caring about anything, starting taking all kinds of medicine for depression. Ten years later, the first week I left for college, she killed herself. Took a bunch of pills. They found her at the beach where my father drowned. That was in July last year. A month later, I got this in the mail.”
He flicked the photo with one finger and it slid across the table, turning right side up as it came to a stop in front of us. The man in the photo did look a little bit like an older version of Kenny. But what I didn’t expect, what Kenny must have known I would recognize right away, was that the man in the photo looked remarkably familiar.
I looked up at Kenny with astonishment.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s Roy Harwick.”
I picked the photo up and studied it closely. It was true. The man in the photo was in fact Mr. Harwick, perhaps twenty or thirty years younger. He had a full head of hair and a virile, ruddy complexion—nothing like Mr. Harwick now, but the expression in his eyes and the shape of his face were instantly recognizable.
I looked up at Kenny and then back at the photo, and then back at Kenny again. I’d never once considered that there was even the slightest similarity between them. Where Mr. Harwick was a pudgy, balding ball of anger, Kenny was handsome and sun-kissed and thoughtful. But now I could see it. If you clipped back Kenny’s long hair and shaved away his scruffy beard, he looked almost exactly like a younger version of Mr. Harwick.
I was beginning to feel like I’d been hit in the head with a two-by-four. “Kenny … what are you telling us?”
He let out a long sigh. “I’m telling you that Roy Harwick was my father.”
19
Kenny had laced his fingers behind his neck and was staring up at the ceiling. I had about a million questions for him, but if what he had just said was true, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of pain he must have been in. He had lost his father at a tender age, and then his mother to suicide, and now he had lost his father all over again. I knew what it was like to be young and lose a parent, but this was something completely out of my league.
Softly, I said, “Kenny, I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “That picture was in the first letter I ever got from him. At first he said he was my uncle. He said he’d read about my mother and he just wanted to know if I was okay. So I wrote him back, even though I knew something wasn’t right. Nobody had ever mentioned I had an uncle. Eventually I started to figure it out, and he finally admitted who he was. It turned out he had planned his escape for months. The day he disappeared, he drove to the beach in the morning like he always did. He made sure he got there bright and early so nobody would see him. He parked his car and went down to the water. He left his shirt and sandals in the sand, but this time he took a change of clothes, wrapped up in a plastic bag and covered with tape. Then he walked out into the water a couple feet deep and trekked three miles up the coast, staying in the water and off the beach the whole time. When he figured he’d gone far enough, he came up on the beach, put on dry clothes, and hitchhiked out of town. He traveled all over the country for a couple of years, doing odd jobs and fooling around with girls. Finally he wound up here in Sarasota, got married, and never left again.”
Ethan said, “Wow. That’s heavy.”
Kenny laughed sadly and shook his head. “I know. It’s crazy.”
“So, why did he get in touch with you?”
He shrugged. “Guilt. He felt guilty, and he wanted to make it up to me somehow.”
We sat there for a few moments in silence. I wanted to believe him, as far-fetched as his story was, but there was still one thing I didn’t understand. I was almost afraid to ask, because I didn’t think I was going to like the answer.
I said, “Kenny, why did you come to Siesta Key?”
He shook his head. “I wanted to see him. I wanted to know who he was. I … I wanted to know why. Why did he leave us? I wanted him to look me in the face and explain it, man to man. I mean, I get it—he wanted to run away. Everybody feels like that once in a while, right? But how could he just leave his family like that? I felt like I couldn’t go on with my life until I had an answer. So one day I just packed up my truck and drove down here. I didn’t tell anybody where I was going.”
“But how did you find him?”
“It was easy. The return address on his letters was always the same—a post office box in Siesta Key. There’s only one post office here. So I just hung out in the parking lot until I saw somebody that looked familiar, and then I followed him home.”
He picked up the photo and slipped it back into his breast pocket. “At first he had written that he lived like a bum, slept on the beach, jumped from job to job, didn’t have any friends. But eventually he admitted that was a lie, too. Turned out he was filthy rich and he wanted to make it up to me. He said his stepkids were worthless and I could have it all. It was too late to change what he had done, but at least he could set me up for life. He wanted to buy me a house and everything.”
I frowned. “So that’s why you’re here.”
He shook his head. “No. No way. I didn’t come here to get rich.”
“Then why did you pretend to be a pool cleaner and work your way into his home?”
“I didn’t pretend. I was broke. I started cleaning pools because I didn’t have enough money to get back to California. So I made up some flyers saying I cleaned pools and could do odd jobs and started leaving them around town. One day this dude calls me up and asks if I can clean his pool, somebody had referred me. When he gave me his address I knew right away. It was Roy Harwick.”
I said, “And you never told him who you were?”
“No. I was going to. But things got a little complicated…”
“You mean Becca.”
Kenny’s face flushed red as he looked down at his hands. “Yeah. Becca.”
Ethan turned to me and whispered, “Who’s Becca?”
“Mr. Harwick’s daughter. She’s pregnant.”
He nodded. “Ah, of course.”
I could tell Ethan was getting a little impatient with the whole story, and to be honest so was I. Kenny must have wanted something more from the Harwicks. Why else would he come all this way and infiltrate himself into their home, not to mention their daughter?
“So when was the last time you saw your father?”
He looked down at the floor, struggling to keep his emotions under control. “It was at his house. The night before you found him.”
I shook my head. “No, Kenny. You’re lying. Mr. and Mrs. Harwick were in Tampa that night.”
He let out a little laugh. “Really? Well, as soon as he heard what I had to say, he came right back home, didn’t he?”