Marcus had seen the photograph before. That was the unbearable part. He had seen it a thousand times in his life, because it had sat for years in a frame on Walter Sullivan's desk at the old garage: two brothers in the summer of their lives, Marcus nineteen and already huge, Daniel seventeen and all elbows and grin, the black Harley between them like a third brother, polished to a mirror. He knew every pixel of it. He knew the chip in the corner of the frame. He knew his father's handwriting on the back.
My boys, it said. Summer, before everything.
But the photograph in his hand was not that photograph. The print was newer. The colors were wrong — too sharp, too modern, printed on paper that hadn't been in Walter's desk since before the fire. And in the lower corner of the image, half in shadow where the frame had cropped it on the old print, there was something Marcus had never seen: a third motorcycle, and on its tank, a date stamp from a security camera, small and white and merciless.
Three days ago.
"Where did you get this?" His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
"Daniel gave it to me." Travis said it flatly, the way a man reads his own sentence. "Three days ago. In a motel parking lot off Route 9, two in the morning, like a drug deal. He wouldn't come in. He wouldn't stay. He put that in my hand and he said—" Travis swallowed. "He said, it's starting again, and if it goes bad, she'll come to the picnic. She knows the way. Whatever she says about me, brother, let her say it, and then show Marcus the picture."
A sound went through the gathered club like wind through wire.
Emily had backed up against the grill table. The spatula Marcus had dropped lay at her feet, and she'd picked it up without thinking, the way a cornered thing picks up anything. She held it across her body like a shield, and Marcus's heart broke cleanly in two at the sight, because she was holding it the way Daniel used to hold a wrench when their father was angry — not to use it. Just to have something between himself and the world.
"Emily." Marcus turned to her slowly, photograph still in his fist. "Emily, listen to me. I knew your daddy. I loved your daddy. And if there's even a chance—" He stopped. Fourteen years of grief rose up in his throat and had to be swallowed like broken glass. "Sweetheart, I need you to tell me exactly what happened. All of it. Starting with where your mama is."
"Mama's at Miss Rebecca's house," Emily said. "Daddy said if the men came, run to Miss Rebecca's, because she has a gate and a dog and a gun permit." A small shiver went through her. "But the men came to our house first. The one nobody's supposed to know about. Daddy put me in the closet with the laundry door and told me to count to five hundred and not come out for anything, not even if I heard him. I counted to five hundred twice." Her chin trembled. "There were sounds. Then it was quiet, and Daddy was gone, and there was blood on the kitchen floor but not a lot, and Mama—" She stopped. Took a breath with her whole body. "Mama was in the truck. Daddy's truck. She was sleeping wrong. Breathing funny. I shook her and shook her and she said my name once, and then a car came and it was him" — the spatula swung toward Travis — "and he put Mama in his car and he told me to run to Miss Rebecca's if I could, and I did, but he's a liar, because he said he'd keep us safe—"
"Emily." Rebecca Hayes's voice came from the edge of the circle, calm as deep water, and the whole picnic seemed to exhale. Rebecca — the club's lawyer, its legal advisor for a decade, the woman Marcus trusted with every contract, every will, every secret that had a signature on it — stepped through the crowd in a sundress and a cardigan with her phone already in her hand. "Mama's safe, baby. She's at my house, my sister's with her, and a doctor friend is looking at her right now. You did exactly right. You did perfect."
"You called her," Marcus said. It wasn't a question. "Before the picnic. You all knew—" He looked from Rebecca to Travis, and thirty years of brotherhood stood between them like a wall of glass. "How long? Both of you. How long have you known my brother was alive?"
"Marcus." Rebecca's voice was gentle, and that gentleness was worse than anger. "Not here. Not in front of the children — all the children." She nodded at the crowd of families frozen around them, at the little faces watching from behind their mothers' legs. "Take it inside. Take it to church. Emily comes with me, she eats something, she sits with the other kids where she can see the door and know it's guarded. And then you and Travis talk, and you let him finish before you decide anything. Can you do that? Can the president of this club hear a man out before he judges him?"
Marcus looked down at the photograph. His brother's face, seventeen and eternal, grinned up at him from beside a motorcycle that had burned to a skeleton of twisted steel in a service road ditch, the night Daniel Sullivan died.
Died. Supposedly.
"Church," Marcus said. "Ten minutes. Everybody patched, inside, phones in the basket." He turned to Travis and held out the photograph — no. He didn't hold it out. He kept it, closed his hand over his brother's face, and put it in his own pocket, over his own heart. "You talk, Hawk. You talk till there's nothing left. And God help you—" his voice finally cracked— "God help you if this is a lie, because if my brother's alive, then everything I buried fourteen years ago is buried wrong, and I don't know who I am in that story."
Travis nodded. His eyes were wet and he didn't bother hiding it. "Neither do I, brother. That's why he sent her to both of us."