Don’t Look Behind You

certainly didn’t give up trying to find out the truth, but I wasn’t just thinking about myself any longer.
    “I guess, in that moment, I finally grew up.”
    Bob Hansen’s eighty-fourth birthday was on October 13, 2008. Ty told Cindy that he wanted to go see his father.
    Even though Bob hadn’t threatened Cindy when she knocked on his door, she was worried about what he might do when he saw Ty. He’d had nothing to do with either Ty or Nicole for years, and she had seen his delight in criticizing both of his sons during the hour she’d spent with him.
    Like everyone else who either knew Bob or knew of his reputation for violence, she was afraid for Ty.
    But Ty was adamant. Bob Hansen’s birthday fell on a Monday, and the two of them drove to Auburn. Alongside the road, the vine maples were scarlet and the big leaf maples golden as they neared the town where Bob lived.
    They parked a few doors down the street from the neat yellow house that was now Bob’s “pad” in America when he wasn’t in Costa Rica. But when Ty knocked on the door, there was no answer—and there was no vehicle in the driveway.
    Ty sensed that time was running out for his father. “I had gone through several of the first stages of grief by then,” he recalls. “I was probably at a point of acceptance that my mother was dead, and I would still look for her, but I guess I wanted a final word with my father, some kind of peaceful conversation.”
    They waited for a long time; Ty was convinced his father was living there and determined to wait until he got home.
    “I didn’t realize then how frightened Cindy really was to be there.”
    More than an hour later, Bob Hansen’s Toyota 4Runner came down the street and turned into his driveway, coasting into the garage.
    After the old man crawled awkwardly out of the driver’s seat, he went to the back of his SUV and was rummaging around, looking for something. Ty, followed by a nervous Cindy, walked up and they were standing behind him as he closed the rear hatch.
    Bob Hansen was caught off guard as he turned around, shocked to see Ty.
    “I want to talk to you,” Ty said, and Bob turned away from him.
    His father had grown very old, and he seemed afraid.
    “Dad!” Ty called. “I forgive you. Do you hear me? I forgive you!”
    The elderly man slowed down only slightly.
    “I hope you can forgive me?” Ty shouted. He didn’t regret his long hunt to find out what had happened to his mother, or feel guilty about contacting the sheriff. At the same time he realized that it must be hard on the old man.
    Ty was torn, pulled in two directions. He and Nick had worked with their dad when they were younger, they’d learned things from him—if not ethics, then skills that they’d been able to use.
    The vacations and trips had been fun once in a while—even though they never quite got over waiting for theirfather to get mad about something. Kandy Kay was gone, and Nicole had a completely different life. Ty’s uncle Ken was gone.
    “What I would have given to have a father like my uncle Ken,” Ty lamented. “He was a really good man.”
    Ty still didn’t trust his father; he still believed that his father had destroyed his mother—and he didn’t want to spend time with him. He didn’t want anything from him. But he hated the idea that one of them would die full of hate.
    “Dad,” Ty called again, “can you forgive me?”
    Bob Hansen half-turned toward Ty, and his son could see hatred in his eyes. He brought his hand up and brusquely signaled with it in a dismissive gesture.
    “Get the hell off my property!” Bob snarled. “You son of a bitch!”
    Cindy tugged at Ty’s arm and urged him to come back to their car. Bob had always had a lot of guns and ammunition in his houses, and there was no telling what he might do.
    For an instant, the world stood still—and then Bob limped toward his house and disappeared. For Ty, there was a measure of satisfaction. His father had always forbidden them to mention their mother’s name to him. And now the old man had had no choice but to hear Ty’s angry accusations. Would it have any impact on him?
    It was over so quickly. Ty hadn’t said everything he wanted to, and he knew he might never know what his father’s reaction was.
    Marv Milosevich, however, heard about the confrontation between Ty and Bob.
    “Bob told me that Ty scared him to death,” Marv said when interviewed. “Bob said, ‘I thought he was going to kill