Empire Falls

asked his brother.
    David sighed—with good reason, since he’d had to work double shifts when Miles was in the hospital. Now this. “What’s wrong with Buster? He was just complaining he needs more hours.”
    “I could ask him,” Miles said. In fact, if David said no, he’d have to. “I’m not sure he’d be able to answer the bell after one of his Saturday nights, is the thing.” Buster’s doctor had warned him to lay off the booze until he got his strength back, but not drinking on Saturday night ran contrary to all of the man’s natural inclinations.
    “You know how I hate breakfasts, Miles.”
    “I promised Tick I’d take her to the Museum of Fine Arts,” Miles explained, his voice low so Walt wouldn’t overhear and volunteer his services. “The show she wants to see is ending pretty soon.”
    “Okay.”
    “Unless you wanted to take her yourself. She’d love that.”
    “No, you go,” David said, opening the oven door and peering at the prime rib roasting slow inside. He’d also prepared a pan of red potatoes in herbs, which Miles picked up and slid onto the rack above the beef. If he hadn’t been there, David somehow would have handled it, using the crook of his arm to cradle one end of the pan, his good hand to grip and guide. His awkwardness was one reason his brother didn’t like to drive long distances, Miles knew. Actually, freeway driving would be easier than the in-town variety, but with only one good hand, David didn’t trust himself in an emergency, especially with Tick in the truck.
    “Since we’re whispering,” David said, “how much longer do you expect to keep Callahan’s a secret?” According to plan, they’d be out of the Empire Grill by Thanksgiving, Christmas at the latest. The problem was that plan was already falling apart, the news from the electrician this morning being only the latest example.
    “As long as possible,” Miles said. “Let it come out in its own time.” He knew what his brother meant, though. It was getting harder and harder to conceal the amount of time they were spending over at Bea’s. And then there were all the phone calls, which Miles tried to conduct in a low voice, because there were usually customers within earshot, but of course nothing attracted their interest more than a confidential tone.
    “I don’t understand,” David said. He’d been cheered by Miles’s unexpected change of heart but troubled by his refusal to explain how it had come about. And his insistence on secrecy made no sense at all. “It’s not like she can do anything, even if she wanted to. For all you know, she’ll be delighted to be shut of this place. You’d do better to come clean. Plus you owe her that much.”
    “Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me what I don’t owe her?” Miles reminded him. “Besides, I’m not so sure there’s nothing she could do, not if she put her mind to it.”
    “If that’s true, wouldn’t you rather know sooner than later?”
    “I’d rather she went away and stayed away for a month or two. I don’t know why she’s hanging around, and I keep thinking maybe it’s us.”
    “More likely it’s development office business,” David said, reasonably enough. “Somebody said she had a bunch of visitors out to her place this week.”
    “Black limos with Massachusetts plates again?”
    “Okay,” his brother conceded. “But if you’re right, and if she’s suspicious and means to cause problems, find out before you start borrowing money and making commitments. When she sees how things are, maybe she’ll relent on that liquor license and you won’t even have to move.”
    “I couldn’t do that to Bea.”
    “No, I suppose not. My point is, the whole thing’s going to come out soon anyhow. You’re no secret-keeper.”
    Miles let this go. Since recognizing “Charlie Mayne” in the newspaper, Miles hadn’t said a word about it to anyone, including his brother, even though his discovery had changed everything. That Sunday morning, he’d felt the knowledge taking root somewhere in his gut and imagined its tentacles probing outward into other parts of his body. Was it that he and his brother had never spoken easily that prevented him from sharing this secret? Of all the subjects they’d been tight-lipped about over the years, their mother had always been right at the top of the list, so maybe that was it. Or maybe it was the possibility that David already knew—that if Miles blurted out the story,