InSight

them, but dead was more of a prison than contained, though he disliked the thought of either.
    The phone rang. He let it go to the answering machine. When he heard the voice, he picked up. “Hey, Carl.”
    “Deciding whether you feel like answering your phone, big brother?”
    “I couldn’t check the number in time.” Sometimes Reece answered; sometimes he didn’t, depending on his mood. Carl knew that.
    His brother laughed.
    “What’s up?” Reece noted the hesitation. “Carl?”
    “Dad’s in the hospital. He had another heart attack.”
    Reece stiffened at the mention of his father, a reaction over which he had no control. “What do the doctors say?”
    “It doesn’t look good. He’s conscious but weak. It’s only a matter of time.”
    “Well, keep me informed.”
    “Jesus, Reece. That’s cold. Your father is dying and all you can say is ‘keep me informed’?”
    “We’ve gone over this a hundred times. Sorry, but I can’t fake that I care. Wish I could, but that’s not my style.” He pulled a beer from the fridge.
    “You’re still his son.”
    Reece wanted to laugh, but the humor eluded him. “He should have thought about that twenty-one years ago.” He took a long draft from the bottle. It did nothing to cool his heat.
    “He could have handled it differently, I agree, but―”
    “Look, I’ve gotta go. Let me know when it’s over.”
    Reece clicked the off button before Carl could argue. He finished the beer, then took another. He’d worked hard over the years to control his anger and sense of betrayal, but times like these brought them back like a knife twisting in his belly. How could he forget? One day he and Carl were drawing up plans to expand the family’s home-building business—Reece, the architect, designing a new type of energy efficient structure; Carl the business head, making them affordable. The next day he was locked in a cement cell with the echoing sound of steel doors clanging shut to keep him rotting inside. One day he had dozens of friends; the next only Carl and his mother stood in his corner. When he saw the toll it took on his mother to sneak away and visit, he asked her not to come any more. That, more than anything had torn him up.
    Now she was gone, and he hoped the old bastard would soon follow, freeing him of at least part of the rage that consumed him and, yes, the hatred for the old man he carried in his chest like one of his stones. How could he feel anything for a man who believed his son capable of slicing a woman’s throat, almost severing her head from her body? Who probably still believed it with his dying breath?
    Reece looked around the house he built with his own two hands. Stone and wood and glass. It fit the new life he’d made for himself. A life he liked. He wasn’t designing the buildings he’d envisioned all those years ago, except for his own, but he was creating something he considered beautiful. Others thought so too, which gave him pleasure. He worked when the spirit moved him, nourished his passion for reading, fished, and ran the mountain roads—all the things he couldn’t do inside, except for the reading, which had saved his sanity.
    His thoughts roamed back to Dana Minette without conscious effort. He couldn’t decide whether she was cute, pretty, or beautiful, though his skill judging women was twenty-one-years rusty. He didn’t score the trifecta in honky-tonk bars, but he wasn’t after looks in those places.
    Dana Minette possessed something quite different. Determination, humor, and warmth, all wrapped up in an attractive package about sixty-three inches in height. Better still, she didn’t appear the type to genuflect for money or position. So how did a creep like Robert Minette get a woman like her to stay with him for twenty years?
    He remembered the first time he saw Minette , with his white-collared, pin-striped shirt, suspenders, and shiny suit. The man had done everything to rally the townspeople against the murderer who wanted to live among them. Reece had run too far and too long to run again. He fought Minette and won. So where did the lawyer find the nerve to drive into his yard, say he had no hard feelings, and act like Reece should fall at his feet and say Yassuh , Masser .
    “No one refuses Robert Minette ,” he said, slicked-back hair glistening in the morning sun. “Robert Minette gets what he wants.”
    Reece laughed and ordered him off his property. The attorney stormed away in his