Silent Fall

in a restaurant, and Richard hadn’t wanted to look bad by snubbing his son in front of his longtime friends.
    They lived separate lives now. Jake hadn’t even invited their father to his wedding. Neither of them considered their family to be anyone but the two of them, except their grandmother, when she was lucid enough to know she had grandsons, which was rare these days. And now Jake had his own family in Sarah and their daughter, Caitlyn. He was moving on, and that was the way it was supposed to be. Perhaps this was the perfect time for his father to strike. With Jake away, there was no one to step in and help Dylan, no one else who would point a finger in his father’s direction.
    "What happened to your mother?" Catherine asked, interrupting his thoughts. "You told me she left when you were a kid, but where is she now?"
    "I have no idea. I haven’t seen her since I was seven years old. She left us a note saying she was sorry, but she didn’t really like being a mother, and she thought we’d be better off with Richard. She never came back to see us, and her name was taboo in my father’s household. If I said her name aloud I’d definitely get a beating. So I kept my mouth shut."
    "And you never tried to find her?" Catherine asked.
    He heard the curious note in her voice and knew it didn’t make sense that he’d spent the past decade searching for the truth about other people’s lives while ignoring his own. "I’ve thought about it," he muttered. "That’s as far as I’ve gone."
    "Why? You have resources, connections. Why haven’t you tried?"
    A dozen good reasons crossed his mind, but he spoke the one that was the truth, the plain, simple, unvarnished truth. "Because she left me. She didn’t want me or care to know what happened to me. Why should I care about her?" For some reason he couldn’t seem to lie to Catherine, although his painful words made him sound like a complete wimp.
    "That makes sense."
    "It might make sense, but it’s a chickenshit way to think," he said, annoyed at himself.
    "You’re not a coward."
    "Aren’t I? I’m afraid to find the mother who left me twenty-three years ago. That sounds cowardly to me."
    "What does Jake say?"
    "He accepts that she’s gone. He thinks my father made life difficult for her, and that she had to leave in order to survive. He remembers our parents fighting all the time, and my mother crying. He’s far more accepting than I am."
    "It seems strange that she wouldn’t have taken you with her when she left your dad. She must have known what kind of man she was married to, especially if they were arguing a lot."
    "That’s what I can’t forgive her for," he admitted. "She should have taken us with her."
    "Maybe she couldn’t. Your father sounds like a bully and a very strong man. She might not have been able to stand up to him."
    "He was all that. And to be fair, it’s possible he told her she could go, but she wasn’t taking us. Although I can’t understand why he would have fought to keep me or Jake. He didn’t care about being a father any more than she wanted to be a mother. They were two people who should never have had kids." He paused. "It probably would have hurt his reputation too much to lose his family. His standing in the community means everything to him. I’m sure he must have told his friends that my mother was psychotic or something. Hell, maybe he told them he put her away in a psychiatric hospital. I doubt he would have ever admitted to anyone that she left him."
    "Then he wouldn’t set you up for murder," Catherine said, shaking her head. "It wouldn’t look good to have his son in jail."
    "Exactly. I told you it’s not him. But you asked me who hated me enough to want to torture me, and his was the first and only name that popped into my head. So it has to be someone else, most likely Ravino."
    "Right."
    A few minutes of silence passed between them. Dylan glanced over at Catherine. She stared out the window, lost in thought. He wondered what she was thinking about now, what had drawn the tiny frown lines around the corners of her eyes. She was such a soft person, with beautiful skin, tender lips. There wasn’t a hard thing about her. She was all heart and emotion. Once in a while he saw hints of a weary, cynical side, but she still never came off as cold and ruthless, just a little sad at times -- like now. He