Chapter 12 - The Cost of Cowardice
Brody answered my call on the second ring.
"Were you on the radio when Dad passed the all-clear?"
A long silence. Then: "Yes."
I leaned against the porch rail. "Were you going to tell me?"
"I was trying to find the right time."
"Six years wasn't enough?"
He didn't defend himself. That made me angrier, because I needed him to say something I could push against.
We met at the closed ball field where Dad used to watch Brody play Little League. The bleachers were rusted. A faded banner flapped against the fence.
"Mercer called Dad because the county system was overloaded," Brody said. "Dad repeated the all-clear after Mercer told him the gate release was canceled. I heard the first warning, but I figured Mercer had better information."
"And when the water hit?"
"I knew we'd been sent into it. I knew before anybody fell."
"You could have stopped the convoy."
"I could have tried." His voice cracked. "I didn't. Then I jumped in without a rope because I thought if I saved somebody, it would wipe out what I'd done."
I remembered him in the current, reaching for Castillo while his feet swept out from under him. Reckless. Desperate. Human.
"Dad found out?"
"At the hospital. I told him I thought it was my fault. He held my hand and said it was his fault too. Then Mom came in and started calling me a hero. We let her."
"You let her steal my part and bury Jonah's."
Brody looked straight at me. "Yes."
I sat on the lowest bleacher. For years I'd pictured a single cruel liar. The truth was worse: a chain of frightened people making the next easy choice, until a dead man's name disappeared behind everyone else's relief.
Brody sat two rows away. "I didn't come to the ceremony to be forgiven," he said. "I came because I heard Mercer was going to destroy the last evidence."
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"How did you hear that?"
He pulled out his phone. There was a voicemail, left at 2:06 a.m. A familiar voice said, "Tell your sister to stop digging. Or I'll make sure everybody knows who cut Jonah loose."
