Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six(82)

“Henry, wow. Great to hear from you.”

“How’s retirement treating you?”

“Eh, you know. I hung up a shingle. I’m not the golfing, cruise to the Bahamas, wine on the beach at sunset type turns out. Much to my wife’s dismay.”

Henry smiled. That tracked.

“I was wondering—have time for a beer and a burger?”

“Sure. When?”

“Tonight.”

There was silence, the shuffling of papers.

“What’s going on?”

“You know, I’m not sure.”

They set a time and place, and Henry headed to work, thinking about the murder in Miami, his half sister Cat with whom he had developed a complicated relationship, and the dark worries he’d pushed away until he couldn’t.



* * *



The Palm Pavilion was a beachfront restaurant famous for its grouper sandwich and live music at sunset. The pretty blue and white building sat on the end of a boardwalk looking out languidly at the Gulf of Mexico and the sugar white sands of Clearwater Beach. It was the perfect sunset spot if you could take the late afternoon heat. Diners were cooled by umbrellas and lightly misting fans in the hotter months. Tonight was on the temperate side, the blanket of humidity that would fall in a few weeks still blissfully absent.

Henry waited at a table in the far corner of the deck, taking in the salt air, the laughing gulls. It was a quiet Tuesday night, and the singer-slash-guitar player was favoring Neil Young and David Bowie covers instead of the usual Jimmy Buffett. Henry turned his sweating margarita glass, watching the door. He’d spent the day researching the things he had on his mind, and he was glad for the warm wash of the tequila.

Henry and Cat shared eighteen half siblings that he knew of. Seven of them were dead. Eight if you counted the Miami tech entrepreneur, though he couldn’t be sure about that yet.

He’d spent the day playing amateur detective, cross-referencing between the Origins site and the Donor Sibling Registry. He hadn’t been on either in ages, having given up the quest for finding more family connections.

Henry had accomplished nearly nothing at work as he dug into each of their lives by searching the internet, visiting social media pages, tracking their friends, reading obituaries. He’d gone down the rabbit hole, as Gemma liked to call it. His head was full of images of the people who were related to him by a stranger’s sperm. Their lives, their loves, their wants and dreams.

So many different types of people, all from the same man. A man who was still a mystery to Henry.

After a while, the detective walked through the door, looking tanned and svelte in a pair of khaki shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and Top-Siders, the Florida retiree uniform. His hair was snow-white now and he sported a wide mustache, neatly trimmed.

West spotted Henry and headed his way. When he took his seat, he ordered a beer from the blonde, hard-body, pink lip glossed waitress and looked out at the fading sunset. She brought back the bottle quickly, a tasty local ale from 3 Daughters Brewing.

“It’s always a sight, isn’t it?” said West. “Every sunset a different color show, a different mood, kind of a reflection of whatever you have going on any given day.”

Henry looked out at the pink sky, the dark blue water, the orange orb moving inexorably toward the horizon line. He didn’t have a ton of time for sunsets, in fact, he found the tourist fascination with the whole thing a little tiresome. Yeah, people, the sun sets. Every. Night.

“I didn’t have you pegged as a poet.”

A smile, a long draft of his beer. “Old age turns us all into poets. Or assholes. One or the other.”

Henry laughed at that. His father-in-law was getting old, too. He was no poet.

Henry took the morning’s newspaper article from his pocket and shifted it over to West, who picked it up, slipped a pair of readers from his shirt pocket and read.

“What’s this now?”

“So, a couple years ago I connected with my aunt Gemma, Alice’s sister. Remember?”

“Of course, nice lady. We’re in touch.”

“Yeah,” he said. “She helped me figure some things out. She’s into genealogy, our family’s history. She got me the Origins test.”

“I remember. As I recall it didn’t get you any closer to your father.”

“That’s right. But through a Facebook page, and the Donor Sibling Registry, I connected with some of my half siblings, other kids fathered by the same anonymous donor.”

He told the detective about Cat, about their conversation, how they kept in touch via email, the occasional call. He told West about the woman Cat had found up in the Bronx, Marta Bennet, how she’d died.

Then, he shifted a file out of the backpack he had at his feet. The manila folder contained articles about the donor siblings who had died. Eight, including the Miami entrepreneur, if he was indeed a donor sibling. He hadn’t turned up on Henry’s Origins page, and he wasn’t hooked up with the Donor Sibling Registry—which he only would if he’d taken a test, or been digging into his own ancestry. But the resemblance he bore to Henry—and to Cat—was striking.

West flipped through the articles, twisted at his mustache.

“What are you thinking?” asked West.

Henry shook his head, looked out at the beach. The bell rang and people cheered. The sun had dipped below the horizon. Supposedly when conditions were right, a green flash of light was sometimes visible right after the sun went down. Two optical phenomena combined—a mirage and the dispersion of sunlight. Henry had never seen it.