“Your Uncle Luke. Your dad's best friend?”
“Yeah. Well, he worked for my father for the last 20 years. He was my dad's business manager. And I worked closely with him for the last decade since I've been my dad's right-hand man.”
“Okay,” I say, remembering how Rye’s demeanor changed tonight when we were in the hallway and Luke's name was brought up.
“Thing is, I realized Luke had been siphoning money from my father. A lot of it—200 grand.”
“Oh my God,” I say.
“Yeah. And when I figured it out, going through the books, I didn't want to come out and tell my father without talking to Luke first. I'd known Luke a long time. He's like an uncle to me. So I went to talk to him.”
“Okay,” I say, listening, taking it in. “What happened?”
“It was bad. It was the worst night of my fucking life.” Rye begins to pace the living room. “We were at the Burly Bar. One town over. We’d had one beer each. Coors Light, nothing heavy. I think to myself, this is a good time to bring it up. No other family around. No pressure, right? So I say hey, I’ve been going through the books. Immediately Luke’s demeanor changes. He gets agitated, defensive, angry. I say hey, we don’t have to do this here. We can go talk about this with my father. Of course Luke doesn’t want to talk to my dad about it. Because he’s been stealing money from my father for a decade.”
“All right,” I say, “and then what?”
Rye sits down on the chair next to me. “He told me it would ruin him. If Red knew the truth, that he had been stealing from my family, he would never look at him the same way. None of us would. The kids, all of us looked at him like he was family. Thing is, Luke had no other family. My dad gave Luke a second chance, and then Luke, well, he wasted it. More than wasted it. He told me not to tell my father, that he would try to fix it because if he couldn’t fix it, well, he'd rather be dead. Said he’d be too ashamed, too embarrassed, he wouldn't want anyone to ever know the truth. I told him it was all going to be all right, that my family would understand, that maybe my dad would just work it out with him alone and the rest of my family wouldn’t have to know. But he wasn't having it. And when he left that night, he hadn't been drinking any more than that one beer. He wasn't saying anything too crazy, too reckless. But the next morning I got this call. He was gone.”
“Oh my God. What happened?”
“He drove right up to Rickshaw Ridge and his car went over the railing. They called it an accident of course. It's a bad bend. It's dangerous to go on too fast. And if it's at night, people die up there. But hell, Luke had no reason to go up there. I know why he went. He couldn't live with the truth, with me knowing the truth.”
“Oh Rye,” I say.
“They found his body and it was no accident. He knew what he was doing. He'd rather die than be found out and look my father in the eyes and tell him what he’d done.”
“So you just held that in. You never told anybody about the missing money?”
“No,” I say. “I had money in savings, plenty of it. So I covered the money. I deposited it into the accounts.”
“All $200,000 of it?”
“Yeah,” Rye says. “The last thing I wanted was Luke's memory tarnished like this.
If I would have kept my mouth shut, if I would have never talked to him that night, he would still be alive. I was a fucking fool, Prairie. I took matters into my own hands. I should have talked to my dad, to my brother Graham. Anyone.”
“You were trying to do the right thing. You went to the source. You thought if you spoke with Luke yourself, you might understand where he was coming from. And it doesn't matter now, does it?”
Rye is shaking his head. “He's dead. And I'm the one who killed him.”
“No,” I say, “you didn't kill anybody. You didn't do anything, Rye.”
“Like hell I didn’t, Prairie. If I hadn't had that conversation with Luke that night, he would still be here.”
“You have to go talk to your father. You have to explain this to your family.”
“No, I'm not talking to them,” he says, tears in his eyes. “I'm never gonna tell them. I don't want them to know. I want them to believe that Luke was the man they think he was. They love him. You should hear the family stories they tell. No, I'm not going to take that away.”
But something else clicks inside of me. As I look at Rye Rough, my whole heart falls, sinks to the floor.
“Is your family right?” I ask him, tears filling my eyes. “Have you chosen to take care of me, protect me, love me, as your way to pay penance for what you think you did wrong? As your way to make this right?” I shake my head, terrified at the realization.
“No,” Rye says. “No, not at all. That's not it. I love you, Prairie. I love you heart, mind, soul. All of it.”
“Are you sure, Rye? Because it sounds like you were sent to those mountains to get your head on straight because you were pissing everyone in your family off over the grief you’re holding inside of you. And then you met me—this broken woman who needed saving—and now you're pouring everything into me thinking I'm going to fix you. But my love can’t make you whole, Rye. You have to go fix things with your family first.”
“I can't do that,” he says.