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Quiet Deception

By Ann Gaylia O'Barr

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CHAPTER ONE

His father’s presence on the doorstep surprised Todd Edwards and gladdened him, too. “You didn’t have to come, Dad. It’s good to see you, though.”
Joseph Edwards stepped across the threshold, and Todd shut the door on the subfreezing weather. After they embraced, Joseph said, “I called before I left this morning, but I couldn’t reach you.”
“I was out with one of the search parties.”
“Nothing new about Byron then?”
“Nothing different from when I called you yesterday. We’ve started searching, now the weather’s clearing, but it’s still cold and nobody can stay out for long. The terrain is so rugged and icy, it takes forever to cover any ground.”
Todd added, “They’ve closed the university for the week because of the weather. Just as well. Gives us time to do something about Byron’s classes.” He realized he was talking as though Byron wasn’t coming back.
Todd helped his father with his coat, still marveling at the whiteness of his full head of hair, no trace of the coal black Todd remembered from childhood. He stood trim and muscular, a foot under his son’s height. Todd’s looks, so they told him, favored his mother, though his hair had darkened as he grew.
“How were the roads?” Todd asked.
“More snow the further south I got. Piled up on the Appalachians. I had to wait before coming into Tennessee for the snowplow to clear.”
“You need something warm. Tea?”
“Fine.”
They sat at the kitchen table and waited for the water to boil. “Todd, I didn’t come to talk about the weather. I’m heartsick about Byron, but if they haven’t found him by now, I’m afraid I don’t hold out much hope. I came to see you. I can spend a couple of days, but I need to leave on Saturday. As Providence would have it, Charles is down with the flu and can’t take the service.”
Todd walked to the stove even though he had to wait for the water. Just before the whistle shrieked, he grabbed the kettle and poured water into the cups.
“Well?” said his father.
Todd returned the kettle to the stove and sat down, not looking at the other man. The steam turned the air humid in the small kitchen and increased the ice in the window corners.
“Dad, it’s been almost two years since I got back from ‘Nam. I’m into my second year of teaching. I wish you’d stop worrying about me.”
“Your friend from childhood disappears and I’m not supposed to be concerned about you? Regardless of whatever you’re still feeling about Viet Nam.”
“Okay, so it’s upsetting, to say the least.” Todd turned back to his father. “It’s the way it’s all happened. Kenneth insists he thought Byron was dead when he collapsed on his desk, but he or his—well, he wasn’t there when Kenneth got back.”
His father lifted the tea bag from his cup and squeezed it between his thumb and the spoon. “Like you said yesterday, everybody thinks Byron just fainted? Then after Kenneth went for help, he revived?”
“And must have wandered out, probably confused.” Todd admitted it as the most likely explanation, but he didn’t like it. “Weather’s been below zero for three nights since then. He couldn’t possibly have survived if he lost himself in the national forest. Plus, of course, his heart. I’d guess that’s why he collapsed in the first place.”
Todd gulped his tea, not minding that it was hot, and tried to blot out the image of Byron dying alone, his body torn apart and dragged off by wild animals. It triggered other memories best forgotten.
“Todd?” His father’s voice gentled him.
He raised his head and met the dark eyes. “Thanks. Maybe it happened that way. If it did, I’ll have to accept it, won’t I? Something else, though. I talked to one of the law enforcement officers, new guy, served in ‘Nam, too, same time I did. We sort of hit it off.”
“He told you something?”
“He said Byron had a sizeable bank account and that he withdrew almost all of it on Thursday, before he disappeared on Sunday evening.”
His father put down his cup. “I’m not surprised about the account. Byron told me after he sold his father’s house that he was going to invest some of it after he paid for his schooling. He didn’t ever want to be poor again, he said.”
“But why did he draw out most of the account?”
His father didn’t answer, just looked thoughtful. Todd wondered how much he knew about Byron’s life after he left Canard.
Did he know, as Todd did, that Byron’s past might be a stumbling block when his tenure review came up if somebody dredged it up? If all of it were known, Byron might be dismissed after his first year at Adair, deemed unable to measure up to the moral standards of a Christian university, no matter how well he taught or how many scholarly articles he wrote.
Was blackmail the answer to all this? Did Byron take the money from his account to pay a blackmailer?
Maybe Byron drew out the money to start a new life, disappear, escape his problems. But if he was planning to leave, he wouldn’t have left his new GTO in the parking lot outside Stoddard Hall, would he?
Best not to reveal such thoughts to his father. If the older man knew something about Byron’s last few years, and Todd suspected he did, fine. If not, why burden him with what a boy he loved almost as a second son had done with his life? Nor would he tell him about the last meeting he and Byron had.
Too bad Dad didn’t see him that last time instead of me. He’d have forgiven him, gotten through to him somehow.
He could share the other burden, though. “Byron told me one time, in graduate school, that he wished you were his father and I were his brother.”
His father’s eyes sparkled at that, and some of his age slipped from him. “I always thought you two were more like brothers than friends. Even if you felt jealous sometimes of Byron coming into our lives.”
“You knew that?”
“Of course.”
“I felt like the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son.”
“Well, Byron certainly played the prodigal a time or two, didn’t he?”
So his father knew some of it at least. Todd said, “Every time Byron made it, he seemed determined to mess up. He said as much once.”
Careful or I’ll spill out that last meeting.
His father said, “It was hard for Byron to forgive the man who sired him. We talked about it a lot. I think the reason he hated Eddie so much was that he was tempted to be like him.”
“I don’t think I helped by—almost hating him sometimes.”
“It’s too bad you can’t see it from a distance like I can. Like you said, little brother Byron got on your nerves at times, especially when you were younger, but you helped him a great deal later on. He was able to go as far as he did because he looked up to you. He told me that several times.”
“Thanks. That helps.”
Todd refrained from pointing out that they were talking about Byron in the past tense. Instead he said, “He’s been coming in and out of our lives since I was ten years old.”
His father smiled. “Oh, no. We met him for the first time right after he was born. You weren’t quite a year old, and the War had just ended.”

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