Only determination.
Only a man who had convinced himself that what he was doing was justified.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “What happened to you? What happened to the boy your mother and I raised?”
For half a second, something shifted in his eyes. I thought I saw uncertainty, perhaps even shame.
Then it disappeared.
“The world has changed, Dad,” he said. “People have to look out for themselves. You had a chance to do this the easy way, but you wouldn’t listen. Now we’re doing it the difficult way.”
The weight of the situation settled over me.
My regular cell phone rarely received a signal at the house. That was one of the disadvantages of living so far out in the hills. The closest neighbor was roughly a mile away, beyond a bend in the road and a thick stretch of trees.
Michael had thought about all of that.
