Curiosity Thrilled The Cat

19

Single Lotus Kick

“Hi, Lise,” I said. “Is this about Gregor Easton?”

“Oh, yes, it is,” she said, and there was a smug gleefulness in her voice. Then she yawned again.

“Have you been to bed yet?” I asked.

Lise’s husband was a jazz guitarist who played regularly in clubs all over Boston and up and down the East Coast. He didn’t keep exactly regular hours, and on the weekend neither did Lise.

“I’m lying across the bed right now,” Lise said.

“So what did you find out?” I asked. “I got your e-mail.” I pictured her sprawled across her queen-sized bed with all the pillows piled under her head.

“Well, as I told you in the e-mail, Easton was born Douglas Gregory Williams. The pulled-himself-upfrom-humble-beginnings story?”

“A fake?” I had to change position because one of my feet was falling asleep.

“Uh-huh. Just like the name. He did his first degree at a small university in Florida. And get this: It was a teaching degree.”

“Easton was going to be a teacher?”

“Apparently,” Lise said. “Hang on a second; I’m losing a pillow.” There were some muffled bumps and then she was back. “There’s a year and a half unaccounted for, as far as I can tell, after he got that degree. Maybe he was teaching, for all I know. Anyway, after that he enrolled in the graduate music program at Oberlin Conservatory. He shaved a couple of years off his age at that point, too.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “Easton went to Oberlin Conservatory?”

“Yep.” When Lise got excited her educated, cultured way of speaking disappeared.

Violet had gone to Oberlin. My heart started to race. “But I thought his graduate degree was from the University of Cincinnati.”

“It is. Easton went to Oberlin when he was still Douglas Gregory Williams—and he was only there for a year. He didn’t graduate.”

“Wow.” I pulled my legs up underneath me. “Do you know why he left?”

“Does a bear have a hairy butt?” she chortled. “Yes, I know.”

A goofy Lise reminded me of the eighteen-year-old girl from northern Maine I’d met in college.

“So?” I prompted.

“Scandal,” she crowed. “Sex, drugs and rock and roll.”

“What?”

“Hang on a sec,” she said. “Yes, babe,” I heard her say. “I’d love a cup.” Then she was back again. “Okay, so there weren’t any drugs that I heard about, and it was classical music, not rock and roll, but the sex part definitely happened.”

“Do I want to hear this, Lise?” I asked, wishing I had a big cup of coffee myself.

She laughed. “Don’t worry. I don’t have any gory details.”

“What do you have?” I heard her take a slurp of coffee before she answered.

“Two things. First of all, Easton was struggling in his composition classes, and then suddenly he got very, very good.”

“He was cheating?”

“That’s the general consensus among people I talked to.”

I stretched both arms over my head. “He could have been homesick or just needed time to adjust to the program.”

“Maybe. But no one seems to think that was it. Apparently he didn’t go from good to better; he went from mediocre to great.” I heard more coffee-slurping sounds.

“So was he kicked out for cheating?” I asked.

“No,” Lise said. “There was a fair amount of talk and a lot of suspicion, but no proof.”

“So, what’s the sex part?”

Hercules wandered over. I stretched my hand down to pet him.

“Easton took some pictures of another student in the program—a female student. Now, by today’s standards they’re pretty tame, but then . . .”

“I get it,” I said.

“And there was some suggestion that he’d pressured the young woman.”

“Is that why he left Oberlin?” Herc was purring.

“Indirectly. The young woman came from a wealthy family. Money seems to have made the entire thing and Easton go away.”

“Paid off or run off?” I asked.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Lise said, yawning loudly in my ear. “I have to go to bed. But there’s one more thing. The young woman, the one Easton took the pictures of? I have her number. Do you want it?”

“Yes,” I said, scrambling out of the chair. “Let me grab a pencil.” I wrote down the woman’s name, Phoebe Michaels, and her number, thanked Lise profusely, reminding her that I owed her, and said good-bye.

Hercules had been waiting patiently for me. I picked him up and went into the kitchen. Lise had pretty much confirmed Ruby’s assessment of Easton’s character.

I was curious about Violet, and did some fast calculations. She could have been at Oberlin at the same time as Easton. Why hadn’t she said anything? She had to have recognized Easton. Could she have killed him? What reason would she have? It made about as much sense as Oren being involved.

“So far my choices are Oren or Violet,” I said to Hercules. “I don’t like either one.”

There was a knock at the door. I set Hercules down and went to see who it was.

Abigail stood on my back stoop, holding a cardboard box. “Did I catch you at a bad time?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I was just getting a cup of coffee. Come in. Can I get you a cup?”

“Thanks, Kathleen, but I can’t stay. I just wanted to show you these books.” She followed me into the kitchen and set the box on the table. “I was sorting more things for the yard sale yesterday.” She opened the flaps of the box. “I found these and I didn’t want to leave them at the library so I brought them home.”

I picked up the top volume, a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in excellent condition.

“That’s a first edition,” Abigail said.

I almost dropped the book. “Are you serious? Do you know what this could be worth?”

She nodded. “I do now. I spent some time online last night, researching prices.” She gestured to the box. “There’s several thousand dollars’ worth of books in just that box. I didn’t feel right about leaving them at the library. I hope that’s okay.”

“It’s very okay,” I said. “Thank you. The board will have to have all the books valued, but this is going to be a big boost to the book-buying budget.”

“I’m so glad,” Abigail said.

“Where do you think they came from?” I picked up Alice again, then wondered if I should be handling the book.

“I suppose they could have been part of the library’s collection, but I’m guessing they were donated by someone who didn’t know what they had.”

I pointed to the side of the box where it looked like a chicken had been practicing hieroglyphics with a Sharpie. “Your secret code?” I asked.

Abigail smiled. “I didn’t want anyone to know what was in the box and I didn’t want to mix up the books with the others for the sale. It seems kind of silly now.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. An idea was beginning to tickle the back of my mind. “I have a meeting with Everett on Monday,” I said. “I’ll show him these and he can arrange to have them appraised and sold.”

“If I find anything else, I’ll let you know,” she promised.

I walked her to the back door. “Thanks,” I said. “I have a wish list of kid’s books I’ve been itching to order, and now it looks like I’ll be able to.”

Abigail smiled. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

Hercules, who had disappeared when Abigail knocked, came back to the kitchen. “You may be a genius,” I told him. “Your brother, too.”

He ducked his head. It may have been modesty or, more likely, he’d noticed a couple of stinky-cracker crumbs on the floor.

I pointed at him. “Don’t move.” The piece of paper Hercules had taken from Oren’s was on my dresser. So was the scrap Owen had swiped out of Rebecca’s recycling bin. I grabbed both of them.

Hercules was waiting by the table. I showed him the piece of paper he’d found last night. “You see this?” I asked. “I think it’s code. Only instead of being letters and words I think it’s music.” Hercules studied the paper as if he was trying to decide if he agreed with me.

“See this?” I held out the sheet music Owen had pilfered the other day. “Gregor Easton wrote that.” I pointed to the composer’s name in the top corner of the paper. “At least he’s supposed to have written it, but look at the first line of music, and then look at the first line of the other page. The pattern’s the same.”

Herc actually looked from one sheet of paper to the other. I sat down, laying both bits of paper on the table. My mind was throwing out ideas faster than I could sort them into sense.

“Lise said Easton was suspected of cheating. His music went from nothing to spectacular almost overnight.” I tapped my nails on the tabletop. “Oren didn’t finish university because of some kind of breakdown. What if he was at Oberlin, too? What if Easton’s music was really Oren’s?”

There was a sour taste in the back of my throat. If Easton had stolen Oren’s music I’d just come up with a motive for him to want the conductor dead. I got up and had a glass of water instead of more coffee. Phoebe Michaels’s phone number was still sitting on the counter. She’d been there at Oberlin with Easton—actually Williams—and Violet. Maybe she could give me some answers.

I looked at the clock. It wasn’t too early to call anymore. I picked up the number. “What do I say to her?” I asked Hercules. He was busy washing his face and had no suggestions.

Then I thought of my dad. “When all else fails, Katie, just tell the truth,” he liked to say. Before I could talk myself out of it I went into the living room, picked up the receiver and punched in the number.

Phoebe Michaels answered on the fourth ring.

“Dr. Michaels, my name is Kathleen Paulson,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning, but I’m hoping you’ll talk to me about Gregor Easton. You knew him as Douglas Williams.”

“You’re Dr. Tremayne’s friend,” she said.

Thank you, Lise, I thought. “Yes, I am. You know that Mr. Easton is dead?”

“Yes,” Dr. Michaels said. “Did you kill him? That doesn’t mean I won’t talk to you. I’d just like to know.”

“No, I didn’t kill him,” I said. “In fact, the police haven’t said how he died yet.”

“But you don’t think he died of natural causes.” Her voice was low and husky.

I sat down on the footstool. “I don’t. I’m the librarian here in Mayville Heights, Minnesota. Mr. Easton was in my library the night he died, and I’m the one who found his body at the Stratton Theater the next morning.”

“Ah, so you’re a suspect,” she said.

“Yes, I guess I am. And it doesn’t help that I’ve only been here a few months.”

“So how can I help you, Ms. Paulson?”

“First, please call me Kathleen,” I said.

“All right, Kathleen—if you’ll call me Phoebe. I’m only Dr. Michaels to my students and pretentious colleagues.”

I smiled, liking her more the more she talked. “You were in the music program at Oberlin Conservatory with Gregor Easton, when he was known as Douglas Williams.”

“I was.”

“What was he like?”

“Handsome, charming, amoral, manipulative and not very talented.”

“There were rumors he was cheating somehow when it came to his compositions.”

“Oh, I think that was more than a rumor. I think it was the truth.”

“Why?” I asked, stretching both my legs out in front of me.

“He had no ability, no talent as a composer. Then suddenly he got incredibly good. He claimed he’d just been suffering from performance anxiety.”

“You didn’t believe him?”

I heard a snort of derisive laughter.

“No, I didn’t,” she said emphatically. “Doug—Easton—was confident to the point of arrogance. The music he started handing in was complex, sensitive and inspired. All the things he wasn’t. I don’t know where it came from, but I’ve never believed he wrote it.”

“Easton left after a year,” I said, trying to work up to asking her about the pictures. I didn’t need to.

“Kathleen, I’m sure Dr. Tremayne told you about the pictures.”

“She did. I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

She laughed. “Oh, that ship sailed a long time ago.” Her voice grew serious again. “Yes, he took photographs of me. Nothing that would be a big deal now.”

“But not then.”

“No,” she said. “Then it seemed like the end of the world. I was eighteen. I’d been sheltered by my parents from everything. He was older. He seemed so sophisticated, so worldly, compared to the boys I knew. They seemed like, well, boys. I was an easy mark.”

“Did he pressure you to pose for the pictures?”

“‘You would if you loved me,’” she said. “How many women have fallen for that line? He promised the pictures would be art. They were just shots of me in my underwear, wrapped in some gauzy black fabric that had probably been a window curtain.”

“But no nudity?”

“No. Just bare shoulders or a curve of cleavage. But it was how things seemed that was the problem, not how they really were.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” I said, changing my position on the footstool.

“He did my makeup—red lips, black eyeliner, false eyelashes. I didn’t exactly look like some inexperienced young woman from a good family.”

“What happened after?”

“He dropped me as soon as he had the pictures. I cried. I begged. He laughed. I was terrified he’d show them to everyone I knew.”

I tried to imagine how humiliated she must have felt. “I’m so sorry that happened to you, Phoebe,” I said. “It must have been horrible.”

“At the time it was. But I was very lucky. I had a mother I could talk to and a father with money. I went home for ten days. When I went back Easton was gone.”

“Your father paid him off.”

Her voice turned thoughtful. “You know, I don’t know for certain. I just assumed he did. We never spoke about it. I thought at the time that my father had gotten the photographs from Easton and destroyed them.”

“He didn’t?”

“No. One day the photos and negatives just showed up in my mailbox in the proverbial plain brown envelope.”

“And you don’t have any idea who sent them?”

“I don’t think I was the first young woman Easton took photographs of. Or the last. I always felt it was one of the women from our Tuesday seminar class.”

“Why?”

“Those were the people Easton spent all his time with.”

“Was there a young woman named Violet in that group?” I asked.

“No.”

“You’re certain?”

“I am. I still have a photo of all of us. Ironically, it was Easton who took it. There was no Violet in the class.” She listed off the names from memory.

So either I was wrong about when Violet had been at Oberlin or she hadn’t known Easton. I felt relieved, but it was a long time ago and I wanted to be sure.

“Phoebe, do you think you could find that photograph?”

“I think so,” she said. “But it’ll take some time. I’m a bit of a pack rat.”

“That’s all right,” I said.

“Give me your e-mail address. If I find the picture I’ll scan it and send it to you.”

“One last question,” I said. “Oren Kenyon. Was he in the seminar class?” Please say no, I thought, crossing my fingers.

“Oren Kenyon? Would he have been maybe sixteen or seventeen?”

“Yes.”

“He was. But I think he was auditing the class, not taking it for credit.”

I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Thank you so much for talking to me,” I said. “I won’t keep you any longer.”

“You’re welcome, Kathleen,” she said. “When this is finally settled, when you finally figure out what happened, please call me and let me know how it ends.”

“I’ll do that,” I promised. We said good-bye and hung up.

I went back to the kitchen, where the papers were still on the table. It always came back to Oren, no matter which way I turned. The more evidence that piled up against Oren, the more resistant I got to the idea that he’d had something to do with Gregor Easton’s death.

“I have to talk to him,” I said to the empty kitchen. I shut off the coffeemaker. Again. I went upstairs, brushed my hair and put on some lipstick.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Was I crazy? Was going to talk to Oren a mistake? But I needed to find out if he was involved in Gregor Easton’s death in some way.

Was this like one of those old melodramatic, womenin-jeopardy movies? Was I just like the innocent young heroine who, when she hears a noise in the cellar late at night, with a violent serial killer on the loose, tosses her hair, licks her lips and goes down into the basement instead of getting the heck out of there? My hair was too short to toss and I didn’t want to lick off the lipstick I’d just applied. Oren was not the bad guy in some old Hollywood B movie.

I got my keys. Both cats were sitting on the bench in the porch. I stopped to pet them. “I have to go see Oren,” I told them. “I’ll be back soon.” I locked the door behind me. It would at least keep Owen from roaming around.

The clouds overhead were thinning, being blown away to wisps of nothing over the lake. It was another beautiful day. I realized I was beginning to think of Mayville as home.

I could see Oren’s truck in the driveway as I approached his house. Moving closer, I caught sight of him on the verandah. He was painting something. It looked like a wooden trough; then I realized it was a window box. Oren looked up and waved his paintbrush in greeting.

I took a deep breath, wiped my sweaty palms on the bottom of my T-shirt and walked down the driveway toward him.

“Good morning, Kathleen,” he said.

“Good morning.” I pointed at his work. “A window box?”

He nodded. “For Eric at the café. The bottom rotted out of the old one.”

The paint was a deep robin’s-egg blue. “I like the color.”

“That would be Susan’s idea.”

Exchanging social pleasantries was just putting off what I’d come to do. I cleared my throat. “Oren, could I talk to you about Gregor Easton?” I asked.

He studied the paintbrush for a moment before looking at me. “Yes,” he said. “I just need to put the paint away and wash the brush.”

He put a couple more strokes of paint on the end of the flower box, then put the lid on the can and stood up. “I’ll only be a minute,” he said.

I nodded.

“Why don’t you come in, Kathleen?” he said.

“All right.” I stepped inside the extension, which was obviously Oren’s workshop, and my mouth literally gaped open. All I could manage was a faint “Oh.”

The space was completely open, floor to ceiling. High windows on the back wall flooded the room with light. More windows on the end of the room overlooked a long workbench. On the other side there was a counter with a sink, and cupboards underneath. There weren’t nearly as many tools as I would have expected. Everything was neat, clean and perfectly organized.

But what dominated the room, almost forcing you to look, were the sculptures. An enormous metal bird, an eagle, I realized, as I moved closer, with a wingspan of at least six feet, was suspended in flight from the ceiling beams at the back half of the room.

I could visualize the feathers, the bird’s beak, its powerful chest muscles, even though the sculpture was nothing more than a metal framework. Somehow I could see the bird. Somehow I could see it flying.

Below, reaching probably eight feet into the air, was a bear, one paw raised above its head. Again, somehow I could see fur and claws and power in the curves of metal.

But it was the eagle that drew me. I stood below it, head thrown back, and just stared. Behind me I heard Oren turn off the water at the sink and in a moment he came to stand beside me. “Oren, this is incredible,” I said.

“My father,” he said.

We moved to the huge bear, which was even more imposing up close. I reached out a hand to touch it and then pulled it back. “It’s okay,” Oren said. “You can’t hurt anything.”

The metal was rough under my fingers. “Your father was incredibly talented,” I said. I realized these were the sculptures Rebecca and Roma had been talking about.

Oren nodded. “Yes, he was.”

I turned slowly to look at the other sculptures. Over by one of the smaller, abstract pieces stood a beautiful . . . piano? I wasn’t sure. I walked over to it. “This isn’t a piano, is it?” I said to Oren.

“No.”

“A harpsichord?”

He smiled. “That’s right.”

“You built this.”

He ducked his head. “I did.”

“You’re very talented, as well,” I said. I pushed my hands into my pockets, afraid I’d touch something I shouldn’t.

Oren hauled a hand back over his hair. “Thank you,” he said softly. He cleared his throat. “I have coffee. Would you like a cup?”

I nodded. “Yes, I would.”

The coffeemaker was on the counter by the sink. Oren pulled over a couple of stools, then poured a cup for each of us. There was a small carton of milk and a dish of sugar cubes on a tray by the coffeemaker. After we’d both doctored our coffee, he folded one hand around his mug and looked at me. “You want to talk about Mr. Easton,” he said.

“You knew him when he was Douglas Williams.” He nodded, took a drink from his mug and set it on the counter again. “The other day in your office, I tried to convince myself you hadn’t noticed that I’d recognized his real name.”

“You were both at Oberlin at the same time.”

He looked past me, nodding slowly again.

I fished in my pocket and pulled out the sheet of paper Owen had brought me, unfolding it on the counter between us. “That’s your music.” I flattened the paper with my hand. “Gregor Easton stole it.”

For a long moment Oren didn’t move, didn’t speak. Then finally he said, “Yes.”

The truth hung there between us. I wanted to reach out and somehow wave it away. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Oren looked past my left shoulder at the sculpture suspended from the rafters. “Kathleen, my father was incredibly talented,” he began.

I turned for another glimpse of the sculptures myself. “Yes, he was.”

“He was an artist. But all anyone saw him as was a carpenter.” Oren studied his own hands for a moment. “He was a good carpenter, but he wanted to be an artist.”

I nodded, unsure of where the conversation was going, but reluctant to stop Oren while he was talking.

He looked at me now. “I could play the piano when I was four. I was composing music when I was six. I created my own method of notation because I couldn’t read music back then.”

The piece of paper Hercules had found. I was right. It was a kind of code.

Oren picked up his mug and took a long drink. “I could—I can—make music with almost any instrument: piano, guitar, bass, mandolin. I can play that harpsichord.” He set the coffee back on the counter.

“A musical prodigy. That’s what they told my parents I was. Gifted. If I look at a piece of music just once, I can remember it and play it. Years later I can play it.” He wiped his mouth with one hand. “I was sixteen when they sent me to Oberlin. I’d long since outgrown all the music teachers in this area, probably in the state. I was auditing a seminar class Easton was teaching as a grad student. I dropped a piece of my music one day. I knew how to write music by then, but I was so used to notating my way that I’d kept on doing it.”

“What happened?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I knew.

“I explained how the notation worked. He offered to help transcribe what I’d written into conventional notation. There was too much music for me to do it by myself. By then I had stacks of compositions, but no one else could play them.”

I set my cup on the counter. “He took your music. Why didn’t you say something? Your notation proved you’d written everything. The university would have expelled him.”

Oren wiped his hands on his pants. “I don’t know if this will make sense to you, Kathleen, but I didn’t want to end up like my father.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

“No one knew I was composing music. To me, all I was doing was writing down what I heard in my head so it would go away. It was bad enough people were already beginning to see me as some kind of musical wonder. If they found out I was writing my own music, as well . . .” He didn’t finish the thought.

“My father wanted me to have the chance he never had—to be an artist. The thing was, I wanted what he had.”

I realized then what he was trying to tell me. “You didn’t want to be a musician.” I looked around at the tools and the work space. “You wanted to be a carpenter.”

Oren nodded. “So many people thought I had a gift. I thought it was a curse.” He played with his coffee cup, turning it in slow circles on the counter. “The funny thing is, he helped me.”

“Easton?”

“I know it sounds strange. Doesn’t it? I had a breakdown. He told my parents I wasn’t nearly as talented as everyone thought.”

“Oren, you know that’s not true. From what I’ve heard Easton was the one who lacked talent.”

He leaned toward me. “I didn’t care,” he said. “His saying I didn’t have much talent let me have the life I wanted to have.” He pushed the mug away across the counter. “It was years before I realized Doug Williams had become Gregor Easton. I was in a music store in Minneapolis and I heard my own music. Before that, I had no idea. And when I thought about it, I decided where was the harm? I didn’t want that life and he did.”

“Something changed,” I said.

Oren slid off his stool and walked over to the harpsichord. He ran his fingers lightly over the keys. “I was working at the theater the second day of practice after Easton got here. He was playing that piece you heard me playing the other day.” He picked out a melody on the keyboard. “It wasn’t . . . right. It didn’t sound the way it was supposed to sound.” He pulled his hands away from the keys. “I knew how that music was supposed to sound. When everyone was gone I sat down at the piano. I hadn’t played for many, many years. But someone was still in the theater.”

“Easton.”

“Yes.” Oren sat on the harpsichord bench. “He wasn’t a good person, Kathleen. He hadn’t come to help out the festival. He was looking for more music.”

“More of your music.” I leaned back against the counter.

“He told me the music should be given the audience it deserved.” He stared at the wide wooden floorboards. “The Stratton has had money problems for years. I told Easton I would give him the rest of my music and he could claim it as his own, but he had to give half of everything he made with it to the theater. He said we could work something out, but he’d have to see the music first to decide how many changes he’d need to make.”

Finally he looked up at me. “I’m not sixteen anymore. I knew he was lying and I told him so. I told him I was going to tell the whole world that it was my music, not his.”

“And?”

“And he laughed at me. Said it was my word against his, and who would believe a mental case like me?”

I wanted to smack Easton myself. “Lots of people would believe you, Oren,” I said. “All they’d have to do is hear you play.”

He smiled. “Thank you for saying that,” he said. “But I had—have—proof. I have all my original notation, all the work as the music evolved. The papers are in a safedeposit box in St. Paul. At least they were.”

“You saved everything?”

“I guess maybe I cared more about the music than I thought.”

My mind began to race ahead. “That’s why you missed meat loaf night. That’s why you weren’t at the Stratton the next morning. You went for the proof.”

Oren walked over to where I was sitting. He stood in front of me, hands jammed in his pockets. “I thought with the proof I could convince him to take the deal I’d offered. I’m sorry I wasn’t at the theater that morning. I’m sorry you found Easton’s body.”

“You didn’t kill him, Oren. You don’t have anything to be sorry about.” I stretched my arm across my chest to try to ease the knot in my shoulder, which had stiffened up while I was sitting.

“Your shoulder?” Oren asked.

I nodded. “It’s still a bit stiff,” I said. “Oren, have you told Detective Gordon where you were?”

He nodded.

“Did you tell him who Easton used to be? Did you tell him you knew each other?”

“I didn’t,” he said softly. “I like my life, Kathleen. I don’t want to lose what I have.”

I slid off my stool. “Maybe it won’t come to that. Maybe if you give people a chance they’ll surprise you.” I waited until he looked at me. “I think you need to tell Detective Gordon who Easton used to be.”

“Do you really think it has something to do with his death?”

“I do,” I said. “Oren, he met someone the night he died.” I flashed on the wound on the side of Easton’s head. “Someone was with him at the Stratton. Someone he knew. Someone he’d let his guard down around. Virtually the entire choir was at a birthday party at Eric’s. He knew someone else here besides you.”

Oren stared out the window for a moment. “Have you read The Go-Between?”

I nodded. “‘The past is a foreign country.’”

“I didn’t think I’d ever go back,” Oren said. “But maybe it’s time.”

I took a deep breath. “I think for Gregor Easton, the past was getting a little too close to home.”