“Are you okay, Victoria?” the voice repeated, more urgently.
As her vision narrowed and darkness closed in, her last thought was of course she was okay. Victoria Slade could handle anything. She was tough, she was strong, she—
—was blacking out from her first-ever panic attack.
One
A month later
“THOUGH I WALK through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me . . .”
As the priest wrapped up his homily, Ford Dixon’s eyes fell once again on the photograph of his father that rested on a stand in front of the casket.
They’d gotten lucky with the photo. As he, his mother, and his sister, Nicole, had realized when preparing for this memorial service, John Dixon had posed for very few pictures by himself, particularly in recent years. Fortunately, they’d been able to crop a photograph taken just four months ago, one of him holding his granddaughter, Ford’s niece, in the hospital after she’d been born. It wasn’t a professional-quality photo—Ford had taken it with his phone—but his father looked happy and proud.
It was a good memory, one that he and his mother and sister could look back on without the uneasiness that clouded many others.
Any moment now, it would be his turn to deliver the eulogy. Never having given a eulogy before, the investigative journalist in him naturally had done his research. He was supposed to keep his remarks brief, but personal, and he was supposed to focus on a particular quality of his father that he’d admired, or share a story that illustrated something his father had enjoying doing.
Most of the people attending the funeral service knew that, in truth, there had been two John Dixons: the larger-than-life, gregarious man always up for a good time—who, sure, rarely had been seen without a beer in his hand—and the moody, angry drunk he could become when he’d had one, or four, drinks too many. Ford could wax poetic for hours about the first John Dixon, because that man had been his hero, the father who’d spent hours playing catch with him on weekends in the field next to their townhome subdivision. The man who used to make up funny bedtime stories with different voices for the characters. The man who’d organized water balloon fights for the kids at family barbecues, the cool dad who’d let him have his first sip of beer at a Cubs game, the guy always getting a laugh out of the crowd of parents sitting on the bleachers during one of Ford’s Little League games.
But the other John Dixon?
That guy was a lot harder to warm up to.
Get away from me, kid. Don’t you have any damn friends you can annoy?
Ford cleared his throat just as the priest looked in his direction.
“I think Ford, John’s son, has some remarks he’d like to share with us today.”
Ford stood and walked to the lectern located to the right of the altar. He looked out at the decent-sized crowd and saw a lot of familiar faces, a mixture of family acquaintances, relatives, and close friends of his and his sister who’d come to offer their condolences.
With a reassuring glance at his mother and sister, who sat in the front pew, Ford rested his hands on the sides of the lectern. He hadn’t written any notes, planning instead to rely on the innate storytelling instincts possessed by all good journalists—instincts he’d inherited from the man who lay in the casket behind him, a man who, once upon a time, had woven epic tales about Ford’s stuffed animals while tucking him in at night.
Today, that was the John Dixon he chose to remember.
“The Fourth of July when I was eleven years old, my father decided we had to have the biggest, most elaborate fireworks display in the neighborhood. Ah, I see some of you out there smiling already . . . You know exactly where this story is going.”
* * *
AFTER THE FUNERAL service and subsequent lunch, Ford drove his mom back to his parents’ house in Glenwood, a suburb north of the city. His parents lived—or now, he supposed he should say his mom lived—in a subdivision nicknamed “the Quads” because each square-shaped building contained four small townhome units stacked back-to-back. Although Glenwood was well known as a very affluent town—one of the ten richest in the U.S., according to Forbes—the particular neighborhood in which he’d grown up was decidedly blue collar, mostly families with two working parents