19. Cosmic Grillman

Frank Reilly wasn’t about to hand over his life to Fate again. Not after all he’d done to take back control from the sonofabitch.

First light, Rockaway beach. Driftwood and flotsam from a tormented winter, like dead men cast upon the Long Island shore. Another wave of memories too. Since the letter the Scotsman had given Frank yesterday, bad memories kept coming. To answer the letter, which purported to be from his long-lost brother, would be to invite more. More pain. More of everything.

Frank maintained control by keeping his world small. He had his routine. Attending Mass. Daytrips into the city. Occasional visits to his younger brother’s family. Anytime he had allowed his world to get any bigger, he’d been shot down. Right now, he felt like a soldier without cover in a sniper’s field of fire.

So Frank had come to the beach to get rid of the letter. The prevailing winds, though, weren’t cooperating. Usually this time of year, constant offshores blew from the west. He needed those to send the letter back across the ocean from where it came. The delicate breeze coming in from the ocean was useless to him.

He decided he would put a stone in the envelope, throw it into the water and let the outgoing tide take it. He picked his way through storm debris down toward the shore. Scanning around for a suitable stone. Only dark ones could be made out against the sand.

A gradual seam opened in the east. Dawn released a new burst of energy. Harder wind began to blow. Whisked up out of nowhere, sea foam whitened the shoreline, which vanished.

Frank found a large pale pebble. Waded into the frothy foam. He couldn’t tell where beach ended and ocean began.

---

‘You got to be pretty unlucky to get born into a family like mine.’

Frank and the Scotsman were at their booth in the diner, discussing the letter. The Scotsman had received it, via air mail, in reply to one he’d sent several weeks earlier when still in Glasgow. The correspondent claimed to be Frank’s eldest brother, James Reilly III. He was living in Bangor, Northern Ireland, with his wife, Ellen.

‘My brother Patrick turned out okay though. How do you suppose that happened?’

‘You didn’t turn out so bad yourself.’

Frank smiled without sincerity. He felt off. Maybe just hungry. They hadn’t ordered yet. He picked up the letter. Apparently you could tell a lot about a person from their handwriting. If he compared this scrawl to his own, they couldn’t be more different. This one took up too much space on the page for his liking. The letters danced in big, billowing loops. Flamboyant, difficult to read. He guessed they were written by someone confident, full of himself. A lucky man.

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