Chapter 8
— The Grandson Who Pilots the River
I sat with Kieran's telephone in my hands for a long time before I made the call. It was a simple thing, a telephone, and yet it felt heavier than anything I had held since the river. I knew that once I spoke, the story would no longer be mine alone. It would belong to another person, and that person would have to choose what to do with it. I had chosen Wesley because I trusted him, and because he knew the river, and because he was young enough to believe that the truth still mattered, and old enough to understand what it would cost. He was my grandson, Landon's son, and a pilot on the Danube, and he had grown up on our boats the way Landon had, only he had kept the love for them that Landon had lost.
I dialled his number, and my hand shook, and I waited through the ringing, and then I heard his voice, warm and a little surprised, asking who was calling. I told him it was his grandmother, and there was a silence, and then he said my name, softly, as if he could not quite believe it. He had been told I was dead. Everyone had been told I was dead. Landon had announced it, I learned later, with a face full of grief, and the company had mourned me, and the river had gone on without me. Wesley had believed it, because why would he not believe his own father? And now his dead grandmother was calling him from a cottage above a lock, and he did not know whether to laugh or to cry.
I told him I was alive, and I told him I had been pushed from the Danube Empress, and I told him who had pushed me. I spoke slowly, because I wanted him to hear every word, and because I did not want to frighten him into hanging up. I told him about the invoices, and about Alpen Trade, and about the audit I had planned, and about the boats that had been sold. I told him I needed his help, and I told him I would understand if he could not give it, because Landon was his father, and a son does not turn against his father lightly. I waited then, with the telephone pressed to my ear, and the fire crackling in Kieran's cottage, and the river moving past below, and I listened to my grandson breathe.
He believed me. I knew it in the first moment, before he spoke, because his breathing changed, and because when he did speak, his voice was steady and clear. He said he had wondered about the accounts himself, that he had heard talk among the crews about repairs that were paid for and never done, and about boats that went without work they needed. He said he had asked his father about it once, and his father had told him not to concern himself with office matters, and to stick to piloting. He had obeyed, because he was young, and because he respected his father, but the questions had stayed with him. Now, hearing my voice, the questions had found their answer.
He asked where I was, and I told him I was safe, in Kieran's cottage above the river, and that I was not ready to come back to Vienna yet, not until I had proof. He said he would come to me, and I told him not to, not yet, because if Landon saw him coming to a lock-keeper's cottage, he would know I was alive. He agreed, reluctantly, and we made a plan instead. He would stay in Vienna, and he would watch, and he would listen, and he would begin to look for the proof I needed, starting with the bank records for Alpen Trade. He knew people on the river, and in the offices along it, and he knew how money moved, and he believed he could find the trail.
Before we ended the call, he said something I will never forget. He said, Grandmother, I pilot boats on this river every day, and I know every bend and every current, and I know that a river does not lie. If you say you were pushed, then you were pushed, and I will help you prove it. I thanked him, and I told him to be careful, and I told him to tell no one, not even his mother, not yet, because the fewer people who knew I was alive, the safer we both were. He promised, and we said goodbye, and I put the telephone down, and I sat for a long time with my hands in my lap, feeling a relief so great it was almost like grief.
Kieran came in then, with tea, and he asked how it had gone, and I told him Wesley believed me, and would help. Kieran nodded, as if he had expected nothing less, and he said that a grandson who pilots the river would know the truth when he heard it. I hoped he was right. I hoped Wesley would be careful, and clever, and brave, and I hoped Landon would not guess that his own son had turned against him. But most of all, I hoped that the river, which had tried to take me, would now help me, through the grandson who knew it best, to find the proof I needed to return to Vienna and take back my company.