Chapter 2: A Town Built on Secrets

After my uncle left, I called my younger cousin, who’d just gotten back to Maple Heights a few days earlier. He let out a heavy sigh on the other end.

There was a pause, then his voice came, flat and heavy. “I don’t know all the details either. My guess is that Rick Mathers and his crew set him up. The Mathers are hustlers, man. How else do you think they snag those lake houses, or drive around town in a Porsche like they’re royalty? Isn’t it all from cheating folks out of their hard-earned money during the holidays?”

He sounded disgusted, and I didn’t blame him—everyone in town had a story about Rick’s crew fleecing someone. That Porsche always parked front and center at the bowling alley, like he wanted the whole county to see it.

Stories like this were as old as Maple Heights itself. Every year, young people came home flush from working out West, only to get their savings cleaned out in some backroom card game. After the holidays, they’d slink back out of town, broke and humiliated. The cycle never ended.

It was like a sick tradition in our county. Folks came home for Christmas, pockets fat from long months on oil rigs, construction sites, or Amazon warehouses. Then they’d lose it all to a game nobody talked about in church, but everyone knew happened. Next thing, they’re catching the Greyhound back to Kansas or Nevada, broke and ashamed.

My cousin was over fifty, honest and hardworking. He lived frugally, saving every penny from out-of-state jobs. Every year, he’d come back with his earnings, hoping to build a house and help his nephew get married.

He was the kind of guy who drank his coffee black, patched his own roof, and made do with boots older than me. He’d work in Texas all year, send every dollar home, and talk about finally putting up that second story or helping his son buy a ring. He never had a fancy phone, but he knew how to stretch a paycheck. He’d always say, “Why pay for a new phone when duct tape works just fine?” and we’d all laugh, even though he meant it.

How could a man like him end up gambling away everything, taking on high-interest debt, and finally walking out onto that frozen riverbank? I just couldn’t understand it.

I sat in the dark, TV flickering, replaying the story in my mind. He wasn’t reckless. He didn’t even play the lottery. How did he fall so far, so fast?

I pressed my younger cousin for details, but he just kept repeating, “I don’t know, man. I wish I did.”

I called a few others in town, but they dodged the question and told me to ask Rick Mathers directly.

Their voices held that edge of small-town fear—nobody wanted to get tangled up in Rick’s mess. “You should just talk to Rick,” they’d say, then shift the conversation to the weather or the high school basketball team’s losing streak.

My parents died when I was young. My cousin worked hard to pay for my high school and college. When I bought a house in Boise, he helped out with cash, no questions asked.

I remembered how he’d driven me to campus in his battered Ford F-150, how he’d slip me a few twenties at graduation, eyes shining with pride. He never wanted anything back—not even a thank-you.

Though we were the same generation, he was twenty years older. He was more like a father to me than anyone else.

He was family in the best sense—steady, dependable, the guy who’d fix your leaky faucet or man the grill at the Fourth of July cookout, cracking bad dad jokes.

Now he was gone, leaving behind a wife and son, my elderly uncle, and $18,000 in debt at one percent daily interest.

That kind of debt was a death sentence in a place where folks barely got by, where every foreclosure was gossip for years. The interest alone could drown you.

Staring at the photo my uncle sent—the swollen, pale body pulled from the river—I clenched my teeth and slammed my fist into the wall. The drywall cracked under my fist, and the sharp sting in my knuckles was the only thing that felt real.

The picture wouldn’t leave my mind. I wanted to scream, but all I could do was grit my teeth and taste blood.

"I have to get an explanation from Rick Mathers."

The words echoed in the empty room, daring me to find the truth and make someone pay.