The summer I turned sixteen and got my license, Kyle Lewis was pulled dead from the lake. It was the week before Christmas and heat pressed down over the town. People went to the lake to cool off, but Kyle didn’t drown. There was no water in his lungs.

Coming back now, ten years passed, like always when I returned to visit my parents, I found myself slowing down when I reached the lake. The turn off was on the long road which led to their house and then on into town, and I felt myself pulled toward it, as if a magnet lay in the deep centre of it, drawing me. I stopped and got out the car and stood there on the side of the road, looking out toward the water, the shimmer of sun on the still surface.

The memories rushed back at me. The evenings my father and I spent out in the garage working on the car he’d bought for us to do up together. My sister sobbing at our table and my mother comforting her while my father stood silent. The long days of summer and the police and the rumours people whispered to one another. The swagger of the Ryan brothers around town.

And the last day of Kyle’s life, recounted to police by those who’d seen him. That day he’d slept until eleven. He and my sister Taylor had been up late drinking the night before, and when they woke the empty bottles and glasses were still on the bench, the smell of booze hung in the air of their little house.

They lived on the same long road as my parents did, but further into town. I passed their house each day when I biked home from school, dreaming of the day my car would finally be ready for me.

Kyle was hungover and he sat on the couch and rolled a cigarette while Taylor made them coffee. She asked him if he wanted anything to eat and he said no, he wasn’t hungry. He was quiet and she knew he was worried. He was worried because he owed Dean Ryan and his brother Pete money, and they were getting impatient.

When told this, the police wanted to know what he owed them for. Taylor said he bought some car parts off Pete Ryan and hadn’t paid him yet, but eventually she told them the truth. By then he’d been found and lay cold in the morgue, and she wasn’t worried anymore about what might happen to him. It already had.

Kyle drank his coffee and smoked two cigarettes one after the other, then he showered and pulled on the jeans and navy tee shirt he would die in.

He told her he was going to visit a friend and drove out the way he always did, tires squealing, sending up a cloud of dust which hung in the still air. At the Mobil on the corner, he pulled in to buy more cigarettes and an energy drink. While he was stood there at the counter, Pete Ryan walked in and came up behind him. 

“I’m coming to collect today,” Pete said.

That was what the cashier heard him say, and she didn’t know what it meant. She said Kyle didn’t reply, or if he did, she didn’t hear it. Or maybe she knew more, just like we all knew more, and didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the Ryan brothers.

My dad had gone to high school with them both, in the same year as Dean who was the oldest, and he said even back then they were raising hell all over town, making a name for themselves.

After Kyle left the Mobil, he came to ask my father for money. When he pulled in Dad and I were out in the garage, tightening the brakes in the car. We’d spent the last six months working on it. Just like he’d promised it would be, now that I could drive it was almost ready.

Kyle got out and my dad looked at him, something cold coming over his expression. He stood silent and waited.

“Can we talk?” Kyle asked him.

They headed inside to the kitchen. A minute later I followed and sidled up to the door, stood silent, hardly breathing. Dad was standing against the bench with his arms folded, Kyle in front of him with desperation sliding off him.

“Please, I wouldn’t ask you if I had anyone else to go to. I swear to God, I’ll pay you back. I just owe Pete for this car I bought off him...”

My father cut him off with a hard laugh. “That piece of shit you're driving’s not worth five hundred dollars let alone five thousand. You come here begging me for money at least have the guts not to lie about why.”

A liar was one of the things my father despised most. Almost as much as he did a man who would hit a woman. My sister’s boyfriend was both those things.

“Alright, but it’s not what it sounds like,” Kyle said, his tone thin and pleading. A way I’d never heard him speak to my sister. For her he’d never crawled. “I sold some pot for them, and I owe them money from it. It was only a one-time thing, I just got to get square with them.”

It was a version of the story I’d heard, which was that he’d been selling a long time for them. And he’d only skimmed a small amount, but they’d added interest.

Dad stood up straight from the bench, and even though he was the same size as Kyle he seemed to loom over him.

“You want me to fix your mess now? What sort of man are you?”

It was a question both asked and answered in his scathing tone. A liar. A coward. The worst kind. I knew exactly what sort of man my father was, what he expected me to be. A man who was strong, who didn’t cry or complain, who took care of his family.

Then my dad spoke again. “I know what kind of trouble you’re in. I’ll pay the Ryan brothers off for you, and you leave town, leave my daughter. That’s the deal.”

Kyle made an odd noise, helpless and angry sounding. “You can’t just tell me to leave town.”

The words weren’t all the way out and my father had him around the collar, slammed him back against the wall.

 “You think I give a shit if Dean Ryan finishes you off? You’re in my house now, and if I ever see so much as a scratch on my daughter again, I’ll break both your arms.”

Then he stepped back, folded his arms again, as if the moment had never happened. Everything felt still. The only sound was a fly buzzing against the window, loud and frantic.

Kyle stayed slumped against the wall a second, eyeing my father, indecision in his clenching and loosening fists. Then without another word he turned and left. Saw me there in the hallway and his eyes met mine, knowing I’d witnessed it, his moment of humiliation. 

He pushed past me roughly, shoving his shoulder into me. I felt a shiver of apprehension then. Not for myself, but my sister. My father had wounded him, and she would bleed for it. 

He left our house and went back to his. Driving fast up the long road which ran between us. He was tense when he got back, pacing and smoking in the kitchen. He and Taylor argued, she told the police.

They argued because he asked if she would leave town with him, and she said no. She didn’t want to leave her family. He told her if she really loved him, she would go with him. While they were arguing she tripped over, she hit her face against the bench and split her lip.

Later that day Kyle drove the short distance into town and went into the pub which Dean and Pete Ryan didn't drink at. He got drunk and he started talking big, saying he wasn’t scared of the Ryan brothers. He had a knife and he was ready to kill which ever one came for him first.

About nine in the evening the doorman kicked him out. He was marched outside and told to walk it off and come back for his car in the morning.

The doorman stood there and watched him leave. He was the last to see him before he was pulled bloated and broken boned from the water, his unsteady walk as he headed down the road which led to his own house, and past that my parents’ house, and if he kept going further still the lake.

The next morning the car was there on the street still, Kyle not in his bed, and my sister starting phoning around to see if anyone knew where he was.

Two days later his body rose up to the surface of the lake, and was spotted by a man out fishing. Both Ryan brothers were pulled in for questioning. People saw them escorted into the station.

After seeing Kyle at the Mobil, Pete Ryan had gone to spend the afternoon watching his son play cricket. He’d stood on the sideline and watched him make run after run, and after he’d taken him out for dinner. Then he’d dropped him back to his mother’s house and gone around to his brother Dean’s house.