Sins of Our Fathers. Shawn Lawrence Otto

shaking his head in wonder.

      She read on: “The earliest human ancestors we’ve discovered are about four million years old, and that’s at 11:59:24. And the start of human civilization—everything we know, everything we have done since the beginning of history, all the roads and towns and cities we’ve built—all that has happened in the last one third of the last second, the time it takes to snap your fingers.”

      She looked out the car window and shook her head. “It’s like an explosion.”

      He missed Julie with an almost palpable longing. Part of the distance that had emerged between them was her age, he knew, and the social demands of junior high. He remembered seventh grade, how brutal it was. Gone were the glasses—it was contacts and eyeliner now—and gone was the innocence. But a big part of it, most of it, he felt certain, was everything that had happened in the year since Chris died. He missed their dates, and their car conversations, and her unguarded exuberance, in a way that made his heart ache.

      Northland Mall lay on the outskirts of Virginia, a town that seemed to him like a miniature version of Duluth, some forty-five minutes down the highway from North Lake. Filled with the post-Victorian homes of mining executives and the scattered saltboxes of their minions, the city clawed its way up a giant hillside. Despite an early, five-story brick attempt at a skyscraper downtown, the tallest building to date was the water tower. Up the hill, to the north and west, the vast mall occupied as much square footage as most of the downtown. When it was built, JW had been asked to be part of a consortium of banks that provided financing, together with the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board, a government agency that was supposed to take the taconite production tax and reinvest it to stimulate the local economy. He had passed on the deal. It was too big for the area, his numbers said.

      After some modest initial success, the mall had fallen on hard times during the Great Recession, making his decision look prescient. Avoiding that loss was one of the reasons North Lake Bank had become a regional leader.

      He found a spot near the northeast entrance and walked across the potholed drive. Inside he could hear the sound of a distant fountain in the main concourse. He headed past the Army-Navy recruiting center, a temp agency, a sleepy Chinese restaurant, and a Goodwill, then stepped into the RadioShack. He was after something he’d seen in the store several years ago, when he was looking for an electronics project as a Christmas gift for Chris. He made his way to the back. There it was, on a bottom shelf near the door to the back room, by the old Heathkits. Dusty and forgotten, the eavesdropping hobby kit’s packaging showed a twelve-year-old boy listening on headphones to his mom and dad, who were in the other room. A bug hidden behind a chair emitted lines representing radio waves. The description said it had a range of a hundred yards. JW stood, blew the dust off, and picked up some rosin-core solder and a soldering iron from the opposite shelf.

      The clerk was a gregarious older man in a red RadioShack golf shirt, with silver hair in a bowl cut. More hair ran thick down his neck and arms, and poked out in a tuft from his open collar.

      “You got a boy for that project?” he said jovially as he stuffed the merchandise into a small plastic shopping bag.

      “No,” said JW. His tone stopped the man short, but then he regretted his abruptness. “A daughter,” he added. The clerk brightened immediately.