So he ordered himself a virgin daiquiri and let himself relax.
Emily kept laughing at whatever was on the pages of her book and when she noticed him watching her, her smile widened. “It’s so good,” she said.
The story she’d told him last night—about her visit to his father and her gift of the photographof the estate—had brought so much back. Her vivid description of the office in that huge library, desk in the center of the regal and imposing room. TV on. Always on and playing one of his father’s insipid shows, even long after he’d retired. Like it was the only thing of value in his life—the only thing that mattered to him.
It certainly mattered more to him than his own flesh and blood—his only child. His son.
The day after Mick—still Milt back then—was released from prison, he’d gone into that office to speak with his father.
Four years of therapy and group counseling and rehab and twelve-steps had had their impact on Milt. He had no memory—none at all—of the night he’d killed Marina Santana. But getting full-scale, black-out drunk had been his pattern since his mother died. And he felt remorse. God, did he feel remorse and a stomach-turning, heartfelt regret whenever he thought of the life that he’d ended.
He thought of Marina, and of her young daughter Emily, constantly. The head prosecutor had shown him pictures of Marina’s entire family—the people whose lives he’d changed, regardless of the fact that the drugs and alcohol in his bloodstream had erased his memory.
So, fresh out of prison, twenty-one years old, filled with remorse and shame, Milt went to talk to his father, knocking on his open office door.
The old man looked up from the papers on his desk and muted the TV with his remote control. “Settling back in okay?” he asked with far more interest and concern than he’d ever shown Milt before.
It gave Milt hope, which was his second mistake. Number one was thinking that the old man would care about Emily in the first place.
“Yeah, thanks. I was, um...” He was hoping to access his trust fund and get his own place, because living here made him miss his mother more than ever. But there’d be plenty of time to bring that up later. Today he wanted to focus their conversation on what he thought of as hisbig ask.
So Milt went in, right up to the old man’s desk. “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
His father glanced at the TV, then down at the papers on his desk before looking back at Milt and attempting a smile. “Sure.” His discomfort and the fact that he really wanted to saynowas written all over him. But he used his remote to pause the DVD that he was watching—an episode of aFriendsknockoff calledMy Pal Peteythat he’d produced. It had survived three excruciatingly terrible seasons. God forbid he miss a minute of that.
Milt sat down in one of the green leather chairs that were parked there, in front of his father’s desk. He cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask you...” He hesitated, and his father jumped in.
“About the civil case?” the old man asked. “Relax. It’s not happening. The family’s not going to file.”
His father had talked about little else during his rare visits to the prison. Whether or not the Santana family was going to sue Milt and his wealthy father—who owned the car in question—for Marina’s wrongful death.
“Oh,” Milt said. “Really?” It didn’t make sense. He’d pleaded guilty. “Do we know... why not?”
“Why should we care?” his father said. “I don’t, and you certainly shouldn’t.”
“I was thinking we should settle,” Milt said. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Iwantto settle.”
“Well, we don’t have to now.”
“I killed someone’s mother,” Milt whispered.
“And you served your time.” His father was getting annoyed. “Your debt to society is repaid.”
Milt was getting upset, too. He could feel his heart pounding. That was not good. Pause, and reset. That was his favorite counselor Marcus’s battle-cry, and it had stuck.
Pause. Laughter was a good way not merely to take a moment but also to flip his internal switch from pissed to amused. So Milt dug deep and laughed just a little because his father was impatient and if he’d just sat there breathing through his pause, theplaybutton for that DVD would’ve been pushed back on.
As it was, his father misread his reaction for relief and said, “It’s over. We don’t need to worry about it anymore.”
And reset. Milt started over, his voice calm, composed. “I’m sorry, Dad, I wasn’t clear. Iwantto settle. I want us to approach them—the Santanas—and offer them a financial settlement.”
His father laughed. “Why on earth would you do that?”
Milt didn’t miss his abrupt change fromwetoyou,singular. But okay, if that was how it was going to be... “I’m twenty-one. I know there’s money—” lots of it, nearly two million dollars “—in a trust?—”
The old man cut him off. “The trust was dissolved when you went to prison.”
That took him aback. Was that even possible? Had his father really done that? Although Milt knew that even if his father hadn’t, he’d be on the phone to his smarmy lawyer the moment Milt left his office. Together they’d figure out a way to make that happen.
