“Well, you’re not going to get it.”
“I’m afraid that’s not an acceptable answer, sir.”
“Tough. I’m a law and order guy. You’re asking me to back away from the pledges I made, the reason I got elected in the first place.”
“Only temporarily. Only for this term.”
“It’s not happening. Not for a single solitarysecondwill I give you or this cockamamie resolution my support.”
“Senator, after all the donations we’ve made—”
“I didn’t ask for a penny of your money. Not once.”
“Even so, if this is indeed your stance we will have no choice but to withdraw our support. If that happens, you risk losing what may be your only chance to enter national politics—”
“You do what you’ve got to do. And don’t ever call me again.” He stabbed the button on his steering wheel. Then stabbed it again. “The nerve of those people. I’d like to wring their collective necks.”
The SUV went quiet after that, his father fuming and Colin scarcely breathing. His father wore what had become his standard attire, a dress shirt with a white collar, this one with grey stripes that matched the color of his trousers and silk tie. The jacket to his suit was set out carefully on the rear seat. The fancy clothes only magnified his father’s bullish strength, like the veneer of oil applied to a loaded gun.
Traffic on US 74 was rush-hour heavy. Abruptly his father swung the wheel, raising a trio of honks from cars behind and to his right, and powered down a side street. Going was easier then, and the open, shaded avenue seemed to ease his rage.
Abruptly his father demanded, “What were you thinking about?”
Colin looked over. “What?”
“When I showed up. You were staring into the distance, I don’t know, like you were in some sort of trance.” He showed his son that familiar gun-barrel grey gaze. “They don’t go in for that kind of stuff at that school of yours, do they?”
“No.”
He turned back to the road ahead. “Because I’ve heard things. Crazy, liberal notions that don’t have any part of my son’s life.”
Colin felt a distinct buzz at gut level. It was as if his father had finally given voice to all the suspicions Colin had been carrying around for four months. Ever since he learned his father had become engaged. To a divorced woman with two young boys of her own. “They don’t teach anything like that.”
“So what is it you were thinking?”
He knew he shouldn’t say it. Even before the words emerged, he knew it was wrong. Dangerous. But the words just seemed to punch out of him, like they had been waiting for this precise moment, and would not be denied. “Do you ever go back to the beach?”
His father flushed beet red. “What kind of question is that?”
Colin had no idea why he spoke as he did. Even so, the words could not be denied. “You asked what I was thinking. I was remembering how Mom sat on the sand and watched the ocean—”
“Today of all days, you can’t give that a rest?” A tremor shook his body and partially shredded the words. “I’m taking you to meet your new family and this is …”
Colin could almost see the rage taking hold, the struggle his father went through to keep it under control. His own response surprised him. His heart raced, he crammed himself tight against the side door, his body felt frigid andclammy at the same time. And yet the fear seemed to belong to someone else. He heard himself say, “Did she have family? Where was she—”
His father’s voice took on the same rough edge as when he spoke to the woman. “Here we are, eight years later, andyou won’t let it go.”
The questions that woke him in the night pressed out, struggling against his desire to smash them back inside. “Why don’t I remember her funeral? I remember going to the hospital with you—”
Roger Eames slammed on the brakes so hard Colin would have shot against the windshield were it not for his seat belt. “Brenda isdead.All that hasno placein our future.”
They drove the final mile and a half in silence. When they pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot, Roger Eames cut the motor and just sat there. Gripping the wheel with such force his knuckles were bone white. “Brenda’s family is from Jacksonville. Downeasters, they’re called. Been there for two hundred years. Not a penny to their names, house falling down around their ears, the biggest snobs on earth. They were furious when she agreed to marry a sheriff’s deputy. They cut her off.”
He kneaded the wheel, the leather squeaking in protest. “Your mother asked me to contact them when she got ill that last time. They hung up on me before I was finished. Two days later, her old man showed up. Offered to pay thirty thousand dollars toward her hospital bill if I’d let them take the body back home. The medical expenses had me drowning in debt. Where that vile, bitter old man got the money is a mystery. Once I agreed, he said everyone would be better off if I didn’t attend the funeral. Not one question about you, their own kin. Not a word.”
Roger Eames rose from the car, slammed his door, and strode away. Leaving his son still seated in the new Escalade, wishing he had never come. As usual.
The Port Land Grille was his father’s regular hangout in Wilmington, with its dark wood and heavy leather furniture and huge steaks. When Colin entered, his father stood talking with his new wife while her two sons glared in Colin’s direction. Everything about Jessica Eames was precise, measured, cautious. Her two boys were ten and thirteen, and both were much bigger than Colin. As they took their seats, Roger’s new wife eyed Colin with frigid displeasure. He had angered her husband, her gaze seemed to say. He deserved whatever punishment Roger wanted to give him. Her two boys eyed Colin across the dining table with predatory gazes.
