Alex thought it was likely that John was being kept awake by curiosity rather than pain-he had probably caught the story about Adrianos on the news, and was awaiting details. As he approached the porch, the front door opened, and John limped out, a mug of coffee in his hand.
“Damn it, John, you’re supposed to be staying off your feet,” he said in a low voice, trying not to wake his neighbors. “And what are you doing drinking coffee at this time of night?”
John pulled the door closed and said, “If I want to hear an old woman bitch at me, I’ll marry that widow across the street who keeps hitting on me. And this coffee’s not for me, it’s for you.” He held the mug toward Alex.
He took it but said, “If she’s been hitting on you, I guess I’ll offer to drive her to the eye doctor. But it will have to wait until morning, because I’m whipped. So I’m not staying up all night shooting the breeze with you, or having any coffee, so-”
“Yes, you are. You have a little drive ahead of you.”
Alex stared at him.
“Some friends of ours were by a little while ago.”
“What friends?” Alex asked warily.
“Kell and O’Neill. From the Malibu Station.”
Alex felt a chill of apprehension and something else he couldn’t quite name, a hollowness in his gut. Uniforms coming to the house from Malibu. His brother Miles lived in Malibu. But John wouldn’t be offering him coffee if Miles or any member of his family was injured or dead.
He saw that John was watching him closely, and silently cursed.
“Friends of yours, then,” he said aloud. “What brought a couple of uniforms all the way down here from Malibu in the middle of the night?”
“They were bringing my grandnephew to me.”
“Chase?”
“I’m surprised you remember his name.”
Alex frowned. “You talk about him often enough. What the hell is he doing here?”
“Waiting for a ride home.”
He looked around in frustration, as if hoping to find someone who would talk sense. It occurred to him that he still hadn’t made it past his own front door. “Let’s discuss this inside.”
“No, the kid’s asleep, and I don’t want to have him overhear nasty remarks from his loving uncle-shit like ‘What the hell is he doing here?’”
“Forget I asked. I don’t care why he’s here. I just want to get some sleep. This is another attempt on your part to get me to talk to Miles, and it won’t work. So call my less than beloved brother and tell him to come and get his kid.”
“Miles is out of town.”
“According to you, Miles is always out of town.”
John nodded. “That’s a big part of the problem. Probably why his kid is getting picked up for taking little joyrides in other people’s vehicles.”
“Christ-he’s here in lieu of being arrested? What next? And I still don’t see why this should be my problem.”
“Maybe that’s the attitude I should have taken when you were about his age.”
Alex looked away. He thought of John taking in their damaged family under his roof. John was six years younger then than Alex was now. How had he managed it? Even before that, he’d done what he could for his family, left a promising military career to be a presence in the lives of nephews who were strangers to him.
“If I shamed you by that remark,” John said, “then I’m making progress.”
“John…you know why this is different.”
“Because I wasn’t cuckolded by my brother?”
Alex didn’t reply, but John dropped his gaze.
“Well, shit,” John said. “Now I’m ashamed.”
“Don’t be. Look, I’ve been called all kinds of things, heard all kinds of words attached to what happened between me and Clarissa and Miles, and it all lost the power to bother me a long time ago.”
John shook his head. “Like hell.”
Alex laughed softly. “You see me pining away?”
“I’m not saying you don’t have women in your life-that’s always been a little too easy for you. No, don’t get fired up-I’m not saying you’re unkind to any of them. But for all that, you haven’t exactly rushed back to the altar.”
“How many alimony checks are you paying a month?”
“Two-as you well know-and we are not talking about me.”
“Okay, so I’m married to the job. Here I am, coming home after two o’clock in the morning-and that’s not the worst of it by any means. I don’t have to tell you what the job does to relationships.”
“Don’t try to take the easy way out with me, Alex. What happened with Miles and Clarissa-” He paused, and Alex could hear his frustration when he said, “You know what really bothers me? You and I talk about everything under the sun, boy-except that.”
“You were there, John,” Alex said, his voice still low. “You were there the night I found my brother and my wife going at it on my living room floor. Did I need to talk to you about it? Was there some part of that you failed to understand? It was all perfectly clear to me.”
“Don’t be a wiseass.”
A silence stretched between them, then Alex said, “Look, Clarissa and Miles made their choices years ago. I didn’t try to stop her leaving me, and I didn’t try to stop him from marrying her afterward. I’ve never interfered with them in any way.”
“Alex-”
“I married her before I was old enough to legally buy a beer, John. Didn’t last two years. This isn’t a matter of heartbreak-it’s a matter of not wanting to have anything to do with people I can’t trust. The only thing I’ve asked is that they stay the hell away from me. Now you tell me you want me to play taxi driver-come to think of it, they’ve got enough bucks to buy a cab company, so maybe you should call Clarissa and suggest that to her.”
“You call her and suggest it. Be an asshole. Make her congratulate herself on her choices.”
“Oh no. You’re the one who’ll make contact. Since Chase is here instead of jail only because he dropped your name-what the hell are you laughing about?”
“Your name,” John said, still grinning.
“What?”
“He had a phony driver’s license on him and gave them a false last name but told them he was Detective Alex Brandon’s nephew. Think about it, Alex. If they had called my house, they would have heard an answering machine.”
“He dropped my name? Jesus, what nerve this kid must have!”
“You ought to meet him and find out for yourself.”
Alex shook his head, then took a sip of coffee.
“All that bullshit that happened with you and Miles and Clarissa,” John said, “none of that was Chase’s fault.”
Alex frowned. He kept drinking the coffee.
“You agree with me?”
“I’m not blaming him.”
“So you’ll give him a ride home?”
“I’m loading up on caffeine, aren’t I?”
“So you think you might want to try to develop some kind of relationship with your only nephew?”
“No, you old geezer, I don’t. But I finally realized that you were going to sit out here blowing more hot air than the damned Santa Ana, and if I have any hope of getting even an hour’s sleep, I’d better take Miles’s juvenile delinquent home. So wake the little bastard up and get his criminal ass out here before I change my mind.”
John laughed. “Caught on, did you?” he said and hobbled back inside.
Fifteen minutes later, a sleep-tousled but wary young man came out of the house. He was tall and thin, blond and blue-eyed-the “Brandon blue” as John called it-and had his father’s good looks. Alex had seen photographs of Chase before now-John made sure of that. But beholding the flesh-and-blood version of Miles’s son was another matter altogether. For starters, he looked a lot like Miles did at his age, and Alex found himself thinking of those difficult years, of how hard Miles had taken their father’s death, how afraid he had been. “What’s going to happen to us?” he had asked again and again.