I gave a bitter, incredulous bark of laughter. “Well, he’s got a bloody funny way of showing it.”
“You didn’t see how he was, Charlie,” he said softly. “Back in February, when you were shot. He might have a bloody funny way of showing it, but he cares all right. I never thought I’d hear myself standing up for the bloke, considering he hates my guts, but don’t kid yourself that he doesn’t care about you.”
“So much so that he tells me I’m a useless cripple,” I shot back, disregarding our current audience, feeling my lip begin to curl. “Yeah, right, how stupid of me! How could I possibly have mistaken that for anything except paternal affection? And then we find him about to screw an underage prostitute. What are you saying—that perhaps my mother bought it for him as a wedding anniversary present?”
“Guys, guys,” Parker murmured, eyes flitting from one to the other. “Uh, can we get back to the matter at hand here?”
“This is the matter at hand,” Sean said, and his face was as cold as his tone now and his eyes were very dark, as close to black as anyone I’ve ever met. All I could see in them was my own reflection and, from what I could read of it, I was flustered and angry and defensive. It wasn’t a good look for me.
“The whole reason you went to see your father yesterday morning, Charlie, was because you knew he’d lied to you the day before,” Sean said patiently, spelling it out. “But his behavior goes against everything you know of the man. Why are you so quick to believe the worst of him?”
The silence that followed his question lasted only around four seconds, but it passed like a slow decade.
“Maybe,” I said, low, “it’s because he’s always been so quick to believe the worst of me.”
“O-kay,” Parker said, more of a drawl. “But if we disregard the possibility—for the moment, anyhow—that he’s gone totally off the rails, what makes you think this would have anything to do with your mother?”
“Because, despite Bill’s skepticism, he’s always done everything he can to shelter her—from unpleasantness, from bad news, from blame. From life, come to that.”
Parker frowned at the bitterness evident in my voice. “So, let me get this straight,” he said. “He’s confessed that he’s a drunk and a liar. And now, from what you’ve said, he couldn’t wait to get himself caught with a hooker. How is that protecting his wife?”
“It could only be,” Sean murmured, “because he was afraid of something worse.”
I snapped back into the here and now. “I need a phone,” I said, aware of the hollowness in my voice.
Parker stared at me for a moment longer, then nodded to Bill, who sighed heavily but kept his continuing disgust to himself. He plugged a handset into the conference-call system that was a permanent fixture in the center of the table. It was clear from the way he practically threw the handset at me that he didn’t think much of Parker humoring us like this.
I checked my watch and ran through the mental calculations. New York was five hours behind the UK. It was a little before one in the afternoon here, which meant it was nearly six in the evening back home.
I dialed the number. As I listened to the line play out at the other end, I realized, on how few occasions I’d bothered to phone home.
Sean leaned across and punched the button for the speaker. When I glanced at him, he merely said, “This I have to hear.”
It took my mother a long time to answer. When she finally did, she gave her usual telephone greeting sounding strained to breaking point, as though under some unbearable pressure.
No change from normal there, then.
“Hello, Mother,” I said. “It’s me.”
There was a long pause. Sean’s eyes flicked to mine and I saw his eyebrow quirk. It shouldn’t have been a trick question.
“Darling … how lovely to hear from you,” she said at last, with that false brightness she always employed when speaking to her only daughter. “How are you? How’s your poor leg coming along?”
The second bullet I’d taken had hit my back high up around my shoulder blade and had ended up planted somewhere in my right lung, which had then collapsed. My heart, so they’d told me, had temporarily stopped at the scene but I don’t remember too much about that.
During the early stages of my recovery I’d had mobility problems with my right arm and hand. At the time, it had seemed that the through-and-through wound to my leg was minor by comparison, but it had proved to have longer-lasting effects, and now that was the part everyone focused on. My mother was no exception.
“The leg’s fine,” I said, which was mostly true. “I’m fine.” I suppose that was mostly true, also.
“Oh. Good,” she said. Another pause before a splintered little laugh. “Was there anything in particular you wanted, darling, only I’m rather in the middle of something right now. It’s the church fête next week and I’m making a batch of treacle tarts.”
I could picture her, a blur of high-tension activity, in the tall kitchen of their Georgian house in the expensive part of Cheshire. She’d cajoled and bullied and eventually worn down my father into having a Smallbone of Devizes custom kitchen installed about ten years previously. I’d been in my teens but I could still remember the chaos and excitement of the transformation from 1950s ugliness to an expanse of blue pearl granite worktops and limed-oak cabinets under an array of halogen spots.
She ruled her sparkling domain like the most temperamental celebrity chef, creating wonderful dishes that seemed to drive her so close to the brink of nervous exhaustion to produce, it took away the pleasure of actually eating them.
“Speaking of tarts,” I said bluntly, ignoring the sudden consternation on Parker’s face, “have you heard from my father today?”
“Your father?” my mother said vaguely, as if we were discussing a casual acquaintance. “I don’t believe so, darling. He’s, um, away at the moment.”
I suppressed a sigh. Up until her retirement the previous year, my mother had been a local magistrate and, contrary to popular satire, she was far from the bumbling picture of the rural judiciary that was so often portrayed. Hard to believe now that she’d once been praised and feared for her incisive mind.
“Oh, yes?” I said. “Run away with a younger woman?”
“Well, really,” my mother said, but there was more stiffness than heat. “He’s attending a medical conference. You know how often he’s called upon to lecture these days.” She paused again, uncomfortable, but she’d always been a bad liar. “I—I spoke to him only yesterday. He sends his love.”
I heard a slight sound in the background at her end of the line and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had visitors.”
“W—what? Oh, no—just the radio, darling. I was going to listen to the six o’clock news when you rang. Anyway, I must go. Things are starting to burn.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said.
“No, don’t do that,” my mother said quickly. “I have people coming round for dinner and I shall need all day to prepare. I don’t expect you remember the Hetheringtons, do you?”
“Yes … yes, I do,” I said, and allowed my voice to take on a slightly disappointed tone. “Well, in that case, Mother, I’d best leave you to it.”
“Yes, all right,” my mother said faintly, her relief at my imminent departure evident. “Thank you for taking the trouble to call, Charlie. We don’t see enough of you these days, you know.”
“I know,” I said, and ended the call. I stared for a moment at the surface of the table as though the future would eventually present itself in the pattern of the grain.
“Wow, she sounds like one tense lady,” Parker said.
“I wouldn’t read too much into that,” Sean said. “She always sounds on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”