My father's stony expression doesn't waver. Why would it? It's been locked in the state of disapproving since the day I told him I was enlisting in the Marines instead of becoming his lackey at the company.
If you'd rather get sand up your ass and your damned head blown off than accept your responsibilities, go right ahead, but don't expect me to give your cold body a hero's welcome when it gets shipped home in a wooden box.
Ah, that's my dad. Always one step away from begging me to toss a baseball around or go fishing together. When he's not telling me to follow my dreams, of course.
It gives me a modicum of satisfaction to know that he was only half right. The sand up my ass definitely happened. But I didn't get my head blown off.
It was my leg.
Well, actually, that's melodramatic. My leg is still attached. But for as much use as I get out of it, the damned thing might as well have been blown to bits. Just like everything else good in my life.
The anger of it all threatens to choke me. It's been two years since I got back from Afghanistan, and the anger isn't fading. If anything, it's gotten worse.
But there will be tomorrow and every day after for self-pity. Now I focus all of my attention on figuring out what my father's current game is. It's not every day that the illustrious Harry Langdon makes the trek up to Bar Harbor, Maine, to visit his only son.
If I've learned anything in the past two years besides how to be myself, it's how to accurately predict what these little visits will entail.
No warning call first. Check.
No greeting beyond a half-second glance at my left leg to see if it's magically quarterback-worthy again. It never is. Check.
Avoidance of looking at my face. Check.
Passive-aggressive comment about my drinking. Check.
Which meant that next up on the agenda would be . . .
"Beth called me," he says. "Says the latest one didn't even last two weeks."
Ah. So that's why he's here.
I give a rueful shake of my head and glance down at my whisky. "Poor Beth. It must wear on her that her little care-for-the-meek underlings don't have the stamina to make it out here in the wilderness."
"It's not-" Dad breaks off and raps his knuckle sharply against the ancient wooden desk in irritation. He doesn't yell. Harry Langdon never yells. "It's not the wilderness, for God's sake. It's a nine-bedroom château with two separate guest houses, a gym, and a stable."
I hear the censure in his voice. I understand it, even. From where he stands, I'm a spoiled brat. But it's easier to let him think that I'm a pampered pansy than to let him see the truth . . . which is that I wouldn't care if the whole place went up in flames. That I hope I go up in flames with it.
Because if my dad finds out how truly dead I am inside, he won't be satisfied with sending the token caretakers my way. He'll have me committed to some crazy-person facility where I'll have to drink out of paper cups and use plastic silverware.
I let my face slip into its default sneer. "Well," I say, lazily climbing to my feet and hobbling over to the sideboard for more bourbon, "perhaps this Gretchen-or was it Gwendolyn?-wasn't the equine-appreciating type. And besides, she had the voice of a hyena. She'd scare the horses."
"It's not the horses that scared her," my father says, his knuckle hitting the desk harder this time. "It's you. You ran her off, just like you ran off the seven people before her."
Eight, actually. But I'm not about to correct him. Not when he's in sanctimonious lecture mode.
"So how many is it going to take, Harry?" I ask, dropping another ice cube in my drink and turning to face him, bracing my hip against the sideboard.
"Don't call me that. I'm your father-show some respect."
"Mr. Langdon," I say, bending forward slightly, but keeping the bow small enough to be insulting. "How many?" I ask again. "How many babysitters have to come all the way out here only to scamper away when they find out I don't need anyone to wipe drool off my face or read me a bedtime story?"
"Damn it, Paul-"
"Ten?" I interrupt. "Fifteen? I mean, you could keep them coming indefinitely, but eventually you're going to run out of available caregivers, right?"
He continues to rap his knuckle softly against the wood, but he's no longer glaring at me. He's looking out the window, where the harbor's just barely visible through the trees in the late afternoon sunlight.
I know, because when I'm alone, it's my favorite time of day. Mostly because it means the day's over. At least until it all begins again. And it always does. Begin again, I mean. No matter how much I may wish otherwise.
"I hire them to help you," he says, this time hitting the desk with a full palm.
I take a large sip of the whisky, letting it burn my throat. The shit of it is, I think the old man really does think he's helping. He thinks that having some overweight, overperfumed wanna-be nurse hovering around will somehow erase everything that happened. I just don't know how to get it through his head that there are some things that can't be fixed and can't be erased. My leg, for instance. And my face.
And definitely not all the things that went fifty ways of fucked up inside my head while I was in that godforsaken sandbox on the other side of the world.
"Dad," I say, my voice a little rough, "I'm fine."
He pins me with a stare, his eyes the same pale blue I see in the mirror. Back when I looked in the mirror, anyway.
"You're not fine, Paul," he replies. "You can barely walk. You don't leave this house unless forced to. All you do is read and mope-"
"Brood. I prefer brood. More manly than mopeI"
"Damn it, don't be cute! You lost the right to be cute after you-"
"After I what?" I push myself upright, careful to keep all of my weight on my right leg so I don't lean to one side. Or worse, wobble. "At what point did I lose the right to be cute? Was it after this?" I point to my leg. "Nah, that wasn't it. Then it must be this." I point to my face and am oddly satisfied when he looks away.
"It's not about your leg or your face," he says gruffly. "It's how they came to be that way that you need to deal with. And you know it."
I do know it.
I just don't believe for one damned second that an outsider coming in here and trying to coax me into the gym to do lame-ass physical therapy exercises or asking me every five minutes if I've eaten is going to fix anything.
"Lindy is here," I grumble.
"Lindy is here as a housekeeper. She's here to wash the sheets and make sure the glasses are clean for the alcohol you drink all day long, not to ensure you don't do something idiotic. And before you start, I'm not asking Mick to do that either. He's a chauffeur."
"Yeah, he seems to be staying real busy with that, what with your bimonthly visits."
"He's not here for my benefit, he's here for yours."
I move back toward my leather chair, too tired of this conversation to even try to hide the limp. "Well, if that's the case, get rid of him. I have nowhere to go. You know, there are worse things I could be doing than staying out of your hair and staying out of the public eye. Do you really want all of your colleagues and country club friends in Boston to see me?"
"You're the one who exiled yourself up here. Not me."
"Exactly! So quit trying to coax every nanny and nurse in Boston to take care of me."
"Fine," he says, his head nodding once.
I open my mouth to argue before his word sets in. "Wait. Really? So you're done trying to-"
He holds up a finger and his eyes go stone cold, and I realize abruptly that I'm no longer dealing with Harry Langdon the father figure. This is Harry Langdon the hotel magnate. The man who's been described by Forbes as hard-hearted and relentless.
My father was forty-seven when I was born, which put him in his mid-sixties when I was in high school, but nobody ever made the mistake of thinking he was my grandfather. Partially because everyone knew him. And everybody who knew him knew that he'd married a woman twenty-two years his junior, knocked her up, and then divorced her before I was potty-trained. But mostly they never mistook him for a grandfather because he's never looked like an old man. He's always had the power and energy of men half his age.
But sometime in the past couple of years his age has started to show in the stoop of his shoulders, the sag of the skin under his chin, and the bags under his eyes. The man beneath the failing body hasn't softened, though. I can see it in the hard set to his mouth and the ice in his eyes.
Instinctively I brace myself for what's to come. He and I have been playing the same game for a while now. He sends a dumpy caregiver my way; I snarl and throw things and curse until she leaves. Repeat.
After the first round, I got a pissed-off email from him. The second woman I ran off warranted a phone call. By the fourth, my father had actually visited, issued a couple of warnings, and left the same day.