He could not help sounding snide as he responded, “I called to ask you for advice in your area of expertise.”
“Which is?”
“Forgetting about your son and leaving your family.”
“Whoa. What the hell is going on, Chad?”
“Nothing. Same as before. Wearing me down.” Chad figured his father knew the score, albeit long-distance; plenty of checks had arrived from Birmingham. Dad would probably have done more, like maybe come to lend a hand, if he’d thought Chad would let him. “I’m over my head in debt. Amy won’t work at anything except spending money, mostly to find Justin, who is almost certainly dead—” Chad’s voice broke up like a bad cell phone signal, but he turned the pickup truck back on for the sake of cold air-conditioning and forced himself to keep talking. “My son’s gone, and I barely got a wife or a family anymore. All me ’n’ Amy do is fight, and the twins keep to themselves. At least they’ve got each other. But I—I feel like I’ve got nothing anymore. Less than nothing. I just want to walk away. Like you did.”
A pause. Then Dad drawled, “Now, don’t that just take the cake? Ain’t Kyle and Kayla the same age you were when I left? Which I have been told hurt you so bad you still haven’t forgiven me?”
True enough. Chad still felt the same old pain and anger, and he still thought his father had some damn nerve trying to get back into his life decades later. Childish resentment edged his voice as he said, “Dad, I’m asking you for help now.”
“I hear you. I’m just having trouble believing you.”
Now, wasn’t that just too damn perfect? His father didn’t believe him either.
Chad hardened his voice. “Believe me. I want out. I want to know how you got the guts.”
“It wasn’t guts, Chad—it was rotgut whiskey. Liquid stupidity out of a bottle. Ruined my liver and my life, and you know damn well it was as wrong as wrong can be.”
“Right or wrong, I got to do something to get out of this situation. If there was a cliff handy, I’d jump off it.”
“I’ve felt the same way. It’ll pass. Are you at work?”
“I was.”
“You still are. Do as I say, not as I done, because I fucked up bad and it ain’t no honor to either of us if you follow in my footsteps.”
“Dad—”
“Son, it’s taken me a lifetime, but now I have a chance to do right by you and I don’t want to blow it. I need you to do as I say, not as I did. I haven’t earned the right to say I love you, but goddamn, Charles, I care about you. Now, are you going to get back to work?”
After a long pause, Chad mumbled, “I guess.”
“Good. And after work, you going home to your family?”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever yes or whatever no?”
Chad raised his voice, peevish now. “Yes, I’ll go home. Today.”
“Good. Call me again tomorrow if you need to. One day at a time is the best anybody can do, ever. I promise I will not pray for you, son.”
Chad actually laughed out loud. Damned if his father didn’t share something in common with him besides a set of chromosomes. Both of them felt the same way about religion. Being prayed over was a bitch.
SEVEN
The rain pounded against the windows now and ran down in water snakes.
Rain like that would wash out tire tracks on a dirt road, footprints at the end of the dirt road, even blood. Even lots of blood.
Stoat, the obsessively tidy pedophile, had chosen his time to be a cautious, methodical murderer.
It made sense. It made so much sense that I sweated and clenched my hands and not quite voluntarily peed my pants, flooding the bed I hated with my own watery relief and revenge.
Feeling both worse and better, I wondered where Justin was, and what he was doing or thinking.
I badly wanted to talk with him, to coax him or persuade him or manipulate him or shame him, whatever it took, and somehow force him to rescue me. And himself.
I could have called, “Justin!” and he would have come into the bedroom to see what I wanted.
But I clenched my teeth against calling him and I did not do it.
Stoat had made him a victim. I would not, could not, must not victimize him yet more.
• • •
I cried a little, cursed under my breath, stared at the ceiling, and thought about Susan Sontag finding metaphor in fashionable forms of death, then of Socrates, examiner of the good life, hefting his cup of hemlock. How had he lived that legendary last day? How could I best live my last day, disregarding the outcome, thinking only in terms of doing a good job of it? Lying in urine put me at a disadvantage. I thought of my sons and hoped they would never find out that detail of my final hours, then worked out a tentative plan to make sure. Thinking of my children made me think of my ex-husband, and I found myself mildly pleased to discover that I no longer cared about him one way or the other. The opposite of love, quoth Confucius or somebody, is not hatred but indifference. With Stoat’s help I’d gotten over my divorce in record time.