Wednesday, December 23.
Bobby looked down at his papers, and his calculator. If he hadn’t been so tired, and so floaty, he would probably have been scared. The item that had appeared in last night’s paper had been small and buried on a back page, but Bobby had become adept at divining the true nature of the obscure. In the kind of enterprise he was involved in, an early warning system was essential. Now he had his warning—four short lines about a man he’d never met, but knew McAdam had—but no driving need to do anything about it.
In fact, at the moment, he had no driving need to do anything. The rational part of his brain kept sending him instructions—he’d seen the item and he had the time; a week of good fast work could get him out of this both rich and untouchable; if he could just get Daddy off his back he’d be fine—but they fell over the rest of him like smoke.
What held his attention was the memory of the Christmas he was ten, the first time he had really understood the way the world worked. He had been hearing about his special status since infancy. He was the Oldest Son, the Hannaford Heir. Sometime in the distant future, he’d be Head of the Family. He’d treated the information the way he’d treated grade-school rumors of high-school algebra classes. He didn’t have to worry about it at the moment. When he did have to, he would.
That year, when he was ten, he’d come downstairs before anyone else was up. The tree was in the larger sitting room, a twenty-four-foot Douglas pine weighed down with five generations of Hannaford ornaments. Because he wanted to get a good look at the crystal angel on top, he came at it from the balcony that opened off the west wing. He stood on the balcony for a while, wondering how they got glass to make the dips and swirls of angels’ wings. Then he went down the balcony stairs to look at his presents.
He was halfway down the staircase when he realized one pile of presents was larger, much larger, than all the rest. He was stupefied when he reached the tree and found that pile belonged to him. It should have belonged to his father. Back on the stairs, he had assumed it had. His father was the Atlas of his world, part ogre and part god, unassailable and eternal. When Bobby thought of growing up, he saw himself getting taller and stronger year by year and his father getting taller and stronger still.
He opened the three boxes at the top of the pile, wondering if he had so much because the things they’d bought him were cheap and inconsequential. They weren’t. He’d asked for a pair of air force binoculars, and he’d got them. He’d asked for a Greenwich gyroscope, and he’d got that, too. He looked across the room at his stocking, hanging from the mantel over the dead ashes of a cold fire and saw the pale blue envelope that should contain a notice saying five thousand dollars had been deposited in his trust account at the First National Bank. Just to make sure it did, he crossed the room and opened it up.
He was stuffing the envelope back into the stocking when he heard the balcony door moving above him. By the time he managed to turn around, his father was coming down the balcony stairs. Bobby backed up a little. He wasn’t surprised at the ritual hatred in the old man’s eyes—he knew his father hated him; he’d always known it—but there was amusement there, too, and Daddy amused scared Bobby Hannaford to death.
He’d taken a Hershey’s Kiss out of his stocking when he’d put the envelope back in. Now he put his fist around it and pumped until the chocolate turned to liquid.
“Things,” Daddy said, stopping halfway down the stairs.
“Excuse me?”
“Things,” his father said. “That’s the only way I know you exist.”
“That’s why I think you’re losing it,” Myra said. “You never listen to me anymore.”
Bobby came to. He was sitting in the kitchen at Engine House, at some ungodly hour of the morning, looking through the window at a thick and furious fall of snow. He was forty-four.
He caught sight of his papers laid out along the table and started to gather them up. “Sorry,” he said.
“Are you all right?” Myra said. “I thought you were comatose.”
“I’m fine, Myra. I’m just a little tired.”
“I suppose you are. Although what got you here at six o’clock in the morning, I don’t know.”
Bobby let this pass—he always ended up letting a lot of things pass, with Myra—and put his calculator back in its slip case. He was feeling better. The torpor that had paralyzed him for most of the last twelve hours was gone. He could see everything he would have to do in the next week, and he could see himself doing it.