Skeleton Key(31)

Donna leaned over the steering wheel and made a pretense of paying attention. Traffic was almost nonexistent—it was quarter to six in the morning, and the yuppies were still at home in bed. If there were still yuppies. Gregor thought he might be out of date. He also thought that he had reached that point in lack of sleep when his condition was on the verge of dangerous.

“So,” he said.

Donna had made the turn. They were gliding down a short block whose tall buildings all seemed to be made out of beige stone. Donna adjusted her rearview mirror.

“So,” Donna said, “I’ve thought it all out, and I’ve decided that you’ve got to do something about it.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve got to do something about it,” Donna insisted. “I mean, it obviously can’t be allowed to go on the way it’s going. Peter’s a spoiler. He’ll wreck everything if he can manage it. And you know that. So you have to do something about it.”

There was a parking space just ahead of them. In fact, there were several. Donna didn’t even have to parallel park. She glided up along the curb and positioned the car’s nose right in front of a parking meter.

“Gregor,” she said.

Donna and Bennis were very good friends. Sometimes, Gregor found that hard to understand. Now he thought it made perfect sense, because in at least this way they were exactly alike. He turned around and looked at his big black suitcase in the backseat of the car.

“Donna,” he said carefully.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Donna said. “So don’t bother. You got him away from me at the wedding.”

“That was different.”

“Exactly. That wasn’t anywhere near as important. This is vital. Tommy doesn’t need Peter Desarian hanging around his life. He really doesn’t. Nobody needs Peter Desarian hanging around his life.”

“Peter is still Tommy’s natural father.”

Donna got out of the car and opened the back door. She got his suitcase out and put it down in the street. The street cleaners had done a good job this morning. There were no stray papers or cigarette butts in the gutters that Gregor could see.

He got out of the car himself.

“I can’t just do something,” he said reasonably. “Peter is Tommy’s natural father. And that matters. It’s even going to matter to Tommy one of these days.”

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

“But the thing is—”

“Don’t you want Russ to adopt Tommy? You’ve said all along that it would be a good thing. It would be a good thing. And you know it. And you can do something about it if you think it over long enough.”

“Like what?”

“Like find a way for us to prove abuse or neglect,” Donna said triumphantly. “Russ explained it to me. If there’s cause to believe that Peter abused or neglected Tommy, then we can get his rights terminated and Russ can go ahead with the adoption. And Lord only knows, Peter has neglected Tommy. He’s barely set eyes on him the whole time he’s been alive.”

“I don’t think that’s the kind of neglect that qualifies—”

Donna turned around, so quickly that Gregor was startled into stepping back. Her blue eyes were large and dark in her white face. Her body was very still. Gregor suddenly realized that he had never seen her really angry before, white hot angry, angry to the bone. He’d seen her blow up at Russ. He’d seen her exasperated and annoyed. He had never seen her like this.

Donna’s going to be very beautiful when she gets older, Gregor thought, with the half of his mind that was operating on automatic pilot. You could see the change that would come in her face. It was there right under the surface. The anger made it plain.

“Listen to me,” she said slowly. “I have no intention, no intention at all, of letting Peter Desarian mess this up. Which means we’re going to have to find a way to fend him off, and find a way soon, because Russ was meaning to file those adoption papers next month. And he’s going to. So start thinking, Gregor. We have to do something.”

Then she bent over, picked up Gregor’s suitcase in one hand, and headed out across the street for the train station. In the faint gray of the early morning not-quite-light, she looked like a Valkyrie.

Other men found docile women who made breakfast for them and cleaned house without complaint Other men found pliant women who wanted only to please, or directionless women who wanted only a man to guide them, or even simply polite women who believed it was only fair to let a man have his own way at least every once in a while.