He reached out and laid his hand over hers. “It’s okay. I’ll buy her another one. We need to talk about Jack.”
She drew her hand away and straightened in her chair. “Atticus, please don’t refer to your father by his first name. It’s disrespectful.”
“I’m sorry.” He was sorry his changed attitude toward his father hurt his mother, even in this small way. But he wasn’t sorry for disrespecting Jack. He didn’t think of Jack as Dad anymore, so why call him that?
He could say Father. That would work.
Father was easy enough and accurate. Jack Spenser had sired him and raised him until he fell over from a heart attack. But even so, to Spense, he’d never be Dad again. “I love you, Mom.”
Her chin was up, she was looking him square in the eyes, and she was so quiet, he wasn’t sure she was breathing.
Which was strange.
Because he hadn’t so much as hinted about a problem, yet clearly she was anticipating the worst.
Her shoulders rose and fell.
Good. She was breathing after all.
“You don’t have to tell me anything, Atticus. There’s very little about your father I don’t already know.”
“I’m afraid there is.”
She wadded up the soaked napkin in her hand and tossed it with amazing accuracy into the wastebasket. “I don’t think so, my love.”
He rubbed his temples with his fingers. Her eyes held such love, so much compassion. The look on her face was like the one he remembered from Jack’s funeral. The one that seemed to say that no matter how bad things got, she’d always be there to make it better for him.
“Don’t worry, honey. Whatever it is, it’s going to be all right.”
There was no possible way she could guess how wrong she was. Time to stop drawing this out. It wasn’t going to get any easier. “My father was unfaithful to you.”
She didn’t look away. Her expression didn’t change. She didn’t even blink.
“Not just in a small way. He . . .” It was Spense who had to look down. He hated what he had to tell her. He took a long breath and glanced up again. If she was strong enough to have this conversation without flinching, then so was he. “It went on for years—most of my childhood.”
“Yes, I think it probably did.” She picked up a cookie then put it back on the plate.
He felt as though he was listening to her speak from under water.
“Thank you for telling me. I didn’t know, for a fact, that he cheated. But since the day of his funeral, I suspected.”
“Why didn’t you say something? Maybe you didn’t want to tell me when I was young, but after all these years . . .”
“Like I said, I wasn’t sure. And with your father dead and gone, I didn’t see the point in tainting his memory for either one of us.” She sighed heavily. “After the funeral, while you were on the floor of your father’s study, desperately trying to put his Rubik’s cube back the way it should be, I was going through bank statements, clothing, shoe boxes. I found photographs . . . of a beautiful blond woman. I found an embroidered handkerchief that wasn’t mine, scented with a strange perfume. Ticket stubs from movies your father and I had never been to. I didn’t have proof, but in my heart, I felt it. All those business trips to Dallas over the years. Is that where she lived?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find out?”
“I met her in Texas. On our last case.” There was so much more to tell her, but she looked tired. “Let’s go into the living room and hang out on the sofa. I’ll pour you something stronger than milk, and I’ll tell you everything.”
“It’s not even 9 a.m.!”
“If I can have cookies for breakfast, you can have sherry.”
A half hour later, his stoic mother drained the last drop of pink liquid from her goblet, and blew her nose on the last tissue from the Kleenex box. Spense was mad as hell at Jack Spenser, but she was taking it better than expected. She’d cried a lot, yes, but she hadn’t sobbed. And she hadn’t uttered a single angry word. He didn’t understand it, but Jack was her husband, and she had a right to react however she wanted. If she wanted to forgive the cheating bastard, Spense wasn’t going to try to stop her.
“Atticus.” She looked up at him with red-rimmed, watery eyes. “I need you to believe that your father loved you, because I swear to you, he truly did. You were his whole world.”
That was bullshit, but let her believe whatever she needed. “Sure.”
“I adored him, with all my heart. I wouldn’t trade my life with your father for another, more perfect version of him, even if I could. I loved and still love a flawed man. But you, my dear, are as close to perfect as any son could be. You inherited all of your father’s good traits and not a single one of the bad.”