Supervolcano All Fall Down(136)

Laughing and liking him very much in that moment, she gave him a hug. “Think so, do you?”

“Darn right I do.” He laughed, too—again, though, not for long. “Mike, he can tell those people what they want to hear. What they need to hear, the way they need to hear it. That’s an art. Honest to God, it is. I’ve watched him do it, and I’ve watched him get what he needs ’cause he can do it. When I realized he could and I can’t—and you’re dead right; I can’t, not for beans—that was when I figured out I was barking up the wrong tree when I put in for chief to begin with.”

“You’re fine the way you are. Better than fine,” Kelly said. “I’d rather have you than somebody who pats me on the back so he can feel where the best place to stick the knife is.”

“Well, I’m glad you think so. Not everybody does—you don’t believe me, all you’ve got to do is ask Louise.” Colin let out another sharp, short chuckle. “And I make a pretty fair cop, if I do say so myself. But if you’re gonna be chief, you have to know how to handle all the political stuff. I can’t, and Mike Pitcavage can. If he’s got to step down on account of his rotten kid, they’d better pick somebody a lot like him to take his place.”

Kelly listened hard. She couldn’t hear any rancor or bitterness. She thought she would have if they were there. Colin could hold things in, but only by keeping quiet about them. When he did talk, he meant what he said.

“I am sorry I had the row with Vanessa,” Kelly said. Unlike her husband, she wasn’t altogether blind to the power of positive hypocrisy. “I wish it hadn’t happened.” That much was true. The rest? Maybe not quite.

“If she wants to give you a hard time, that’s between her and you. Meeting my new wife and getting along with her, it can’t be easy for a grown kid,” Colin said.

“Marshall hasn’t had any trouble I’ve seen,” Kelly said tartly.

“Marshall’s Marshall. He doesn’t get himself in an uproar about stuff. Vanessa . . . does. She’ll go to war over commas. Makes her a darn good editor. Makes her kind of a pain, too. And she’s a woman, and so are you.” Colin set a fond hand on the curve of her hip. But then he said, “That’s not where I was going with this.”

“Where were you going, then?” Kelly asked.

“If she gives you a hard time, that’s her business, hers and yours,” Colin said. “But if she gives a little tiny baby a hard time, that’s a whole different ball game. That’s being mean for the sake of being mean. She knew what she was doing when she slammed the front door, all right. I called her on it, too. She didn’t like that very much.”

He hadn’t raised his voice. Kelly would have heard if he had. No, Vanessa was the one who’d started yelling. But Colin didn’t need to make a lot of noise to get his message across. Kelly’d known that as long as she’d known him. Vanessa wouldn’t have cared for his opinion, even delivered quietly.

“As long as it happens just the once, I’ll forget about it,” Kelly said.

“Sounds about right.” There, Colin’s agreement seemed reluctant. He went on, “Since she has landed a job, she will want a place of her own. She’ll want one, and she’ll get one.” And if she had some not-so-discreet encouragement from her father to speed her on her way, that wouldn’t bother Kelly a bit. Not even half a bit, Kelly thought as she started fixing dinner.

* * *

Dick Barber eyed Rob in mock reproach as they came up to the Episcopal church. Snow swirled through the air. It was one of the months with a vowel in it, so of course snow swirled. “The things some people will do to get out of climbing a ladder every time they want to go to bed,” Barber said.

“Don’t listen to him, Rob,” Justin Nachman said. “Now that you’re officially moving out of the tower, I’m gonna sublet it. I’ll be rich, man. Rich! He chortled unwholesomely and rubbed his mittened hands together in gloating anticipation a ham Shylock would have envied.

“I wasn’t listening to him. You don’t need to worry about that,” Rob answered. “Of course, I wasn’t listening to you, either.”

“Hey, there you go,” Charlie Storer said. “Equal-opportunity discrimination.”

Rob waited for the next smart-ass crack to come from Biff Thorvald. But Biff was less into them than his bandmates and the proprietor of the Trebor Mansion Inn. And he had more distractions. He was making sure his little son, Walter, didn’t trip on the rough sidewalk. He was also shepherding Cindy along. His wife’s belly bulged again. That made her balance less sure, but she at least knew enough to be careful. Walter wanted to go running all over creation. It wasn’t as if he even walked very well, because he didn’t. Toddlers always wanted to do more than they possibly could, though.