Distant Blood (29 page)

“Your choice!” I snapped back. “That was your choice.”

He lowered his arm, tired of pointing. “Yes, fine. If you want to play it that way—my choice.”

“You chose not to be my father. And now you want me to choose to be your son—” Anger wobbled my voice. I saw Aubrey watching us from the safety of the gardens. When he saw me see him, he turned and fled.

“I am choosing to be your father, if you'll let me.” Bob Don lowered his voice. “But now you have to go, Jordan. You get out of here. Or you and I never speak again.” His hands closed into fists and he could barely speak. His lips tightened into a vicious frown.

I managed to form words with my bone-dry mouth. “I don't respond very well to emotional blackmail, Bob Don. I don't like ultimatums.”

For a moment the only sound was the rush of the waves on the beach below us. “I don't like doing my damnedest to
be a father to you and being made to feel like a redheaded stepchild. You've made it quite clear you think you don't need a dad. I won't trouble you anymore. Get your bags packed and go, then. Take my car. Gretchen and I'll make arrangements to get back to Mirabeau.” Fear played along his face. He glanced away from me, toward the front door.

I shook my head and took his arm. I kept my voice soft. “Stop this. Just stop it. You don't want to push me away. I know you don't.”

“What I don't want is to hurt anymore about you, son. I wish you'd never found out I was your father. Then you could have stayed the ideal son in my mind. I never would have sullied my picture of you with a real person.”

We'd sparred with the truth that lay between us for the past year. I had tried to reconcile the lie my life had been. He had tried to father me past the thirty years we hadn't shared. His abandoning the quest to integrate us into a family seemed completely out of character. I stood my ground.

“I don't believe you. Tell me what it is you don't want me finding out.” My mind nimbled over the possibilities. “Is it about whatever might have happened between you and Paul and Gretchen all those years ago? Or why Sass is such a terror? Or why Tom seems to hate the rest of this family? Or whatever happened to Deborah's parents? Or what Wendy might be up to? Or is it some dirty secret of Uncle Mutt's?”

His eyes were blue steel on mine and I realized, sickeningly, that I'd completely miscalculated. Bob Don meant business, and in the worst way. “This isn't Mirabeau. You are here by invitation, boy, and that invitation has just been revoked. As soon as Mutt gets back, you go. You leave here. If you don't, I knock you out and dump you on the boat back to the mainland myself. Whether or not you and I are still father and son—and the whole concept kinda seems a joke right now, since you won't show me a dog's consideration— will depend on what happens when I get back to Mirabeau.”

Anger coursed into my face; I could feel the blush deepen my skin. Hurt forked my tongue into a weapon. “I haven't exactly behaved like the model son? I'm sorry to disappoint you. But that's inevitable when you stick me up on a
pedestal so high I can't even see you or the ground. You haven't treated me like a son; you've treated me like a pathetic charity case, like I'm some mistake you've got to make up for.” Sass's cruel words rang in my ear.
You're a mistake.
“A mistake. Is that how you view me?”

“Your mama was sharp-tongued, too, when she got riled,” he muttered.

“And what's that shit?” I barked. “I'm sick of these little insights into my mother's character you seem compelled to offer me. Do you think I don't know her? I spent a hell of a lot more time with her than you ever did!”

“That wasn't my choice. I loved her,” he said through gritted teeth.

I shook my head. “It still amazes me she cheated on my father with you. I can't quite picture it. Maybe it wasn't the grand passion you've painted. Maybe it was two or three quickies in the toolshed. God knows there aren't any other witnesses to back you up. Maybe I am a mistake, then. Maybe my mother wasn't anything to you but a convenient piece of ass and all I am is you not having a rubber in your pocket when you got a bad itch to fu—”

He stepped forward then, quickly, and slapped me across the face. The force of the blow was not hard, but I rocked back on my heels, my hands groping for the swing's chain. Shock and surprise lit his own eyes, and as I rubbed my stinging cheek I saw the hand he'd struck me with quaver.

“Jordan—” he croaked.

“You hit me,” I said, my voice shockingly mild.

“No.” He shook his head. “I won't have you talk about your mama and me that way.”

“I don't want to hear the same old litany, Bob Don. You made your feelings clear just now.” A sharp stabbing pain lanced my heart. Oh, what had I done?

He stepped forward, remorse etched in his face. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to turn away and pretend that this terrible exchange had never taken place. Instead I looked past his shoulder to see two boats roaring across Matagorda Bay toward Sangre Island.

I STUMBLED UP THE STAIRS OF THE CREAKY
house. I went to Candace's room and rapped quickly before stepping inside. Candace glanced up from her magazine. She didn't look so sickly; a bit of color had returned to her face. Her eyes widened at my expression.

“Uncle Mutt's on his way back. With the police. If they need to talk to us, we'll talk. Otherwise, get your bags packed, we're going.”

“Going? Going where?”

“Back to Mirabeau. Bob Don's made it abundantly clear that we're no longer welcome here.”

She dropped her magazine. “What are you ranting about? And what about Aunt Lolly's funeral?”

I didn't bother to hide the anger heating my blood. “The man who provided the sperm to create me is no longer interested in my company. He doesn't trust me, and I can't be a son to him, Candace. He doesn't want us at Lolly's service. You thought he'd need us, he doesn't, believe me.”

I tossed one of her carry-ons onto the bedspread and reached for her book bag. “Where's your stuff? We can be gone in an hour or so, if the cops don't need further statements from us.”

“Wait a minute! Hold on, ace.” She took the other bag from my hands. “Tell me what's going on.”

I started, sounding like a recalcitrant child disavowing his own blame in a schoolyard squabble. “He's all bent out of shape because he thinks I'm snooping around his precious family. And now it's become pretty obvious that he's not going to trust me with whatever haunts him here and I don't
believe he ever loved my mother and I'm sick of him trying to tell me what kind of person she was and—” Hot shame silenced my torrent of words. I felt roiling nausea churn my guts. I turned from Candace and hurried into her bathroom. I knelt before the open toilet right before lunch made an encore appearance.

When I'd quit retching, I spat the sourness out of my mouth. I clenched my eyes closed and leaned against the porcelain bowl. There are not many moments in a man's life when the quiet, comfortable fabric of his existence unravels in a long, painful thread. I'd had my share: the damp-smelling funeral parlor where my grandfather lay in the quiet of his coffin and I had my first look at human death; the dark, rainy morning the doctors told me with their fixed expressions of professional disappointment that Daddy was dying and they could do nothing; the faultlessly beautiful night in Boston when the phone call came from Sister that my mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's; the vengeful, drunken slur of Gretchen's words when she told me I was Bob Don's bastard. I felt the wrenching tug at my heart that this was another such moment. I'd laid open the anger, frustration, and pain I'd nursed so carefully, treasured so well, against Bob Don and my poor mother. I'd suggested their love—and I should have known better of them both—was nothing but physical pleasure, Bob Don was a callow cad, and my mother—my beloved, smart, funny, unpredictable, kindhearted mother—no better than an easy lay.

If I had decided to be mad, it was in the sense of insane.

I spat again into the toilet. Candace had followed me and, without speaking, rinsed a washcloth and applied it to the warm spot where neck met back.

“You've been urping, too,” I said by way of casual conversation. “Maybe I've caught whatever you've got.”

She rubbed the cool comfort of the cloth against my neck and splayed her fingers into the short hair on the back of my head. “I don't think so. Can you tell me what happened, honey?”

I retold the tale, not shying away from my own culpa-
bility in the stupid exchange. Candace listened, and when I was done, she rubbed her eyes with her fingertips.

“Oh, Jordy. Please don't do this to him and to yourself.”

“Do what?”

“If I have ever doubted you and Bob Don are blood kin, that doubt has to be gone. Y'all are so much alike it's not remotely funny.”

“Great. Now you, too. Listen, I don't want to hear a lot of psychobabble about this, Candace. Can't you just tell me I'm right and agree with me, for once, that Bob Don and I do not a family make?”

“Loving you doesn't mean sharing your brainwave pattern,” she answered, not unkindly. She mopped at my lips with the wet washcloth. “Maybe we should all breathe a sigh of relief this finally happened.”

“What?”

“You're arguing. It might be healthy. Like I said before, you and Bob Don acting like a real father and son is long overdue.”

I stood and went to the sink. I ran water into my cupped hand, slurped it into my mouth, and rinsed the ick from my gullet. I spat back into the sink and stood to look at the woman I loved.

“One of your most annoying traits, Candace,” I said with a calm I didn't feel, “is that you always talk like you're some special seer. Like God pointed you and you alone to the flowchart of my life. That you know what everyone ought to be doing or thinking or saying to each other. And that if folks don't follow your advice, you can peer into that crystal ball you keep stashed away from the rest of us and foresee the onrushing doom. God, I'm tired of that!”

“Jordan, don't yell at me.”

The calm tone of her voice grated like fingernails raking a chalkboard. “I
will
yell, thanks. I will yell my throat raw if I feel like it. I have spent the past year trying to get used to the idea of a car salesman that I never liked much being my father. Of my mother being an adulteress. Of living the rest of my life in a little town that I love, but that offers me very few career choices. And watching my mother slide down
into dementia. You know, those aren't fun things, Candace. Disney hasn't designed a ride around those little activities quite yet. And now I've gotten to meet my new family. And what a fucking thrill that's been!”

She was silent.

“I don't like to whine. Truly I don't. But I am tired, sweetheart.” My voice dropped and my head felt light. “I am tired of feeling like I've got to adopt Bob Don just because maybe he didn't wear a rubber thirty years ago—”

“Jordan!”

“—and because you keep telling me I need to give him a chance. No, I don't. There is no law, legal or moral, that says I have to give him the time of day. I don't need another father. I buried my father already. I would just as soon leave now, like he wants. I'm tired of being treated like a pariah here. I'm tired of feeling like I must apologize for who or what I am. And I'm so mad at him, at my mother, I can't even think straight. I said rotten things to him—and a part of me meant it.”

“Are you done?” Her words were soft. I felt my fury begin to subside.

I stood and leaned against the towel rack, feeling more tired than I believed possible. “No. Yes. I don't know. Please, can't we just get out of here?”

“Fine, we'll leave.” She turned soundlessly away and began packing. She folded shirts and walking shorts with cold precision, not looking at me. Finally she spoke: “I have to say you surprise me—I never thought you'd run away.”

“There's a difference between running away and acknowledging you've had enough,” I answered. She didn't look at me, briskly packing her belongings.

I had never spoken so harshly to her before. But I felt the sudden weight of weariness that I'd tried to ignore for months crash down on me. My relationship with Bob Don seemed finished, and with an icy idleness, I wondered if the same could be said for Candace. The thought jolted me and I forced it toward the back of my mind. I helped her in piling clothes into her bag. Neither of us spoke.

We didn't get a chance to finish stuffing the luggage.

Aubrey knocked on the door and opened it, barely waiting for an answer.

“Y'all gotta come downstairs. Mutt and the police are here.” He ran a trembling hand across the sheen of new sweat on his forehead. “They got the autopsy results.”

“It was a heart attack,” Uncle Mutt said in a low, soft voice. “Lolly had a heart attack.”

Silence greeted this announcement. I sat on the couch, sandwiched between Candace and Deborah. The air in the study felt old and heavy, like air from a tomb recently opened. My hand wandered to Candace's and I took hers in mine. Sweat slicked her palms.

Sass and Aubrey sat on the other couch, with Bob Don and Gretchen. Sass stood. She held hands with her son.