Once in a Lifetime (28 page)

“Where the hell is everybody going?” He looked at Russ. “And who do you think you are looking down your broad noses at Jack Stevenson? I can buy and sell the lot of you.”

Russ doubled up with laughter, though only he knew how he managed it. “I don’t doubt it for a second, man. You gave away your daughter in order to keep your fortune. Don’t tempt me. Hike it on upstairs, and for God’s sake,
get a life!
”

The next morning, Telford stepped out of the limousine, took his bags and started up the short walk to the front door of Harrington House. Suddenly, the strangeness of his surroundings registered—the silver-gray Lincoln Town Car parked in the circle, several saplings uprooted, limbs detached from older trees and a shattered garage window. He’d seen the storm’s damage along Route 70 as the driver brought him in from Baltimore International Airport, but he hadn’t considered the damage it might have done to his home. Seeing that it was minor, he heaved a sigh of relief, walked into the house and dropped his bags, his only thoughts being Alexis and his craving for her.

His foot touched the first step of the stairs, and he looked up and stopped, rooted in his tracks, as Alexis floated down to him, followed by her ex-husband. Grinning. Triumphant. Arrogant. Alexis stopped.

“Telford. Oh, Telford, I didn’t realize you’d be back to day.”

Hold your tongue, man, and don’t say anything you’ll be sorry for. Jack Stevenson is baiting you.
Before he could greet her, Jack plunged in, playing his cards close to his chest.

“Thanks for the hospitality, buddy,” Jack said. “All of it.”

His resolve to remain unperturbed deserted him. “What do you mean ‘all of it,’ and what the hell are you doing up there?”

The man’s grin widened. “It’s where I slept last night.”

She whirled around. “What are you insinuating? You slept up there because Russ told you to.”

“So you were visiting Tara when the storm hit, and Russ allowed you to spend the night. Well, the storm’s over, pal.”

He dashed up the stairs to where Alexis stood, fit to explode, folded her in his arms and covered her mouth with his own. Warm and pliant, she melted into him, gripping his shoulders and lower back. With parted lips, she took him in and gave him what he needed.

As if Jack Stevenson were not standing there, he took her hand, walked past him up the remaining three stairs with her, went into his room and closed the door.

“I’d like to rearrange that guy’s face. Where’s Tara?”

She stepped closer and rested her head against his chest. “Russ took her to school. I was up here doing my work. I didn’t even know Jack was walking behind me.”

“The guy’s cunning. I didn’t appreciate his attempt to implicate you.”

Both of her arms went around him, and she nuzzled his chest. Coming home. This was what it really meant to come home. “He no longer surprises me,” she said, her voice muffled by the fabric of his jacket. “How’d you leave things in Barbados?”

“I’m satisfied for now, but that is definitely not where my mind is. I missed you.”

She stepped away and looked up at him, her stance provocative and inviting. “Wherever your mind is right now, I guarantee it is not alone.”

“If I put my hands on you right now, here in my room, three feet from my bed… Look, I’ll be down in a minute.” He opened the door. “Wait up here. If he hasn’t already left, I’ll see him out.”

He ran down the stairs.
Let’s see who’ll be wearing an arrogant, mocking grin now.
As he turned toward the foyer, the front door closed, and Russ locked it and wiped his hands along the sides of his trousers as if brushing away some unwanted matter.

“Damned nuisance,” Russ muttered, looked up and saw him. “Say, brother, when did you get here?” They rushed to each other, and Telford knew again the strong, welcoming love of his brother.

“About twenty minutes ago, just in time to catch Jack making an ass of himself.”

“Don’t tell me. If anybody’s an expert at that, he is. I just sent him off, and I wouldn’t care if I never saw or heard of him again.”

“Same here, but we have to tolerate him for Tara’s sake. How’s Henry? When I talked with him a few days ago, I sensed that he lacked his usual vigor.”

“This is flu season, and he may have had a touch of the virus. Drake will be here tomorrow, and I understand from Alexis that Velma will get in Christmas Eve morning. I guess we’d better get her some presents.”

He wasn’t going to laugh at that, he told himself, but when had Russ become so transparent? “Yeah. I’m going into Frederick this afternoon and do some shopping.”

“I figured you’d forgotten I was still upstairs waiting for you to say something like—” Alexis pursed her lips and put a bland expression on her face. “Like yoo-hoo, hey, pig. You know what I mean.”

He walked back to the bottom of the stairs, where she stood and draped an arm around her waist. “Quit mugging. A man would have to be out of his mind to forget about you.”

She raised both eyebrows. “Enough said.”

Russ blew out a long and loud breath, as though he’d practiced doing that for their benefit. “You two either get your show on the road or break it up. Watching it is like seeing a bunch of people gazing at a wildfire and praying for rain instead of plunging in and doing something about it.”

Telford didn’t allow himself to get irritated at his brothers, so he waved a hand at Russ, dismissing the remark.

He’d already made up his mind that when January the first came, there’d be no debris cluttering up his life. Happy or not, he’d at least know where he was headed.

“You believe you ought to say whatever you think?” he asked Russ, though he imagined that, as much as his brother loved things tied in neat packages, the ill-defined relationship between Alexis and himself bothered him.

“You’re smart,” Russ said. “So you know nothing stays the same. Any welder will tell you to strike when the iron’s hot.” He strode past them and dashed up the stairs.

Since he wasn’t ready to settle issues with Alexis, he hugged her, dropped his arm and gazed down at her. “I’d better let Henry know I’m back. See you later.”

He found Henry in the pantry, humming. “Going to Chicago,” a song popularized by the Count Basie Band six decades earlier, and slung his arm briefly around the old man’s shoulder. “How’s it going, Henry?”

“Same as always. If you want I should stay here cooking you meals, see to it that I don’t have to fix another morsel for Jack Stevenson.”

“You could always give him cabbage stew.”

The frail old man stared up at him with the look of incredulity on his face. “And you think I didn’t?”

He laughed aloud, a good cleansing guffaw. “You just made my day. Don’t I wish I’d been here.”

“This is subject to remake your day. Old man Sparkman called here a couple of times wanting to speak with you. Said it’s important.” He took a piece of paper from his billfold. “Here’s his number.”

“Thanks.” He stared at the number. So familiar, though he knew it had been years since he’d used it. “This seems like… Say, this is Mercy Hospital in Frederick.” How often he’d dialed that number during his father’s last illness.

He dialed the number, and when the voice identified the hospital, he hung up. “I’ll get hold of him later. Right now, I need to unpack and get a briefing from Russ. You need anything from Frederick or Eagle Park?”

“Nope. I done my Christmas shopping in Florida last summer. Don’t wait till the last minute to do things. Didn’t teach you to do that either.”

He brought Russ up to date on their operation in Barbados, got a look at Russ’s design for their next project and phoned Alexis. “I’m going to Frederick. How about dinner tonight? If it’s yes, tell Henry not to count on the two of us for dinner.” He told her good-bye, got into his car and headed for Frederick.

He was of two minds, curious as to why Sparkman considered it important to see him and tempted to let the old hatred resurface and have its way. But Alexis’s words haunted him:
“Happiness and bitterness don’t go together. You can’t love and hate at the same time.”

After finishing his shopping and completing several errands, he started home. But his conscience flailed at him, and he turned around and drove to the hospital where he found Fentress Sparkman sitting up in bed watching a soccer game on TV looking years older than when Telford last saw him in September.

He walked up to the foot of the bed. “You wanted to see me?” he asked him.

Sparkman turned off the television set. “Yes, I did. I thought you’d call, but I’m glad you came. I like to talk to a man face-to-face.”

“What’s on your mind?”

Sparkman trained fierce eyes on him and patted the edge of his bed. “Sit down so I don’t have to yell. We’ve had some rough times testing each other. I tried to throw you flat on your face, and I don’t apologize for it even now. I did it, and what’s done is done.”

“Why’re you telling me this? I know—”

“That’s just it. You don’t. All you know is the war between me and your daddy. We hated each other, and tried to ruin each other, and I succeeded. I’m not proud of the way I did it, but it’s done. It was him or me, and putting up buildings didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

Hairs seemed to stand up on the back of Telford’s neck as he stared at Fentress Sparkman. His mind’s eye dragged him back twenty years, and he was gazing at his own emaciated, terminally ill father, aged by illness beyond his years.

“Run that past me again, will you?” he said, as fear seemed to curdle his blood. “Why did you and my father hate each other?”

Sparkman turned fully to face him. “Because we had the same daddy.”

“
What?
Are you crazy?”

“Sane as you. I was born out of wedlock a couple of weeks before your daddy, Josh Harrington, was born, and your grandfather refused to acknowledge me publicly. He was scared to death your grandmother would leave him, and from all reports she would have. Your father and I knew each other well, were even in the same class all through school, and believe me, I suffered. In those days, being what they called an illegitimate child was as scandalous as being a child molester is today.

“We fought all the time. Josh Harrington went to proms, courted the town’s best women, went to Yale. And he had the Harrington name. I never went to a prom in my life, not that the man who sired me wouldn’t have bought what I needed, but my mother didn’t know how to do anything, and didn’t bother to learn.” He sucked air through his front teeth. “She didn’t have the mother wit of a rat’s tootoo.”

He’d give that comparison some thought later on. “How did you get where you are? Your mother couldn’t have been all bad.”

“She wasn’t. She filled my head with the desire to get even, as she hadn’t been able to do. I told myself I’d do it for her. I sent myself to Harvard, working like a dog to get there and stay there, and when I graduated head of my class, by dang, they knew who Fentress Sparkman was.

“I want us to bury the hatchet, Telford. I don’t have a soul but myself. Never had any children, and my wife’s been dead for years. I’ll be checking out of here in less than six months myself. At least, that’s what these doctors tell me. I ruined your father just like I set out to do, and losing the benefits of forty-some years of work killed him. I can’t make up for that,
but I want to leave what I have to you and your brothers. That alone won’t get me into heaven, but it might help.”

Telford got up and walked over to the window, wishing he could open it and get some fresh air. For a long time, he gazed down at the street, at the people rushing along with their Christmas packages, oblivious to the fact that he’d just had the wind knocked out of him.

He turned around and looked at the man he’d spent over half of his life detesting. “You’re telling me that you’re my uncle?”

“If you don’t believe it, it’s easy to prove. DNA doesn’t lie.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked back to the bed. “Oh, I believe you. A tale like that one has to be true. Besides, when I first looked at you in that bed, I thought I was hallucinating. Without those horn-rimmed glasses you’ve always worn, you look enough like him in his last days to be him.”

“I heard he got pretty sick. You think over what I want to do. As I see it, I’m just giving back to Josh what I took away from him. And…and if maybe you can see your way clear to…to overlook some of the things I’ve done—”

He had no desire to see the man eat crow, but he needed the answer to two questions. “What prompted you to go to the ceremony for the completion of Eagle Park High School and sit in the front row?”

“I know how to play rough and dirty, and Lord knows I’ve done plenty of that, but I’m a gentleman. You beat me fair and square. I tell you the truth, I couldn’t help admiring you. Nobody thought you’d pull it off. Three major projects in three different places, and you took that little three-man company and made us all stand up and take notice.”

“What about that strike? It came close to ruining us.”

The old man brushed his hand across his brow. “I know. That was too much even for me, which is why I settled it. My conscience gave me a good beating.” His rate of speaking slowed down and his eyelids drooped.

“I’d better not tire you out.”

“Come back if you can, but don’t take too long.”

Memories of his father came back to him as he stared down at the man who claimed to be his uncle. “I’ll be back. Thanks for telling me. It couldn’t have been easy for you.”

“Once I…decided to do what’s right, I was relieved. Give my regards to your brothers. Josh raised some fine men.”

“Thanks. I’ll tell Russ and Drake all that you’ve said.”

He barely remembered walking from Fentress Sparkman’s hospital room to his car, but he was sitting in it staring through the windshield and seeing nothing. If he’d ever received a tougher wallop, he didn’t remember it. He drove home with great care, left his car in front of the house and headed for the kitchen where he knew he’d find Henry.

“Henry, could you put that aside for a few minutes? You and I have to talk.”

“Later. I got to…” He glanced at Telford. “What’s wrong, Tel? What’s come over you?”