1. Jake #3
“Anything else, your majesty?”
I ignore his sarcasm. “No. That’ll do for a start.”
I get busy sorting paperwork, ignoring Madison’s brief appearance to help Mike with the table.
He looks around afterward, and I decide to find him another job.
“Why don’t you open that bottle of thirty-year-old Scotch I gave Dad a decade ago?
” I point. “It’s in that liquor cabinet, sealed like the day it came from the distillery. ”
I get a grim look for that. “Hardly seems like the time for a celebration.”
I prop my hands on my hips and give him a look that’s even grimmer.
“All right, how about this: there’s no point in buying the really good stuff if you’re going to keep it locked away until you can only use it to clean your drains.
I’ve had a shock. You’ve had a shock. I’ve driven half the night.
You’ve been up all night. We deserve a shot, not any bloody coffee. ”
Confronted with such indisputable logic, Mike gets the bottle. He could be walking on eggshells, which means he feels guilty about something. If it’s our father’s heart attack, I need to shake him free of that idea and fast.
“What did you say to him anyway?” I demand.
“Me?”
“You look freaked. Tell me.”
“Well, first I quit. That was earlier in the evening.”
“Probably not without provocation.”
“I don’t think so.”
He’s thinking it through, deciding how much to say. I offer a distraction, and frown at a slip of paper. “Who keeps a receipt from a barber? It’s four years old.”
Mike shrugs. “Then I took issue with him keeping my daughter from me and threatening her.” He cracks the seal on the bottle, gets out a couple of glasses and pours.
It takes me a minute to process what he’s just said. Daughter? “No.” It’s a token protest because Mike doesn’t lie.
“Yes,” he says heavily.
Mike has had two women in his life. Sylvia Kincaid was the first and probably the great love of his life.
She vanished and broke his heart. There was also Lauren at university but she broke off their engagement and I couldn’t blame her.
It has always been clear that no one could compete with Sylvia.
Daughter. Is that why Sylvia vanished after high school?
And that daughter was the cause of the last great fight Mike had with our father. Rightly so, in my view, if our father was threatening the girl.
He probably wanted to erase her from existence, and Mike would never tolerate that. I’ll guess he didn’t know about his own kid, and am pretty sure I could put the credit for that at our dear father’s feet.
I come honestly by my asshole tendencies.
“Then I have taught you something,” I say heartily. “Definitely worthy of celebration. Make mine a double. No ice.”
Mike hesitates for a heartbeat, so I shake that receipt at him.
“And who pays fifteen bucks for a haircut?”
“Anyone who goes to Barney downtown.”
“You’re kidding me. Fifteen bucks?”
“If it was four years ago, he probably left a two-dollar tip to round it up.”
Mike’s right. “He did. He wrote it in.” Thirteen dollars for a haircut. I’ve returned to 1965.
Mike sips his drink. “How much do you pay for a haircut?”
“Eighty bucks, one-fifty if I need highlights.”
Mike grins. “Is that with the little foil packets?”
“So, what if it is?” I will not apologize for wanting to look my best. I wave the receipt. “And what was this for? Why did he save it? Did he think he was going to get a tax credit for making a charitable donation?”
Mike gets a big trash can and I toss the crumpled receipt from Barney’s Barber Shop.
We clink glasses and I toast the framed photograph of Patrick that hangs over the fireplace.
What is that about? It reminds me of the pictures of the Queen that hung in every classroom and public meeting place.
I guess they’re of Charles now. Did our father think he was King of Empire?
“Godspeed, you old bugger,” I say and Mike chokes on his drink.
To my relief, he echoes the toast, though he looks a bit forlorn afterward.
“What happens next?” he asks.
“This,” I say, heading back to the desk and lifting everything out of one drawer. I take it to the table and indulge in another sip before I start to sort. That trash can comes in handy but quick.
“Can I help?”
“Better done by one person. I can keep track of what’s here and what’s not.” I take another drink. It is good Scotch. But Mike needs a task. Hmm. “You should maybe go ’round to Weatherby & Bradshaw, give them the bad news and ask about the will.”
He nods agreement. “No rush. Richard won’t be there before nine. I’ll finish my drink first.”
“Fair enough.” I top up my glass. I’ll have had three by the time Mike works his way through one. Everyone needs a hobby, as they say.
I wish I could think of another job for him.
He needs a distraction, but I have no more ideas.
Maybe letting him mope isn’t all bad. I’m emptying another drawer of the desk when I find the bundle of cards.
Surely, my father didn’t have a stash of love letters?
I know he screwed around on our mom, but it seems uncharacteristic for him to have left written proof.
“Hello. What’s this?” The sender is Sylvia Kincaid which gives me a bad feeling about the contents – and the implication. It’s a stack of letters, one or two a year for more than a decade, most addressed to Mike. And they’re here, in our father’s desk.
Seems the old man did something more than threaten Mike’s daughter. Why else would he have these letters squirreled away?
It’s one thing to have hopes for your kids’ futures, dreams and ambitions even, but it’s another to stick your hands into their lives and muck things up. My fury at my father and his meddling ways doubles in that instant, and I haven’t even read the letters.
“Something for you,” I say and toss the bundle to Mike.
“You shouldn’t have,” he replies, but he’s frowning at that top envelope.
I watch him, pretending that I’m not doing so. He opens the top one and I can see that it’s a Christmas card. His throat works and he puts the card back in the envelope, running his finger down the side of the stack.
A penny is dropping.
“Seventeen,” he says, as if that’s important.
Seventeen Christmas cards? A little math is a glorious thing. If this is the story of Mike’s daughter, Sylvia must have left Empire after high school because she was pregnant. Seventeen years would be about right.
The mysteries of the universe are all resolved in time.
“You know what they are?” I ask, but we both know it’s not really a question.
Mike nods slowly. I watch him open the bottom one, which has to be the oldest, and start reading. His shock is palpable.
“Never saw them before?” I guess.
Mike shakes his head. “She told me she wrote. He told me no letters ever came.”
“Someone had to be telling porky pies.”
He frowns down at the next letter, clearly shaken.
I am livid. How dare the old fucker do this to Mike, the kindest and nicest guy ever?
How dare our father keep this from Mike for all these years, denying him a connection with his own child – and then threaten the daughter too?
In this moment, I hate Patrick Cavendish with the fury of a thousand suns and I thought I already did.
“I never thought he would lie to me,” Mike admits quietly. “I was wrong. He admitted it last night.”
I know it would be smarter for me not to say anything in this moment. The fact is that if our father wasn’t dead, I’d be first in line to strangle the life out of him with my bare hands.
I expect Mike to sit there and read the whole pile, but he straightens with purpose.
“I’ve got somewhere to go,” he says and I know then that Sylvia isn’t far away anymore. She’s here in Empire, with her daughter, and that’s why our father threatened her and that’s why Mike challenged him.
He has a chance of getting what he wants, right here and right now, and I want him to have it with a ferocity that shakes me.
“Of course, you do,” I say with a nod.
But Mike lingers. “How do I fix this?”
Ah, so our father lied and the lovers blamed each other. A story as old as time, and one that I know Mike can get sorted. “Just tell her the truth. Women love that shit.”
“I always have.”
“You’re golden then.” I drain my glass as he stands there, practically rooted to the spot. If he thinks Sylvia is going to turn him down, he’s dead wrong. “Go on. Get out of here.” Mike heads for the door. “And good luck.”
He pauses on the threshold to look back. “You said that when I brought Lauren home.”
“Well, I was saying it to her, but details.”
“What?”
“Come on, Mike. From certain angles, Lauren resembled Sylvia, and you’re so transparent, everyone knew you were still in love with Sylvia.”
“But…”
“But nothing.” He has doubts and I’m going to dismiss them, here and now.
“You didn’t shortchange Lauren. She had her eyes wide open.
It’s not like you got hitched on a drinking binge in Vegas, and woke up the next morning, not knowing who was in bed with you.
You dated Lauren for years. She dated you for years.
She knew exactly what she was getting into, and she chose you anyway. Well, for a while.”
Mike still doesn’t leave so I give him a bit more encouragement.
“As much as it pains me to admit it, I think some people are destined to be together. They fall in love hard, sometimes right away, and no matter what happens, they never fall out of love. Everyone else is left in the shade. No one else compares. And those lucky bastards can pick up where they left off, whenever their paths cross again, whenever the situation is right.” I toast him and watch him smile.
It was just an attempt to encourage him, but I have that awkward feeling that Truth has made an unexpected cameo appearance. Of course, I cover as best I can.
I’m not sure Mike is fooled.
“I never knew you were a romantic,” he says, maybe seeing a little too much.
“Tell anyone and I’ll have to kill you. Okay?”
“Okay.”