Chapter 3 #2
“The pleasure is mine.” He left his hand where it was, even when Swansy’s top hand began to move. I wondered whether he knew how much she could tell from a hand. Either he didn’t, or he had nothing to hide.
I watched her closely, anxious to know her reaction to Peter. But she wasn’t letting on. Leisurely she finished exploring the back of his hand and tracking the length of his fingers. Then she wagged his hand toward a chair. “Sit by me, please.”
Peter sent me a lopsided grin. In return I shot a pointed look at the cushioned armchair that sat not far from the bentwood. As Swansy released his fingers, he backed into it. I stayed close by her chair.
“Is this your first trip north?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. I’ve been many a time to Camden, though not in a long, long time.”
“Camden.” She was silent for a minute. “What was your business in Camden?”
I knew what he’d say. Camden was a summer playground for the big bucks crowd. My family and I had visited friends there many a time. Funny, we’d never heard about him then.
“When I was in my teens,” he said, “I waited tables at the big old hotel that used to be there.”
Which was why we’d never heard about him then. The Madigans and their friends didn’t mix with the hired help. If either Samantha or I had dared to flirt with an attractive young waiter. Dad would have cut off our allowances for a month. We’d never have risked that.
Besides, the years would have been wrong. Peter was forty. When he’d been in his teens, I’d have been too young to flirt. Not that I ever really got the knack of it.
So Peter had worked. I remembered Samantha saying something—what was it?—about his having made it big only in the past five years? That opened up dozens of questions, none of which I had the nerve to ask.
Swansy did. She started with, “Where are you from?”
“Originally? Columbus, Ohio.”
She mulled that over. “It’s a long way from Ohio to Maine.”
“Uh-huh.”
Swansy pulled a Swansy, then. I’d seen her do it to others, and heaven only knew how many times she’d done it to me, but I was surprised that it worked on Peter.
He seemed too sharp, shrewd enough to hold the cards to his chest in the face of a bluff.
But when Swansy sat there, training her opaque blue eyes his way and smiling with such sweet anticipation, he fell prey and, without another word from her, began to talk.
“I’d been a troublesome kid. My mother died when I was ten, my older brother had long since left, and I was stuck with my dad, who was as rigid a man as you’d ever want to meet.
I ran away whenever I could. Those summers, I hitched my way to the coast. I was fourteen the first time, but I was a big kid.
I had no trouble finding a job. In the summers after that, my dad was pleased to see me go. ”
He tossed me a glance. Only then did I realize that I’d been holding my breath. I let it out slowly, but I couldn’t take my eyes from him. “What did your dad do for a living?” I asked softly.
“He worked in a factory. Punched in every morning, punched out every night. I couldn’t bear the thought of growing up to do that. Prison was preferable in my mind—at least, that was what I told myself when I did some of the things I did. I came really close to finding out.”
“What did you do?”
He shrugged. “Petty stuff. Nothing felonious.”
“Like what?”
He looked bemused. “You really want to know.”
It was halfway between a question and a statement, and either way, I couldn’t deny it. I wanted to know, not because it had anything to do with what he could or could not do for Cooper, but because I was curious.
“I stole cars.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute. Then I couldn’t help myself.
“That’s petty? Do you know what havoc you wreak when you steal someone’s car?
I had a car stolen when I was twenty. It was my mother’s, but I’d been the one driving, so I felt the burden.
There was the hassle of being without it, the hassle of waiting for the police to call and report it found, the hassle of having it repaired, not to mention the expense, and then the feeling of driving a car that’s been diddled with by some faceless creep. ”
Peter looked amused. “‘Diddled with’?”
I’d used the phrase in all innocence, but the way Peter said it, and the look in his eye when he did, suggested something X-rated. “You know what I mean,” I muttered and looked away.
Quietly Peter said, “I never damaged any of the cars I stole. I just rode them around. It was an ego trip. I stepped on the gas, really stepped on it, and watched the speedometer needle pass sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety.…” His breath caught, then broke free. “It was a wild feeling of power.”
My gaze had returned to his as he’d been talking, lured by the excitement that, even then, crept into his voice. It was in his eyes, too, that excitement, and as I looked it seemed at the same time dangerous and sexy. Unable to accept either, I snorted. “It was a miracle you didn’t crash.”
“I did,” he said, and the excitement was gone.
“Two weeks after my eighteenth birthday, I got drunk, went for a spin and rammed headlong into a bridge abutment. I was driving my dad’s old shebang that time, so I didn’t get into trouble with the law.
My dad gave me up for dead, literally and figuratively.
I was in a coma for a month and woke up to find that I’d broken most every bone in my body. ”
I exhaled. “What happened then?”
“Not much. At least, not quickly. I was in the hospital for months. There was a first round of operations, then a second round. I had surgery to correct things that hadn’t healed properly, then I had to lie there and let them reheal.
When that was done, I started in on the endless physical therapy it took to get my body working again. ”
My gaze dropped to his legs. Lovingly encased in denim, they were long, strong and straight. “It’s hard to believe.”
“I could show you scars,” he said in a very soft voice, one that conjured up tummy-tingling images.
“I’m sure,” I said quickly. “Still, it’s hard to believe.”
“Why so?”
“You move so well. So fluidly. You don’t have any sign of a limp. You kept up with me all the way from my house.” I felt a stab of guilt. “It wasn’t the easiest walk. I’d never have suggested it if I’d known what you’d been through.”
“What I’ve been through is over and done. I’m fine. I swim regularly. I play tennis twice a week. I ran a marathon last month. I’m probably in better shape than I’d have been if I’d never crashed that car.” He paused before adding, “I know I am mentally.”
That got me wondering some more. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Get from that hospital bed to the courtrooms of America.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
I could have guessed that, but I wanted to know the details. I raised both brows in as tempting a silent invitation as I could muster, pulling a Swansy of my own. Then it struck me that, for all intents and purposes, I’d forgotten Swansy was there.
I quickly looked to her face. She was sitting quietly in the rocker, wearing an innocent smile, as unobtrusive—and intent—as a fly on the wall. I had the distinct impression that she was pleased with the way the conversation was going.
I leaned low and murmured, “Can I get you anything?”
She shook her head, but reached for my hand. Still the focus of her attention was Peter. “How?” she asked him.
Before he spoke, he looked at me, pointed silently to the chair on which he sat, asking me with his hands whether I wanted to sit. It was a courtly gesture, but I shook my head. I felt safer standing by Swansy’s shoulder, holding her hand. She grounded me.
Peter stretched out his legs and loosely folded his hands over the buckle of his belt.
“I had lots of time to think when I was laid up—lots of time with nothing to do and no one to see. I felt pretty low. At some point I decided that there had to be more to life than the kind of cheap thrills I’d been looking for.
So I buckled down. I took correspondence courses during my recovery and graduated from high school.
I was still in intensive physical therapy, so I couldn’t do much for another year.
I read a lot, thought a lot. Little by little I was able to go to work.
I had stacks of hospital bills to pay, and when I’d done that, I worked for another two years to stash money away for college.
By the time I entered the state university, I was twenty-four.
I did well, transferred to Penn, went from there to NYU Law, and the rest is history. ”
He summed the struggle up so quickly that it took me a minute to ingest it.
When I did, I couldn’t help but let out a breath.
“That’s a wonderful story.” It was just the kind that had always appealed to me.
“You fought the odds and came through on top. There must be any number of people who are sitting back, shellshocked to think that the drunken kid who went head-on into that bridge abutment is as successful as you are.”
“I didn’t have much choice. It was curl up and die or do something with my life.”
“You could have done less. You could have gotten yourself back on your feet only enough to hold down the barest excuse for a job. You could have been satisfied with punching in and out like your father did, then going to the corner bar and drinking your way through Monday night football.”
“If that’s the kind of life that works for a man, there’s nothing wrong with it,” he said in a voice that wasn’t quite as gentle.
“It’s a waste,” I argued. “That kind of existence goes nowhere.”
“For some people, it’s all that’s possible.”
I was shaking my head even before he’d finished. “There’s always more. Small things. Subtle things. There’s always something to work for.”