Chapter 42
“Take a seat, Dad.”
I gesture to the wing chairs in front of a desk he used to sit at.
“Don’t use that tone with me. You don’t know the half of it.” He pins me with a gaze that used to send reporters to their knees. It won’t work on me. Not anymore.
“Then tell me. Tell me how you and Alice carried on an illicit affair and I was conceived.”
The man before me draws in a long, whistling breath.
In six weeks, he looks like he’s aged sixteen years.
Age spots, once soft and subtle across his forehead and hands, are more pronounced.
His hair, once a majestic, slicked pompadour, is now a wiry mess of snowy wisps that will not behave.
Magnus sits before me in trousers and a knitted sweater, hugging a frame more bone and sinew than substance.
Did I break him? It’s hard to say. He’s been through wars and economic plunges.
If anyone has the cast-iron kahunas to survive this, it’s him.
“Well, go on then, the floor is yours. Tell me.”
“Your mother has always been a conniving cunt of a thing. Marin and I didn’t want Michael to marry her, but he remained adamant.
The Quince family was adamant. We only had one surviving son after Matthew passed away.
Marin couldn’t have any more children, so I guess we kind of funneled everything we had into Michael. ”
Michael Mercer remains the epitome of a spoiled rich kid. He grew up surrounded by future lawmakers, a future president, and European royalty.
“Anyway, the damn kid wouldn’t listen and proposed, anyway. She said yes, of course she fucking did. I thought—we hoped — that she might come around in time and be a decent human being.”
“Decent?” My laugh is incredulous and throaty, coming from low in my chest. “Who was judging that? You?”
“Both of us. Marin never took to her, but over time, once Mitch and Monica came along, we had the family we craved. The mines were booming and broadcasting regulations really opened up in the eighties. Excess was everywhere; it’s not like it is now with such a divide between the classes.
Everyone bought newspapers and magazines.
Cable television gives you over one hundred and fifty channels.
Life wasn’t just good; life was fucking fabulous. ”
“Until…”
The old man inhales again and wheezes out a crackling cough. The wet sound lingers while I recline, fingers steepled. If he wants water, he can damn well get his own.
“I dunno exactly. In the nineties, we had a new war. We had uncertainty, we had change. And with Marin approaching menopause, we hardly spent any time together. She was too hot, or too tired, or whatever. I know it’s not an excuse, but around the same time Michael started talking about actively divorcing your mother.
He started spending more and more time away from family.
Your mom had a bank of nannies raising Mitch and Mon, always off doing her own thing.
When it was only her and I in the house, she had some satin slip of a thing on. I lost control and fucked her.”
“Repeatedly?”
“Yes. About a week. I can’t remember. Marin called one night to say she and the kids were coming home the next day, and I snapped out of it. I told Alice it was a mistake, and not to breathe a word about it to anyone. She agreed until she found legal documents on the fax machine and lost it.”
“You shot yourself in the foot. You couldn’t tell Michael…”
“Christ, no, can you imagine?” He grabs the chair arms and sits up straight.
“Oh yeah, old man, I can.” My knee bounces with restless energy. If this is his explanation to garner any sympathy, he is shit out of luck.
“Alice said she was pregnant the night Michael returned. I’m not sure she even knew then, more of a hope in the darkness, I guess.
If she wasn’t, she might have manufactured some other plan or faked a miscarriage.
Who knows, the woman is a fucking loony.
Michael froze. The look on his face I will never forget, Marin’s either.
Suddenly, the get-out-of-jail-free card was the key that locked her in.
A couple of weeks after that, she did confirm she was pregnant.
She had the tests and everything, those scan things.
She talked the nurse into a conception date before Michael left for Barcelona. ”
“And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“Yeah,” he says after a long beat.
“Did you know?” I demand, my index finger pushing into the desk.
“No. I mean, the thought crossed my mind, but you could have been Mike’s from before he left. I didn’t ask her to confirm anything, and she never offered.”
“Oh, I fucking bet she didn’t,” I say to the ceiling. “Is that why you put me in this chair even when Michael wavered?”
“Mason, please.”
“Answer me! You are here now with your lawyers waiting outside. There is something you want to sort out today. I think I am entitled to the truth after thirty years of lies, don’t you think?”
“Fine, fine! You are in that chair because you deserve to be. It was never some pity ploy to make up because Michael is a self-serving bastard. If he blamed you for stymieing his escape from Alice, that was on him, not you. As the child of an inappropriate union, you were the only innocent party. You did the work, and there is no one who deserves this title more than you. I made mistakes I’m not proud of.
I’m not saying you were one, but your mother was.
I’m here asking for your forgiveness and to continue a normal relationship with you.
I may have lost Michael and Marin. Christ, the woman is a fucking saint.
I’m not sure she will ever forgive me. She’s the one, besides you, who is in the middle of all of this. ”
“She is the one person, besides Nic, who is blameless in this whole fucked-up farce, you know that, don’t you?
” His throat works overtime on a swallow.
With anyone else, shame would be obvious.
Not him. Magnus Mercer has never admitted any wrongdoing in his life.
He was never wrong, perhaps not quite right but never wrong.
“I do. She’s a wonderful woman, your grandmother.”
“Didn’t stop you from sleeping around when she had some hot flushes though, right? You are correct about her being wonderful, though, and a saint. The weekends she took me sailing were some of the best memories of my childhood, and I don’t have an extensive bank to choose from.”
His fingers work the leather armrests, squeezing and releasing like a pump.
“Her father took her sailing when she was younger, and she loved it. No one took any interest in it other than you. I was always too busy and preferred polo or poker. Mike suffered from terrible seasickness, and Mitchel only wanted something with wheels and a big motor. Monica doesn’t travel well by boat either.
That’s part of why you and Marin have such a special bond.
You share the love of the ocean, the wind in your hair and salt spray in your face. She said it makes her feel alive.”
“She’s right. It does.” The way Illusions cuts through the waves is a feeling so far unsurpassed. “The ocean embraced me when nobody would. It saved me.”
He nods his affirmation, content because I have a connection with someone, somewhere.
It will never be him, not after what he did, not after his racist, sexist, bigoted tirades over the years that I had to sit through in silence.
And most definitely not after he admitted to sleeping with Alice when his own wife was experiencing menopause.
Jesus Christ, has there ever been a more distasteful, abhorrent human? Ladies and gentlemen, my father!