by Melody Clark
“That man insulted me numerous times. I would never have said those things to him,” Edward said sharply. “I managed to keep a civil tongue, largely by walking outside.”
“I wouldn’t have let him go on.”
“He shouldn’t have gone as far as he did.”
“I realize that, Edward, but while you’re not a child, you’re my child. In this house, you’ll act according to my wishes –” Thomas said, walking up closer. “First there was the car, and then the house funding – ”
“I thought we had processed that.”
“Those incidents stemmed from the same problem we are discussing now. You’re my oldest, and I need you to support my decisions, not undermine them.”
“Even if I disagree with them?”
“Especially then. We can take up our disagreements apart from the others. But we need to show a consolidated front.”
“Are we in a war?”
“In a way,” Thomas replied. “Especially when we’re dealing with children.”
Edward shut his eyes. He took in the words and nodded. “Look, I acknowledge I overstepped my boundaries. I crossed the line. I didn’t keep my place. I stepped on your toes. Okay?”
“This isn’t about anyone keeping their place.”
Edward turned away to plead his case to clouds and open sky. “Fine. Pick the appropriate metaphor. I was wrong. I apologize and I will apologize again. This is not my world. It’s not my culture. It’s not my place. I feel worse than a fish on a bicycle here, I’m a fish on a Harley Davidson. I’m a pentangular peg in a round hole. I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing here – ”
“Edward!” Thomas said sharply, circling around to face him again. “One disagreement does not a crisis make.”
“It hasn’t been one disagreement,” Eddie said, turning away again to gaze back at the road.
“What on earth are you two yapping at each other about?” Tad said, as he came around through the side gate. “The whole backyard, not to mention half of Summerfield Drive, is beginning to wonder. Your voices carry, you know.”
“I was about to say as much about the inside of the house,” John Croftdon said, looking pale and wan in his robe and slippers, as he walked up to join them.
“You shouldn’t be out of bed, Granddad,” Tad replied to him.
“No, and I wouldn’t have been if the noise hadn’t commenced,” the old man answered.
Edward didn’t join the conversation, having focused on the row of cars along the band of Summerfield that belonged to Croftdon House. He focused on one car in particular. The side of the car read Status Associates. It was a Bakunin company car. No mistaking it.
Thomas stepped up beside him to consider the view, too. His voice sounded immediately concerned, “Where do I know that company name from, Eddie? Status Associates.”
“It’s what Wendell calls his security company. Basically, they’re his SS and I really don’t like them being here. Everyone stay here. I’ll go confront him.”
Tad grabbed his arm. “Wait a damned minute. Like hell you will. We’ll call the police.”
“It’s just one guy,” Edward said. “I’m the obvious one to confront him. He may have reservations about shooting me. I’ll just tell him he’s on private property.”
“Edward, Tad is correct,” John Croftdon said. “He should accompany you.”
“Wonderful, and now I am doomed to be William Blazeby to your Davy Crockett,” Tad said, pushing Edward in the car’s direction. “Lead the way, oh King of the Wild Frontier.”
As they approached, Edward slowly realized that he had never seen this guy, and he felt like he knew a lot of them, from their years of haunting the house during Wendell’s more pugnacious periods of paranoia. No doubt they had picked someone less recognizable, even though saddled with a company car for legality’s sake. No sense losing a foot soldier doing a yeoman’s job, Wendell had said more times than Edward wanted to remember.
Eddie walked up from behind and yanked open the door. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?”
The man had clearly been watching his rear view mirror. He looked up, unsurprised. “My job.”
“This portion of the road belongs to the Croftdon family and is not open to outside traffic,” Tad said. “You’re not allowed here.”
“Oh, really? I didn’t know it wasn’t a public road, did I?” the man asked, smirking with his reply. He looked past Eddie and toward Thomas. “Hey, Tom, long time, no see. How’s the family?”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Thomas called back.
“Leave,” Edward said. “And don’t return.”
“I am just here to follow up on the packages you received when Mr. Bakunin packed up and sent along your belongings,” the man said. “There was something he forgot, so I’ve brought it to you.”
The stranger pitched a 5x8 manila envelope out of the car and to the ground.
“See you,” the stranger said, gunning his car and shooting off down the road toward the open public street.
As the car drove away, Eddie picked up the manila envelope that had been thrown down. It bore no address. It wore no outside message. Just a bulky plain envelope.
Tad considered it more closely. “What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know. Probably one of Wendell’s head games.” He looked back toward Thomas. “You know that guy? He seemed to know you.”
Thomas shrugged. “Possibly. From town perhaps.”
“He’s not one of Wendell’s usual goons,” Eddie said. “They were all domestic. That guy is English, which means he’s not just visiting. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come.”
“Don’t let the old bastard drive you to paranoia, too,” Tad said.
“Are you joking? The only way to survive around Wendell Bakunin is by being more paranoid than he is,” Edward said, his attention returning to the envelope. He opened one end. He pulled out the contents far enough so everyone could see it.
“That bastard,” Tad hissed.
“Well, I guess it’s obvious what that is,” Edward said, sliding the packet of fine white powder back into the envelope.
“That’s one devil of a legal quagmire for the footman to take on, whoever he was,” Tad said.
“Maybe it just looks like heroin,” Edward said.
Tad pulled the packet out of Eddie’s hand and stuck it in his inside jacket pocket. “I will lock this in my room safe and then carry it into work tomorrow to have it tested. If it’s heroin, there will be an easy path to tracking him down. I memorized the identifiers on the car. While I lock this up, why doesn’t everyone go back to the party and not let this bastard steal more of our day?”
“Actually,” John Croftdon said, “I should like to speak with Eddie in private for a few moments. But it won’t take long.”
John Croftdon opened the door to his office and, beyond the office, his own room. Besides his desk, a parlor piano stood at office center, covered with lace doilies and a host of variably sized and aged framed photographs. The hood pulled down over the piano keys appeared to bear a fine tatting of dust, as if no one had played it in years.
“That was your mother’s,” John explained, seeing Edward’s consideration of the dust. “In later years, when my wife was ill, she would play for her. After your mother died, and then your grandmother, I hadn’t the heart to remove it from the room.”
The photographs across the piano were all big, formal portraits. One in a silver frame of Edward’s parents when they were young. Another of his parents with his brothers, in one unit, all smiles, no shadows. He wondered, distantly, where he had been that day. What he had been doing. If they had wondered what he was doing too. There were other pictures. People he didn’t recognize. Strangers whose blood no doubt flowed through his veins. A pictorial story of his family in which he had never played a part. An age lost to him.
John Croftdon smiled his perfunctory smile and indicated the big portrait of his parents when young. “That is your father and mother on their wedding day.”
Edward tried to smile. “I guessed.”
“It was a very happy day. For the most part. Overshadowed, of course, by your absence,” John said, smiling thinly. “A moment ago, when I said I hadn’t had the heart to remove the piano, your expression told me you wondered if I had a heart at all. I know you harbor much ill will toward me, Edward.”
“It isn’t that simple, Mr. Croftdon.”
“No, my boy, you of all people are entitled to hate me. I do wish we had the time to get past the Mr. Croftdon nonsense. I am afraid we won’t. Your brothers don’t much hold me in particular reverence, but they still manage a Granddad on occasion. If not that, then perhaps John might suffice?”
“I don’t hate anyone,” Edward said. “Good and bad came from what happened. Even I see that.”
“Good, because wallowing in bitterness about the past does no one any good,” the old man said, sinking as if in a state of abandon into one of the two wing chairs in the office. “I know that better than most. Which brings me to our topic of conversation. Please, have a seat and be comfortable.”
Edward sighed, considering the open door and the hallway that promised deliverance. There seemed no real way to escape. He resigned himself to one of the mauve velvet barrel chairs that sat between the piano and the fireplace.
John Croftdon sat forward. “I’m dying, Edward.”
“Tad seems to think you’re doing a bit better.”
John chuckled sadly and nodded. “Yes, your brother gives me best case scenarios, but I know. It took the wind out of my sails to simply walk outside to speak with you. Like an old arthritic can feel the approach of rain, old men can sense the nearness of death. I waited too long to have my boys, and now I’m going to leave my son and grandsons while they still may need my guidance. Even you, if I may be so bold as to say.”
“I think you may just be feeling negatively because you’re ill,” Edward suggested.
John smiled. Truly smiled. Edward had never seen this much of the old man’s smile before – it almost seemed kind.
“You remind me so much of Thomas,” John said. “You are very much your father’s son. Regardless of the future, I’d ask you to indulge me in a philosophical question. Do you by any chance believe in fate? In a grand design?”
“No,” Edward said simply.
“I didn’t think so. You’re very like your brothers that way. But I must say I do. I believe in destiny. It’s my C of E upbringing, I suppose. I think we all have done what we have done in accordance with some cosmic excogitation, if you will. We cannot see its divine mathematic expression, but I believe it exists. What would you say to that?”
Edward shrugged. “I’d say that’s a nice way to assuage our consciences when things don’t work out the way we want them to.”
“Yes, but it rubs both ways. For instance, I had a baby sister once.” He stood up with a feeble kind of grace to collect one of the piano photographs and pass it to Edward. “Adelaide. So much smaller than her name when we lost her. We called her Addie. Sadly, she never got much older than she was in that portrait. We were a few years apart in age. The one clear memory I have of her is of her death.”
The very old portrait Edward held showed a plump-cheeked young girl with lit-up eyes. Two, maybe three.
“I’m sorry,” Eddie said, handing the photograph back again. “What happened?”
John propped the girl’s portrait on the table beside him. “We lost her during the Blitz – the London Blitz – you know about that, don’t you? The bombings during WWII?”
“Of course.”
“Many children were evacuated to the country,” the older man said. “My father wouldn’t hear of it. George and Mary were staying and so must we. Father was a mad man. To be fair, it was impossible to know when to run for cover. Sometimes there were alerts with no raids. And other times, there were raids with not enough warning. You could never really tell from one day to the next what would happen.”
“I’ve read something about it,” Edward said.
“So, to complete the story, my mother was in our little square garden planting flowers in a window box, of all things. We held onto those traditions, as a detour around the horror. You know, planting daisies around the graveyard. And Addie had this little red watering can with a yellow down spout. I remember it so clearly – there was a bright yellow sunflower painted on the side. Funny the things you remember.” He shook his head to himself. “I walked out into the yard to tell Mum of a siren. But it all happened before we could seek cover.”
“I can’t even imagine,” Edward replied.
John nodded. “My mother and I fell to one side and my baby sister to the other. On our side, we had been safely sheltered by this long slope of heavy siding from our neighbor’s front porch. On the other, my sister had been – crushed. Crushed, Eddie, like a stray cat in the motorway. Her little watering can was sitting there, untouched, beside her.”
“That is truly terrible,” the younger man replied.
“My mother never forgave herself for having survived. I never forgave my father for making us stay. It took me years to realize I had never forgiven myself either for any of it. Even though I was only a child.”
“I’m sorry,” Eddie whispered.
John nodded. “I don’t mind telling you that I have been a truly wretched father in many ways. I met their needs. I even lent a sympathetic ear on occasion. But most of my heart was set on some greater goal. You cannot behold the events that we in our generation did without being much changed. It made me a relentless, driven man, Eddie. Your adopted grandfather shared my blood thirst in his own way. We never stopped to consider the consequences. I couldn’t bear to, I suppose, for fear of accepting the blame.”
“I can see how a belief in fate would be comforting,” Eddie said.
John leaned forward again. “I dispatched you for my own selfish purposes. I acknowledge that, but it helps me to think that, perhaps, we wouldn’t be as well off as we are, if that hadn’t happened. Something worse might have resulted. It may be that your sacrifice helped us all.”
Eddie shrugged. “If it helps you to think that, so be it. It’s nothing I can accept as true.”
John’s smile was understanding. “Until I lost my son, George, Wilse’s father, I never understood the pain I put Thomas through by forcing him to give you up. My relationship with both my sons had never been warm. It eroded even further when you left us. And I now believe George’s death was the price I paid for sending you away.”
Edward stared backward at the door, vaguely pining for escape. “I think you’re overestimating the impact of individuals, Mr. Croftdon – John.”
“Please, let me finish. Your mother, too, never recovered from losing you. Her cancer death was just the end point of a long, slow dying of her spirit. My wife saw Faith as the daughter she never had, and I lost her not long after. That, too, was my recompense. And then Thomas crawled into a bottle for some time.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Croftdon, but why are you telling me all this?”
“For two reasons. First, because I heard your argument with Thomas. He’s a much better father than I ever was, but when he falters, he is only echoing the atrocious example I set for him. Since you have returned, I’ve seen a light come back in his eyes that I haven’t seen for a very long time. He is so deeply proud of all of his boys. And he has all of you now. For the very first time. Please don’t punish him for my mistakes.”
“I have no wish to punish anyone,” Edward said.
“Even me?” John asked with a slow, tired smile.
“Even you,” Edward said. “I can accept that you regret your actions. And if I hadn’t gone to the Bakunins, I’d have missed out on knowing my adopted mo
ther Jennifer and so many other things. I don’t really hold any grudges.”
“Good. Because, whenever I die, I would like to die having made peace with you.” John looked down after a long moment. “I hope what I tell you now will reassure you I only want what is best for you.”
“What is that?” Eddie asked.
“Please do not believe Wendell Bakunin above killing you if you got in his way,” John said.
“Why is that?”
Old man Croftdon shook his head. “I can only say that Wendell’s father was as frightened of Wendell as anyone. He realized too late the monstrosity he had created. He had intended to toughen the boy, make him stronger. And instead he destroyed his conscience, his empathy, his capacity to care.”
“I will keep that in mind,” Edward said.