Downstairs, I pass the kitchen, where the clock above the sink reads just past nine. I never did have dinner.
I continue down the dark hallway of the main level toward a faint glow. My father’s study. Before I even enter, I can smell the trace of cigar smoke, which over the years has soaked into every surface of the room. I pass through the open doorway and find him sitting in one of two overstuffed leather chairs. He’s not smoking, but he is drinking, a cocktail glass with two fingers of whiskey, neat, in his right hand. He’s not on his phone. He’s not reading his Wall Street Journal or a book. He’s just sitting there in the silence, a solemn look on his face, as if wondering what the point of everything is anyway.
He looks over to me as I enter.
“Rosie,” he says.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Come join me.” He points to the other chair, which hasn’t had a regular occupant as long as I can remember. My father always sits in his favorite chair, and once in a while, someone’s weight might bend the cushion of the chair next to it. But mostly, I’m guessing, my father sits alone.
“Okay,” I say.
As I sit, he stands, walks over, and pours me the same drink as his, not asking if I want or even like whiskey. Fortunately, the answer to both these unasked questions is yes. I take the offered glass and sip. It burns deliciously, putting to shame the light tingle of the wine.
I clear my throat, barely suppressing a cough. “You know,” I say, “your whiskey was the first alcohol I ever tasted.”
He looks over to me without moving his head. His eyes have a look of playfulness that doesn’t match the rest of his demeanor. “That so?”
“I was thirteen. Cora and I snuck some.”
“What did you think?”
“I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever tasted.”
He nods and considers this.
“What brand was it?”
“Jameson,” I reply, remembering clearly.
“Well, that was the problem. You didn’t go top shelf.” He points to my glass. “What you’re sipping right there is Charbay Release III. Four hundred bucks a bottle. If that was the first thing you ever drank, you’d be an alcoholic by now.”
I take another sip and confirm my taste buds aren’t sophisticated enough to appreciate the liquid flowing over them. It tastes good, but four hundred bucks good?
“Well, thank god for Jameson,” I say.
We sit there and soak in the heavy silence. There’s no tension, exactly, but it’s not quite comfortable. Like being under a blanket that’s both scratchy and cozy.
After a minute or so passes, he says, “What are your vices, Rose?”
“My vices?”
“Yes, your vices.”
I’m stumped by the question. Not because I can’t think of any answers but because my father is the one asking me. I think about it a few seconds more, then raise my glass and tilt it side to side in front of him.
“Alcohol is not your vice, Rosie. You drink, but you’re not a drunk, far as I can tell. An important distinction. You don’t smoke, at least not that I’ve ever seen. Probably don’t gamble. Truth is, I don’t know you very much as an adult. I’m just wondering what it is that you regret about yourself.”
I push back in my chair, making myself smaller. “That’s a hell of a question. Especially given our…past.”
“I don’t see much value in small questions.”
“That I believe.”
“Okay, I’ll start then,” he says. His voice is so calm, so smooth, just that same tone he always has. Stern and reassuring at the same time, the voice of quiet authority. “I like women too much. I see a pretty lady, and I just want to sweep her off her feet. And by that, I mean screw her.”
“God, Dad.”
“Just being honest with you. The thing is, I never meet an attractive woman I want to spend time with outside the bedroom. Other than those moments, I just want to be alone.”
“So that’s your vice?”
“That, and I have an insatiable need to conquer everyone I deal with in my business. I guess that’s the pattern. I see a pretty company, I want to buy it and then sell it off in pieces. Companies and women. I just want to have my way with them. Then, the second I get what I want, I feel nothing.” He takes a sip, allowing the alcohol to linger in his mouth for a few seconds before swallowing, chasing the numb. “Pretty much nothing at all.”
“Well, that’s depressing,” I say. “So what’s the point of it all, then?”
“Exactly,” he answers. “What the point?” My father rises, walks over, and pours himself another. He’s always been a heavy drinker, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen him drunk. The alcohol just settles deep into his bones, fortifying rather than unsteadying him. When he sits again, he says, “It’s like I’m chasing some feeling I haven’t experienced in a long time, and I can’t even describe what that feeling is anymore. I don’t know if I’ll ever catch it again, but I keep trying. I do believe that’s the definition of insanity.”
“You could take a cruise.”
He laughs, a short, bitter bark. “Yeah, suppose I could.” He flashes me another look, those eyes squinted as always. “So I’ve told you my vices. My weaknesses. So what about you?”
I’ve been thinking of my vices since the second he brought it up. How do you define a vice, exactly? At what point does something cross the line between being a simple human frailty and a significant character flaw?
There is one thing that bubbles to the surface. One thing about me I know to be true. Whether it’s a flaw or not, it’s the first thing I thought of when he asked.
“I’m not good at forgiving,” I say.
This time, his laugh has sincere delight in it. “Are you kidding me? Rosie, that’s not a vice. That’s a virtue. And, by the way, you can thank me for that trait.”
“And I have a hard time moving on from the past.”
He considers this for a bit, nodding.
“The past is a whore,” he finally says. “The present is your mistress. The future is your only true love.”
I don’t completely understand what he means, but the word mistress burns into me and makes me say what I do next without much thought.
“I was going to leave Riley.”
His face freezes for a second, followed by an almost imperceptible raising of his eyebrows.
“Interesting.”
I lower my voice, though I know we’re far beyond earshot of Max’s room.
“I told him I wanted a divorce.”
“When?”
“Six months ago. I was about to move out when he died.”
“Did Max know?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t think so. I didn’t tell him. Maybe Riley did, but I doubt it.”
“What was your plan?” My father is always about the plan. “Where were you going to go?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I had to get away.”
He sits up, leans forward, and cradles his glass in both hands. I have his full attention, and it’s a bit unnerving. I both fear and admire his intensity.
“Why?” he asks.
I take a deep breath, hold it for a moment, then release it and tell him something I haven’t told anyone else.
“He was cheating on me.”
My father considers this and offers no more emotion than a feeble grimace. “Cocksucker,” he says, and I’m not sure if he’s referring to Riley or the bitch he slept with. “Can’t say I’m not surprised, though. I always knew he wasn’t good enough for you.”
Men. Fucking men. Why is their field of vision so completely narrow? “Dad, I wasn’t even good enough for you. You cut me off as soon as I wanted to leave Bury.”
“You cut yourself off, Rosie, which was the best decision you could have made. Made you stronger, smarter. You think your sister
would have made that choice?” He shakes his head. “No way.”
“So why do you enable her now?” I ask. “You hired Peter. You still give money to Cora. Why do it if you think it’s hurting her?”
He looks at me as if I’ve just asked why the sky is blue. “Because she’s Cora, and you’re Rose.” He takes his index finger and loops it around the rim of his rocks glass. One time. Two. “How long had he been cheating on you?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I think at least six months.”
“Who was it?”
“Does it matter?”
“It’s always essential to know the enemy.”
My stomach churns every time I think of Riley with that woman. We’d already grown apart by the time I found out, but the simmering rage that stirs in me when I think about walking in on them in our apartment makes me want to throw my glass against the wall and watch it burst into shards.
“She was one of his business partners,” I say. “Also married.”
He nods, as if this all makes perfect sense. “Did she go to the funeral?”
“I made it very clear she wasn’t welcome.”
“Does Max know about her?”
I don’t know the answer to this. “I hope not,” I say. “He knows there were problems. Arguments he witnessed. Riley and I said some things I wish Max hadn’t heard.”
My father settles back deeper into his chair, lost in thought, his gaze not on me but on the wall of books on the other end of the room. He takes a sip of his drink and says, “No matter what you think of me, I’m your father and will always do what I can to protect you. You can tell me anything. You know that. So I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to be honest in your answer.”
An inferno of dread sweeps through my chest.
He leans forward and drills that stare of his right into me.
“Did you?”
It takes more than a second for me to understand what he’s asking, but not much more.
“Jesus, Dad, what kind of question is that?”
“A simple one. Couldn’t be more simple. A yes-or-no question.”
“You are not seriously asking me this.”
“Why not?” he says. “You found out he was cheating on you. Then he ends up dead.”
“I’m not having this conversation,” I say.
“We can end it after you answer the question.”
“What kind of person do you think I am?”
This question elicits a knowing smile, so gentle and slight, yet there’s an underlying menace only another Yates could detect. “You, me, your sister. We all have a thread stitching us together. You ask me what kind of person you are? I know who you are. You’re a Yates.”
I take another sip of my drink, clinging to the glass as if it will somehow protect me, a magical amulet.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I say. “About that. The thread.”
“Don’t you?”
“We said we’d never talk about it. That was our agreement.”
The room is smaller, tighter, the air stale and warm. A prison cell.
“And yet,” he says, “the very thing we agreed to never talk about is part of your next book.”
There it is. That’s what he’s really getting at.
“Cora told you.”
“Cora told me.”
“It’s not the same thing,” I say, hearing the outer edge of panic in my voice. The doubt. The second-guessing. “It’s different. Different circumstances. It’s fiction.”
I can see his pulse pounding in the veins of his temple. Though his voice doesn’t waver in tone or volume, I know him well enough to hear the brewing anger beneath his words. “And what do you say when fans ask you how you get your ideas? What do you tell them, Rosie?”
“I think you’re overestimating my readership.”
“Once it’s out there, it’s out there. Forever. Is that the risk you want to take? You do understand there’s no statute of limitations, right?”
I rise to refill my drink, not because I need it but because I don’t want my father looking at my face. I don’t want him reading my fear.
“Have you even read the book?” I ask.
“Not yet,” he admits. “But I will. Your sister filled in the details for me.”
“She’s overreacting.” My hand quivers as I fill my glass.
I don’t hear him rise from his chair, and when I suddenly hear his voice at the back of my neck, I nearly scream.
“The name Caleb Benner is still well known around here,” he whispers. “You might have left, but the mystery of what happened to that boy hasn’t. People still talk about it, time to time, like they would about a local boogeyman. Once in a while, there’s still an article written about his case. How the police vow to never give up figuring out what happened, despite no new leads for nearly twenty years. Your sister was interviewed back then, if you remember.”
I don’t turn around. “A lot of high-schoolers were interviewed.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that the Yates name is still part of the public police record.”
“It’s different,” I say. “You just… You need to read the book. It’s a very small part of the story.”
He’s closer now. I don’t see him but I can sense it. “You used the name Corey Brownstein. The same initials.”
“Dad, I—”
“The same fucking initials, Rose. How stupid are you?”
Finally, I turn. My father is inches away, and despite his stillness, I picture a thousand springs coiled inside him, ready to release at a breath of a trigger.
“Change it,” he says. “Change the book.”
I’m a little girl again, facing my father’s anger whenever I displeased him. It never took much, sometimes as little as an eye roll when he told me to finish eating my dinner, but I could always feel the instant shift in energy as I do now, that heaviness in the air, an invisible wave washing over me. Logan Yates is an accommodating father as long as you do everything on his terms. The second you draw a line in the sand, the man no one wishes to face emerges.
“I can’t just change it, Dad. The book is coming out in January. The final edits are done. The book is being printed.”
“Bullshit,” he says, his eyes flaring for a moment beneath his perpetual squint. “And the title, even? Child of the Steps? That’s right on the goddamned nose. There’s time. Get it changed. All of it.”
“I can’t.”
“You will.”
“Or what?” I ask. “Are you going to excommunicate me? In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve lived outside your bubble before.”
“And look how well that turned out,” he says. “You’ve got an autistic kid, a dead husband who cheated on you, and you’re working in a fucking grocery store. You call that success?”
All those times in my life that my father intimidated me, even scared me, I never fought back. He never raised a hand to me, but sometimes I wished he had, because his towering presence and biting words were more painful than an open palm across the cheek. But I’m not the same frightened child I once was.
I’ve learned how to defend myself.
“First of all, fuck you.”
I’ve never said this to my father in my life.
“Second,” I continue, “Max is not autistic, and if he were, that’d be just fine. He’s your grandson, for god’s sake, and he needs your love, not advice on how to dominate everyone he meets. Third, yes, I have no money. You think I don’t know that? You think it doesn’t stress me out? It does, but not nearly as much as taking your money does.”
My voice has risen multiple decibels, and I suddenly picture Max pressing up against a wall in the hallway, eavesdropping. I walk around my father and peek out the office doorway but see nothing.
�
�You still have answered my question about Riley.”
I walk back to him. “I don’t have to. You’ll continue to believe whatever narrative is burned into your brain.”
He downs the last of his drink, and I can’t remember if that’s his second or third since I came in.
“You have blood on your hands,” he says. “You do, I do, your sister does. That doesn’t go away, and this book of yours will draw attention to it.”
“I had to write it,” I tell him. “There’s nothing incriminating in the book, but I had to write what I did. What happened… It crushes me. The pain hasn’t gone away.” I think of my recurring nightmare. “If anything, it’s gotten worse. I can’t tell anyone. Not even Riley knew. Only you and Cora, and even just putting that one scene in my book was a relief valve. Can’t you understand that?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Don’t you feel the same thing? The guilt?”
“By the time I came home that night, the damage was done. I just cleaned up the mess.”
There are moments when I wonder about my mother, what she was like, what she sounded like when she laughed, or if she ever laughed at all. I don’t remember her, but in my mind, she was a beautiful, generous, gentle soul, and whatever good qualities I may have inherited I got from her. So if she really was that type of person, what did she see in Logan Yates? What was it about him that allowed her to forgive his cold shoulder to the world, his utter lack of empathy?
How did I come from this man?
“I just don’t understand how you don’t have any remorse,” I say.
“Change the book,” my father repeats. “At the very least, change the boy’s name. That should be easy enough to do.”
Seconds pass, and I’m left feeling unsteadied by alcohol and weak-kneed with anxiety. I don’t want to admit he’s right about this. But he just may be.
“I’ll try,” I say. “The best I can do is try.”
“You will. And if you run into any problems with your publisher, you come tell me.”
“And you’re just going to fix everything?”
“Apparently, it’s what I do best.”
He sets his glass down, leaving it for the housecleaner to deal with. Then my father walks away without saying another word, and as he disappears into the hallway, I’m jealous at not having inherited his dispassionate nature.
The Dead Husband Page 8