“Actually, two favors. I was going to ask C.J., but I know he gets busy here.”
She stiffened, wary. “What is it?”
“Can you see to my dogs? Go to my house twice a day?”
The dogs. Yes. She could handle them.
“Okay.”
She could take care of Austin. She could take care of the dogs. She just didn’t want a man depending on her.
“You can stay at the house if you want,” he said. “There’s food in the freezer. There are leftovers from yesterday. There’s milk that will go bad if no one uses it.”
She nodded. “I might do that. Janey might like the extra space for a few days. If I don’t, I’ll at least go out twice a day to mind the dogs.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” He strode toward the barn, no doubt to get the support from his best friend that he hadn’t got from her.
* * *
CASH DROVE TO Havre and took Gulfstream to Billings where he caught a flight to Denver and from there to San Francisco, all the way on autopilot. His mind was stuck on his father.
They’d had no relationship for years, and then the man had shown up to tell Cash he loved him. Now he was gone. Too suddenly. He hadn’t left Cash time to prepare.
Once in San Francisco, he parked his luggage in a hotel room then, after a quiet meal in the hotel’s restaurant, went to the funeral home for Dad’s visitation.
To Cash’s surprise, he recognized a handful of people there—some of the guys Dad used to work with, as well as a couple of women, all in uniform.
James Reading stepped forward with an outstretched hand. “Cash, haven’t seen you in years. You’ve grown up.”
“I didn’t know you were still in touch with my dad. I recognize others here, too.”
“Despite his faults, your dad was a good cop.”
He was?
“He had great instincts and a sharp mind.”
So Dad had his supporters among his fellow cops.
“He had a good sense of humor, too. Used to keep us all in stitches.”
Cash had been so wrapped up in Dad’s failings as a husband and father, he’d forgotten about his sense of humor.
He remembered now how popular Dad used to be.
He glanced around the room, realizing that he hadn’t done that when he first walked in as he usually did, his cop instincts always strong in a new environment, always observing, assessing. They were obviously dulled by shock and grief. Not an ideal situation, but it was what it was.
There were two camps of people. The cops Dad used to work with stood on one side of the room. On the other stood a motley, unpolished group who looked more than a little downtrodden. They must be the people Dad befriended in his later life in the Tenderloin.
Cash wondered how many of these had been on the opposite side of the law when Dad had been a cop in that district. How many had Dad once arrested?
A woman walked toward him and, because of her determined expression, Cash thought she might be the woman who had called him.
She stuck out a hand, almost defiantly, and Cash wondered why. “I’m Alice Gaither.”
“Thank you for calling me, Alice.” She gave him a firm handshake.
She’d seen better days. He couldn’t guess her age, but considered that she might be as old as Dad, with the same problems—dissipation brought on by the excess use of drugs and alcohol. Her gray eyes were clear, though, and hard. She hadn’t been using lately.
He wouldn’t call her an attractive woman, but she might have been a long time ago. She dyed her long hair black, too dark for her pale skin, and had applied her cosmetics with a heavy hand. The rest of her was heavy, too. She had a big bosom that Dad would have liked.
“Thank you for coming.”
What was that edge in her voice? “Why wouldn’t I come? Frank was my father.”
“Let me introduce you to his friends.” She put an emphasis on the last word and led him across the room while he puzzled over her apparent disapproval of him.
He met all of Dad’s friends and found that, on the whole, he liked them. They were poor, unabashedly so. They spoke of his dad in positive terms, not glowing, but realistic. They had respected him.
One man in a wheelchair said, “Frank was never short of a few minutes if you needed someone to talk to, or short of a buck if you needed a coffee.”
“Yeah,” another man said. “He bought me dinner a few times when I had no money.”
Nothing had changed. Dad had still spent freely, even when he no longer had much. What Cash had always thought of as free spending, though, could also have been called generosity.
James Reading caught Cash as he was leaving. “Some of us who worked with your dad are going to raise a few pints in his memory at an old hangout. You’re invited, of course.” Cash accepted, said he’d meet them there.
He returned to his hotel room to process some of what he’d heard at the visitation. Dad was almost two different people, it seemed. The man his friends remembered had not been the man in Cash’s house when he was growing up.
Cash stared at the walls, lost, too alone.
He needed out of here. When he stood to leave, his phone rang.
* * *
AT SEVEN, SHANNON drove to the trailer park to pick up Austin for their movie date.
She knocked on the door and Connie answered. Why didn’t the woman have any lights on in the house? Was she conserving energy? Or had their power been turned off?
“Hi,” Shannon said. “I’m taking Austin to the movies.”
Austin scooted around his mom. “See you, Mom.”
He caught sight of her car.
“Where’s Cash?”
“He won’t be coming tonight. It’s just you and me. Is that okay?”
Austin nodded and climbed in.
“Where’s Cash?” he asked again, once they were driving. “How come you’re here instead?”
“His father died this morning. He flew to San Francisco for the funeral.”
Austin didn’t say anything for a minute, then “I wish I could have talked to him before he left. I know how that feels when your dad dies. Even if he turned out not my real father, when he died, I still thought he was my dad.”
“Do you want to call Cash?”
“I don’t have a cell phone and Mom wouldn’t want me to spend all that money on a long distance call from home.”
“I have a cell you can use.”
Austin stared at her. “Really? That would be okay with you?”
“Sure.”
“But I can’t pay you back.”
“I know. You don’t have to.” She rummaged in her purse and handed him the phone. “I can’t dial while I’m driving. Do you know his number?”
“Yeah. He made me memorize it in case I ever needed him.”
Austin punched in the number and a moment later Shannon heard him say, “Cash? It’s me. Austin.”
This kid humbled her. How many twelve-year-olds would make a call to comfort an adult? It was hard enough for most adults to do.
He’s showing you up, girl.
Yes, he certainly is. He’s a brave boy.
And you are a coward.
Yes, I have been, with good reason.
Yeah, but how old are you? Maybe it’s time to grow up.
She felt good with Cash. She saw beneath his surface to something she hadn’t recognized in a man before. Depth. Strength of character. Someone she wanted to be closer to. But then what? How was she supposed to just throw out everything she’d learned from life, from her direct experience, for a big uncertain maybe with a man?
Maybe Cash would work out.
Maybe Cash would be someone she could rely on.
Maybe she wo
uld get really, really hurt. Either way, maybe it was time for her to deal with her fear of emotion.
* * *
CASH GRIPPED THE phone. Austin was calling him in San Francisco?
“Is something wrong?” he asked, suddenly alert.
“Shannon told me about your dad. I’m sorry, Cash. I know how you feel.”
Yes, he would. He’d lived through it himself.
In that moment, Cash knew that whatever happened to Austin in adolescence, he would be okay. He would turn out to be a good man.
This boy was so intrinsically good he amazed Cash. Sympathy calls were tough to make and Austin just sucked it up and did it.
Sympathy calls were hard to take, too, and Cash couldn’t handle it, couldn’t catch his breath or reel in his emotions.
He concentrated on the mundane, because the issue of his Dad’s death was too huge. “Are you calling from home? This will cost you a fortune.”
“No. I’m in Shannon’s car. We’re going to a movie and she’s letting me use her phone.”
“That’s good of her.” Focus on the mundane.
“It will be okay in a little while.” Sincere, earnest support from such a young voice. Mind-blowing. Tears he had been avoiding rose to the surface.
“Thanks, Austin.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “I mean it.”
“Really. Even before I found out that my dad wasn’t my father, I started feeling better and stopped missing him so much. You’ll be okay.”
“Austin, you’ll—” His voice cracked again and he stopped and held his breath.
“You’ll be okay, Cash.”
God, the sweetness of this was going to kill him. “You’ll never know how much this call means to me. Thanks.”
“That’s okay,” Austin said. “That’s what friends are for. How long will you be away?”
“Until Monday.”
“If you feel bad on the weekend, you can call me. If you want to.”
“I will.” Cash hung up because a mix of sorrow and pride choked his throat. Sorrow that his father was gone, and pride in a child who wasn’t his, but who he wished was.
* * *
AT TEN THAT night, Cash stepped out of the pub where he’d spent the evening with Dad’s old cohorts.
They’d laughed a lot. Even Cash had laughed with them, because the stories they told about Dad were funny.
Cash had forgotten a lot of his good memories of his father because the bad had affected him so adversely.
He called his mother. “Can I come over?”
“You’re here? Yes.”
Half an hour later, he stepped out of a cab in front of his mother’s house. Her new husband had done well by her. The house was solid middle class on the outside edge of an upper middle class neighborhood.
She answered after one knock, drew him into her warm home then closed the door behind him.
She took him in her arms and held him. He didn’t cry, but tears were close.
“Are you okay?”
She drew back to look deeply into his eyes. “I think so. I don’t know.” She gripped his hands. Her hands felt solid, welcoming, supportive.
“Come. Sit down. We’ll talk.”
In that moment, their relationship shifted and he knew it was permanent. He might be a grown man, but she was finally giving him what he’d missed through the years of his childhood.
She was being a mother, and he liked it.
She took him into the living room and spoke to her husband waiting there. “Hugh, put on the kettle.” She sat beside Cash on the sofa.
Her husband rose to do his wife’s bidding, happily as far as Cash could tell.
Where Dad had been a chippy streetfighter, this huge man Cash’s mom had married the second time bulldozed his way through trouble and yet, Cash trusted him to take care of his mother.
The first time around Mom had gone for charm, but her second husband she’d chosen for his dependability and strength.
Hugh returned to the living room and rested his big, ham-fisted hands on her shoulders. When he touched her, he was gentle. “You want me to put out some of that banana bread with the tea?”
“Yes, dear, please.”
They sat and talked for hours, remembering the positive. That was new was the first time his mother had ever shared her early memories of Dad, when things were still good and Cash small and happy.
It was the first time he heard his mother speak with any perspective, without the bitterness.
When he left, he thanked his mother for being there.
She had supported him in his grief and that amazing about-face in her character really touched him.
* * *
ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Cash sat in Alice’s tidy, tired living room. Only a few chairs and one overflowing bookshelf furnished the room. What had she and his dad been living on?
Dad used to like spreading cash around. How had poverty felt to him later in life?
Alice wore not a speck of makeup and her imperfections showed—coarse, leathery skin, large pores, sun damage. Her fleshy face looked too old, no doubt due in part to the pack of cigarettes on the arm of her chair. She took one out and lit it.
Sometime between yesterday’s visitation and today, she’d had her hair cut almost boyishly short. Without the artifice, Cash could see the bones of who she used to be and, yes, she would have been attractive once.
She caught him staring. “Your dad liked my hair long. I was too old for it, and for the heavy makeup, but he didn’t like when I said that. He liked my hair dark, too. I’ll be changing that in time, letting it go gray.”
So she’d put Frank to rest and would now do things her own way. She’d worn everything he liked to the visitations first, though, quite a sign of respect.
“How long did you know my dad?” he asked.
“Thirty years.”
So, during the time Dad and Mom had still been married. Had she slept with him way back then?
“He was a cop. I was a hooker.” She said the last part defiantly, as though anticipating Cash’s disapproval.
“Did he ever arrest you?”
“All the time.” She smiled, those memories obviously filling her with affection. “We had a…contentious relationship.”
Contentious? How did a hooker know a word like that?
“Your dad and I liked to read.” She pointed to the bookshelf.
Was she a mind reader or was he just so judgmental that it showed on his face?
“You and I met once, you know,” she said. “Or rather, I saw you once.”
Suddenly, he knew who she was—the prostitute Dad had been screwing against the wall behind the strip joint on O’Farrell.
“You grew up nice-looking, like Francis.”
“You probably saw my dad more than my mom or I ever did.”
“He was comfortable with me. I accepted his flaws.”
“Didn’t you know he was married and had a son? You couldn’t have left him alone? Left him for us?”
“You’re looking for stereotypes. I wasn’t a hooker with a heart of gold. I wanted Francis and was damned glad when he ended up in the Tenderloin with the rest of us.”
“How long did he live with you?”
“Twenty years.”
Dad had gone straight from Cash’s home to this woman’s.
He couldn’t stand the pain that caused, the hunger, and lashed out.
“Did he sleep around when he lived with you?”
She didn’t flinch. “Probably. Your mom wanted to change Francis. Wanted him to be better than he was. From the get-go, I saw him for who he really was and I was okay with that. I knew who I was getting when I married him.”
“Married? When?”
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“As soon as he divorced your mom.” She stubbed out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray beside her chair. Three feet tall and silver, with a marble bowl, it was a piece of furniture. Cash hadn’t seen one like it in years and never outside of a used furniture or oddities shop.
“Francis didn’t leave any money. There’s nothing for you and your mom to get your hands on.”
“We didn’t want money.” Cash strained to temper his voice. “We wanted him. We wanted him to want us.”
He drew a deep breath. It whooshed out of him and he said, more calmly, “I know Dad didn’t have money. He asked for some over the years, and I always sent it when he asked.”
“So that’s where the money was coming from.” Alice studied him with an assessing eye, as though changing her assumptions about him.
She stood and left the room.
He realized something he’d never known before—why Dad had been two different people, one man with the outside world and another at home.
With the outside world, he’d been himself.
At home, he’d striven to be the man his wife wanted him to be, dependable, faithful, sober. A family man. But that wasn’t who Francis Kavenagh was.
He had always been doomed to failure at home.
The real Frank had been the man the world had known and owned, not the man he tried to force himself to be at home.
Cash and his mother had only been borrowing him for a few hours at a time. Dad must have been living under tremendous strain, trying to maintain his unnatural identity when he was with his family.
He’d lasted seventeen years with Mom and Cash. When all was said and done, that was a long time for Frank.
He wished he’d understood all of this years ago. It would have made his life a lot less painful. He wouldn’t have wasted so much hope wanting more from his dad than Frank could give.
If he had understood as a boy, he might have accepted and come through childhood better.
Alice returned a moment later with a jar, and he knew immediately what it was. Dad’s ashes.
She held it out to him.
He didn’t know if he could touch it, but knew that he wanted to, that he needed some connection to the man who’d stopped by his office.
He reached for it slowly.
When he took the small heft of it into his hand, he marveled that all of Dad was here, that in the end this was all there was and the rest only memories.
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