“Wait a m-minute. I know what P-Paramount paid you for the rights to your last b-book. Even if your wife gets half, you’re n-not hurting. So why are you spending your w-weekends w-working on a house?”
CJ finished dealing and set the rest of the deck on the table. He poured himself a drink, looked at Dennis, and shrugged. “It‘s something to do.”
That brought chuckles from around the table, and CJ smiled in tune, which helped him cover up the inadequacy of the response. If he was going to be honest with Dennis, he would have said he was working on the house because he was unmoored. Because he didn’t have anywhere in particular he needed to be. And because his wife had him in a financial vise. But that kind of answer wasn’t the sort one trotted out at a poker game.
And after an evening of brooding, he was in far too good a mood to be sucked back into anything beyond cards and Frank singing from the other room.
Chapter 20
The poker game had lasted well into the morning, finding added energy in CJ’s presence—a new player who had added a bit of unpredictability to the gathering.
CJ felt pretty good about walking away from the table a few hundred dollars richer than when he’d walked in, and was especially pleased that the lion’s share of his winnings came from the scourge of evildoers and miscreants everywhere. To hear the others tell it, Jake Weidman rarely went home with less than he’d brought with him. Rick lamented that Jake was the luckiest man he’d ever met, and the reason he kept inviting him to play cards was that he was hoping for some of that luck to rub off on him.
Last night, though, CJ had taken Weidman nearly every hand, which had led Rick to comment that he might have found a new rabbit’s foot. In the too bright light of day, CJ determined that was more ludicrous than it had sounded last night. He personally couldn’t detect any thread of luck running through his life over the last month. So if Rick wanted to use him as a charm, he needed to prepare himself for fate’s wicked backhand.
The only thing arguing against that was the fact that he’d run into Weidman in the first place, and that his luck at cards might manifest itself more fully as he tried to determine what role the man played in the subject of CJ’s article.
CJ was tired when he showed up at the Lyndale house, and his elbow throbbed from where he’d banged it on the new granite countertop he and Dennis had installed this afternoon. The house they were remodeling was starting to come together, even in the short time they’d been working on it. In fact, they were making such good progress that Dennis was worried the job wouldn’t last through the spring as he’d hoped. When CJ had mentioned that Dennis was loaded and didn’t need the job anyway, Dennis hadn’t responded except to grab the nearest power tool, which happened to be a drill, making it impossible for CJ to say anything else to him.
The whole thing continued to confuse CJ. The only way he could make sense of it was to pretend that Dennis wasn’t worth twenty million. When he removed the money from the equation, everything else made sense. Without the money, smart business practice. With the money, lunacy.
But as CJ ascended the steps of the Baxter place, he thought he might be the real lunatic.
They’d had Edward call, knowing that of all the immediate family, he got along with Uncle Edward best. But they needn’t have bothered with the ruse; he would have come regardless, if only to see how his presence in town was affecting everyone. The reason for the dinner meeting was somewhat muddled, which could have been due to Edward’s delivery. But if CJ’s memories of family dinners were at all accurate, he suspected the occasion would indeed be a muddled affair.
What surprised CJ was that even after the passage of so many bitter years, he wouldn’t have missed this for the world. For some strange reason he felt an odd kinship with these people, and it had nothing to do with the fact that they shared blood. He couldn’t quite figure it out, but between the time he’d received the invitation to when he parked the Honda and began walking up toward the house, he suspected it had something to do with the new book percolating in his brain. The book he would get down to seriously working on over the next couple of weeks, once he’d turned in his current project to The Atlantic. It was the first time a project had excited him in a long while—since he’d finished writing The Buffalo Hunter—and he enjoyed the way his mind kept disappearing down rabbit holes, developing the backstory before he’d written a word.
He didn’t knock but just walked in, and he heard the sounds of a large gathering as he made his way down the hallway toward the dining room. Before stepping out of the dimly lit hall and into a room crowded with relatives, he stopped and listened to his family talk. It was the typical stuff—work, politics, church, sports, bills. The things a normal family would discuss at the dinner table. He couldn’t figure out how he felt about that until he realized he was smiling.
When he walked into the room he saw that Edward was true to his word. The place was filled. The dining room had long been the focal point of the home. A table that could seat twenty comfortably dominated it—and it spoke to the age of the house, to a time that placed greater importance on the gathering of the family around the table. And gather they had; it appeared to CJ that nearly every seat was occupied, and that the collection of relatives included people whose names he couldn’t recall at first glance.
Uncle Edward, who had doubtless been watching for him, spotted him first, and CJ noticed the empty chair next to him, close to the head of the table at which sat CJ’s father. The food was already on the table, which was what CJ was aiming for when he chose to arrive fifteen minutes late. While he was okay eating with these people, he had little desire to engage in any pre-dinner mingling.
Everyone else had noticed him now, and as he walked around the table to get to his spot, he fielded a flurry of handshakes and warm greetings. Most had not seen him since Sal’s funeral, and his conversations were limited that day, so this was the first occasion for most of the more distant relatives to interact with him.
It was as he was trying to disengage his hand from the hand of one of his second cousins that he saw Julie. She sat at the other end of the table, talking to the person seated next to her—another of CJ’s cousins—and almost as soon as his eyes found her, she looked his way. Just for a split second, and then she was gone.
He extricated himself from his cousin’s handshake and slipped into the chair next to Edward, who slapped CJ on the back, so hard it nearly brought tears to his eyes.
“Glad you could make it,” Edward said.
CJ tried to respond but all that came out was a cough.
“Sorry about that,” Edward said, once he realized what he’d done.
CJ waved him off and reached for his water glass, taking a long drink. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Julie looking his way, the hint of a smile on her lips.
Years ago CJ’s grandmother would have been responsible for the feast spread out on the table. But she’d died the year before he left for Vanderbilt.
“Who cooked?” he asked his uncle.
“Meredith and Julie,” Edward answered.
The first time CJ met his brother’s wife was at the funeral, and they’d spoken only briefly. But if half of what was spread out on the table was her doing, then he decided Graham had married well. And he already knew that Ben had hit the jackpot, regardless of how good a cook Julie was.
“Hey, little brother,” Graham said, flashing CJ his warm campaign smile. The serving dishes had already made the rounds, and Graham’s plate was piled high. With ham as the entrée, Graham took it upon himself to slice a generous slab for CJ.
“Thanks,” CJ said. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the ham hit his plate. For the next few minutes a procession of side dishes made a circuit around the table, all for CJ’s benefit, and because everyone was watching he took more food than he otherwise would have. When the last casserole dish returned to its spot on the table, CJ was left with a mountain of food he would never be able to eat. Nevertheless, he picked up his
fork and dug in.
As he chewed, he looked around the table. Graham and Meredith sat directly across from CJ and Edward, along with Maryann and her husband. Maryann gave him what he could only call a lewd smile, which sent a shiver down his back. He tried to recall the names of the people he couldn’t quite place, but except in a few cases, most of the ones he didn’t know remained that way. When he looked the other way, he found his father was watching him with an expression as inscrutable as the ingredients of the tasty noodle concoction CJ was enjoying.
“Hey, Pop,” he said.
George held his gaze for a few seconds, then gave his son a curt nod before returning to his dinner.
Over the next several minutes, the various conversations around the table, and the noises of clinking glasses and utensils on plates, provided the background sounds as CJ worked his way through the food on his plate. What amused him was that, although he’d been invited to sup with them, no one in his immediate family seemed inclined to say anything to him. In truth, they weren’t saying much to each other either, but that could also have been the result of his presence.
Farther down the table, though, sat the Baxters who were more distant from the seat of power. Their conversation was relaxed, comfortable. CJ wondered if anyone on his end noticed, but suspected they didn’t. They were too wrapped up in their grand scheming to notice something like that—to notice that a lack of grand scheming resulted in happier people.
“So, CJ,” someone said from down the table, “how’s your latest book doing?”
CJ didn’t catch who’d asked the question, so he directed his answer to the general vicinity of the inquiring voice. “Not bad,” he said. “It’s not my bestseller, but it’s holding its own.”
“Would it be selling more or less if you hadn’t clocked that critic?”
CJ didn’t need any help identifying the man asking this follow-up question. Richard seemed pleased with himself for having posed it. Next to him, Abby stared down at her plate, using her fork to pick at the minuscule amount of food left there.
CJ let the silence that had settled over the table linger. Then he sent a sly smile his cousin’s way. “I guess you’d know all about clocking someone, wouldn’t you, Richard?” Turning his attention to Richard’s wife, he said, “Nice to see you, Abby. You’re looking well.”
Richard’s face darkened, and it looked as if he might come out of his chair, but a single look from George kept him in his seat. Richard aimed daggers at CJ before picking up his fork and resuming his dinner.
After that, an uncomfortable silence fell over the gathering. As CJ dipped his spoon into the delicious sweet potato casserole, he glanced over at Julie and Ben. Julie’s husband gave him a wink and a half smile, and CJ could only assume it was for what he’d said to Richard. It was the sort of validation he’d been hoping to get from Ben’s wife, and once again the dynamics of this thing made him uneasy. He was the first to look away.
When he glanced toward his father, he saw the old man watching him with disapproval in his eyes. In response, CJ borrowed a gesture from Ben and winked at him.
Edward chose to break the tension with a war story. Even though it was one that everyone had heard, it was a welcome distraction. And since Edward never told a story the same way twice, there was no telling what he would come up with now.
When Edward’s story ended—a new ending this time, judging from the reactions of those who had heard it before—pockets of conversation started up, although no one sitting around CJ seemed willing to say a word. The exception was Maryann, who, upon seeing CJ look in her direction and rarely able to resist the urge to stir things up, said, “So who left whom?”
She asked the question just as Graham took a bite of green beans, and CJ thought he heard his brother make a small choking sound.
When CJ didn’t answer right away, Maryann said, “I mean, you and your wife are on the outs, right? That’s why you’re staying here?” She pulled out the inappropriate smile again. “What—did you cheat on her?”
Graham’s spoon fell onto his plate, and George’s face turned a shade of red that CJ remembered from his childhood as signifying an imminent spanking.
“Maryann!” George said, but she didn’t look his way. Instead she fixed CJ with that unsettling smile while her husband, a small, wiry man with a thin mustache, refilled his wineglass, seemingly oblivious to his wife’s antics.
Rather than allow her to goad him further, CJ said, “I would never cheat, Maryann. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t steal either. I wouldn’t think about supplementing my income by stealing from the company I work for.”
CJ watched Maryann’s face darken to much the same shade as their father’s. As a result of CJ’s veiled accusation, some of the extended family had begun low conversations, and there was little doubt as to the content of these discussions.
Maryann said nothing but instead reached for her husband’s wineglass and took an angry gulp.
This time when CJ looked in Julie’s direction, she was indeed looking back at him, but he found that he couldn’t read her. She held his gaze for what seemed a long time, and then looked away.
Edward leaned toward CJ and whispered, “Hey, can you ease up a bit? I don’t have that many war stories.”
“I’m not starting anything,” CJ said. “And you have more war stories than there are pictures in this house.”
As CJ was whispering to Edward, Meredith rose from her seat and walked down to the other end of the table where she placed a hand on Julie’s arm. The two of them headed into the kitchen.
CJ was stuffed. He set his fork down and pushed the plate away, then leaned back in his seat. Graham had come to the same conclusion, and both brothers relaxed, each regarding the other.
Graham said, “I finished The Buffalo Hunter last week.”
“What did you think?”
“It was good,” Graham said. “Different from your previous stuff, but good.”
The fact that Graham had just repeated Artie’s comment about the book almost word for word was not lost on CJ.
“I didn’t know you read my books,” CJ lied. All of them acted so worried about the family portrayal that they probably hired a cryptographer to read each of CJ’s novels just to make sure there were no secret codes embedded in the text.
“I’ve read all your books—as well as the short stories, the articles, even the reviews.”
CJ nodded an acknowledgment and also affected a wince. “Not all the reviews, I hope.”
“Are you working on anything new?” one of his cousins asked. CJ wished he could remember the man’s name.
“I’ve got something in the works. Still in the planning stages.”
“Care to give us a hint?” Graham asked.
CJ took a sip of water, then said, “To be honest, I don’t even know what it’s about yet.”
Julie and Meredith reentered the dining room, each holding a dessert. Meredith set a cherry pie in front of George while Julie deposited a chocolate cake at the other end of the table. Their arrival tugged at the attentions of those who’d been listening in on the brothers’ conversation, and the desserts won over most of them. So when Graham pressed CJ about the new book, their talk was close to being a private one.
“But surely you have a theme in mind,” Graham said.
Although he’d said it as if in passing, seventeen years was not sufficient time for CJ to have forgotten how to read his brother, regardless of the tricks he might have learned in the political arena. Graham was fishing.
“I’m working through a few possibilities,” CJ said. “Right now I think it’ll be about deceit.”
“Interesting.” Graham accepted a piece of pie from Meredith.
“Would you like some pie, CJ ?” the lovely brunette asked him next.
“No, thank you,” he answered. “I’m going to hold out for some of that chocolate cake.”
He couldn’t be sure from this distance, but a hint of color might have touched the ed
ges of Julie’s ears.
“What specifically about deceit?” Graham asked.
CJ held off on giving his brother an answer. Instead he watched as Julie, without looking in his direction, cut a piece of cake—a large piece—set it on a plate and sent it down the table toward him.
“What about deceit indeed,” he finally said to Graham. “I thought I’d explore how a horrible secret can eat away at a family for years, and what that does to each person who knows about it.”
His cake had reached him via the hands of his uncle Sal. CJ found his fork and dove in. Only when he had a mouthful did he look at his brother, and as with both his father and Maryann, Graham’s face was inching toward that Baxter shade of red. But Graham caught himself quickly and released the breath he was holding in a long, quiet exhalation.
“Interesting idea,” the older brother said. “But hasn’t that one already been beaten to death?”
“Of course. Any writer will tell you there are no new stories. We’re all just plagiarizing each other now.”
Those who were still tuned in to the conversation, who had missed the tension hidden in the words, laughed at CJ’s seeming self-deprecation.
CJ thought that Graham might say more, but apparently he’d already said what needed saying. If the family had suspected— feared—that they were the model for CJ’s books, he’d given them something more to chew on now.
“Pop, did you hear that I cleaned out Jake Weidman last night?” CJ said, asking only because he’d learned through Rick that his father was a more than occasional guest at the game, and because it was another of his father’s haunts in which he’d insinuated himself.
“I heard you got lucky your first time,” George said. “Were dealt some cards that worked for you.”
The chocolate cake didn’t have an equal in CJ’s opinion, and he took another large bite. “Maybe a hand or two,” he said. “But after a while, Jake knew I had him. He even said as much.”
He could see that Richard had become interested at the mention of Jake’s name. CJ imagined it made Richard feel a bit queasy to hear that he was getting chummy with Jake, the superior to Richard’s boss.
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