by Glenn Meade
I loved him for that. He’d always been a good father, loving, supportive, tough but kind, a no-nonsense man but with a soft heart. In Iraq, he always insisted that his unit carry gum, candy, coloring books, and pencils to hand out to Iraqi kids, not only to win hearts and minds but because he felt for those kids, trapped in a war zone and a battle not of their making.
“How’s the writing going?” Dad asked, changing the subject.
Dad knew my writing habits. He knew I was struggling right now. He ought to know. My home was my father’s ten-acre farm on Lake Loudon. There were lots of reasons I’d moved back into the family residence, not just because of his Parkinson’s, but we’ll get to those. “You’ve heard of writer’s block?”
“Sure. Like hitting a wall, huh?”
“Well, I think I haven’t just hit a wall, more like a mountain.”
I’d gone and done the unthinkable, given up teaching at Bearden High School, where I’d taught full-time for almost six years. I had enough money saved and figured I’d take a year off to try to write a novel. I needed to get writing again. Not just because it was bugging me to finally attempt to write a book but because I hoped—prayed—that writing would in some way help me to come to terms with my ghosts. They say writing is like taking off all your clothes in public, and by so doing you in some way purge yourself. I hoped so. My soul needed it.
My father half smiled. “The block, it’ll pass.”
“I hope. What’s in the package?”
He took the heavy parcel from under his arm, weighed it in both hands. “Something I made.”
He unwrapped the crinkly brown paper. It was a heart-shaped gray marble stone, about a foot long and an inch thick. Inscribed in the center were some words that look like Latin: Dilexisset, numquam oblivione delebitur. Whatever that meant. But I could see he’d put a lot of work into it—cutting, shaping, chiseling, polishing.
“That explains all the screeching and squealing noises I heard from your workshop.”
“Yeah?”
“I thought you were torturing a cat.”
“My stone grinder. Sounded like it, huh?”
“Close.”
He held up the marble heart. “The Latin inscription means ‘Always loved, never forgotten.’ Archaeologists sometimes found that inscribed on the tombs of respected ancient Roman nobles. If it was good enough for ancient nobles, I reckon it’s good enough for us Kellys. I’ve been meaning to do it since I mastered that chisel and grinder.”
I felt touched. “Thanks.”
“You bet.” Taking his hat off, he went to lay the inscribed piece on the white marble chips between the two graves.
As he leaned over, holding on to my mom’s gravestone for balance, with a tremor in his hands and jaw, I saw the crown of his head, his gray hair thinning on top. I noticed the raised veins on his outstretched hands as they placed the marble, the skin on the backs of his hands starting to take on that crepe-paper look. The strong-man father I adored was getting older. That day in Florida when he faced off against those two macho idiots seemed a lifetime away. Yet I knew he’d still protect me with his life if he needed to. He was still my shining knight.
My father was no pushover. He kept a loaded .45 in his nightstand and an array of weapons around the house. “Be prepared, honey. That’s one thing the Army always taught me.” He kind of reminded me of Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, the same lean but tough look. You don’t mess with Grandpa, even if he had Parkinson’s.
It’s hard watching a parent grow old. You see your own mortality in theirs. An entire life and your shared past receding, the brightest days gone, certain death and your own future looking you in the face. Dad was still fit and able, but you could see the cracks beginning, hear the wheels starting to creak.
He laid his handiwork down between the two graves, lovingly touched the marble of both gravestones, and then said a prayer and stood, tugged on his hat again, and tightened the string of his hat flaps. “Guess I’d better go if I’m to make good time.”
“Call me on the way.”
Dad never liked lingering long here, even when it was just my mom’s grave. And we never talked about our loss. But we both know how deep the void is and how cruel. That was another thing about my dad, maybe a Celtic flaw—he tried never to show pain if he could help it.
“You bet.”
But then I saw his shoulders hunch and shake, and I heard it, a whimper that sounded like an agonized cry. He suppressed his pain. His eyes teared. He wiped them. I hugged him, kissed his cheek hard. I loved the smell of my father. Soap and workshop oil, all maleness.
Dad kissed me so hard on the cheek it hurt, and his big arms went around me, smothering me in a bear hug. When he let me go, he looked over at the graves.
“I loved her so much, Kath. Loved her like crazy. I’ve never stopped. Loved them all. Jack, Amy, Sean.” There were tears on his cheeks.
I met his stare. There were tears on mine, too. “We both did.”
I sat there alone after Dad left.
It must have been half an hour, maybe less, of getting lost in memories, the kind that only those who remember their dead can understand. I remembered Amy’s birth, how she came eleven weeks early, and in the hour after she was delivered, when things were touch and go, Jack was pacing the hospital room like a madman. Chewing gum, reeking of the cigarettes he smoked outside the hospital lobby, and worrying that Amy was not going to make it.
Until I begged him to stop pacing, my own nerves frayed, and he stopped, sat beside my bed, held my hand tightly with tears in his eyes, and told me that somehow everything would be OK. His reassuring smile and the grip of his hand told me that he really loved me.
I recalled Sean’s first day at school and my son turning to wave at me one last time before he entered the classroom, beaming uncertainly as he said good-bye.
I mentally pushed Sean’s and Jack’s smiles away. They were too painful. Too deep. I was ready to leave. I touched the gravestones one last time, felt their glacial coldness seep into my fingers.
That’s when I heard the whisper of a car engine somewhere behind me.
I turned and saw a gleaming silver chauffeured Bentley glide up to the cemetery entrance.
I recognized the man who climbed out, talking on his cell phone. Handsome, wearing a long black tailored overcoat, his dress shoes polished like porcelain.
My pulse went wild.
Because the moment I saw the man’s face turn toward me, I knew there was trouble.
6
* * *
You never really fall out of love with a face you fell in love with.
It can still lure you, twenty-odd years on. And sometimes I still felt the lure of Chad Benton. You could smell power and money on him. Old money. The kind that never goes out of fashion and never gets squandered, because there’s so much of it.
Chad was West Point and Vanderbilt. His grandfather had been a Supreme Court justice. His father was once a senator for North Carolina, before his passing from a heart attack at fifty-eight. The newspapers said he’d died in the ER while on a business trip to Miami. The rumors said he’d suffered a cardiac arrest in a brothel with an eighteen-year-old Brazilian girl for company.
They said Chad’s family had serious presidential ambitions for their golden boy. I knew that wasn’t just a rumor. Chad ventured into politics five years ago and languished a little, not making much headway in the polls. But it was still early days, and he was still young at forty-two. And most of all, his family had connections, and the vitally important requisite for any electoral ambition: a truckload of money.
I once heard the rumor that his family were gangsters, classy gangsters, and that the old riches weren’t all that old and mostly earned illegally.
I also knew that Chad’s maternal great-grandfather made a fortune during Prohibition, running whiskey and r
um from the Caribbean. “Thugs with money,” I overheard someone once call the family at a party. Which was kind of ironic, because the first time I ever saw Chad, I thought he looked like Gatsby in the old movie when Gatsby was played by Robert Redford. Chad was that kind of handsome.
Chiseled jawline, a perfectly shaped nose, thick fair hair graying attractively at the sides. He could have been an actor if his life had not been mapped out by his old man. Kind of a bad boy with a good streak, the kind some women can’t resist.
And when I was sixteen, he was the first guy I ever had a serious crush on, when I saw him on parade in his lieutenant’s uniform at Fort Campbell. Even then, I knew he was out of my league.
Now he slipped his cell into the pocket of his overcoat. With a wave of his leather-gloved hand, he strode toward me.
Chad didn’t seem his usual confident self. Maybe that was what alerted me to trouble.
Overconfidence and arrogance were qualities in men that never usually attracted me. But Chad’s self-assurance, his powerful family connections, his striking looks, and his strong sense of personal destiny always made him an exception to any rule. Not that he was arrogant—well, maybe he could be—but the general aura he gave off was that he was a man of importance, in control, the kind who always earned your attention.
Even today, as he walked up the rise to join me, and as distracted as I was by my family’s graves, Chad wrenched my focus from the past.
President of Brown Bear International, Chad ran a lucrative empire that specialized in corporate security and risk-management consulting. He provided military and law-enforcement training to governments worldwide, and his company logo was an enormous grizzly bear, rearing up on its hind legs, wielding its claws. The company’s slogan—“A Trusted Ally. Ultimate Training. Elite Protection”—was always right below the grizzly.
Chad’s company operated in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and a dozen other hot spots around the world. He had served for twelve years in the military before resigning his commission and taking over running the firm his father had started.
Chad and Jack were comrades in the 101st, and after Jack left the military, he went to work for Brown Bear as a security adviser. So did my dad for a couple of years. Jack was working for them at the time of his death. He was good at his job and traveled the world, usually on short assignments.
Brown Bear was a good employer. It had a reputation for looking after its personnel and for generous pay scales. Health plans, pension plans, payouts to family in the event of an operator’s death on active duty were far from tight-fisted. For a year after Jack’s disappearance, Chad made sure to check up on me, phoning or visiting, to make certain I was OK. He had his secretary do it sometimes, but more often than not, he called me himself.
His daughter, Julie Ann, was the same age as Amy. They often played together, and they liked each other. Julie Ann reminded me so much of Amy. After the plane went down, she brought me comfort.
Exactly when my relationship with Chad morphed from him comforting a widow to a physical thing I still don’t exactly recall, but it kind of sneaked up on me. About a year after Jack and my children disappeared and the aircraft had not been found and it was obvious my family was not coming back, Chad started to get more serious. I figured later that he was being proper about it, giving me time to grieve. Besides, he had just come through a divorce.
Then, two years after Jack’s death, Chad asked me to marry him. I took a long time to think about it—a month—and finally said yes. We were married in a small, quiet ceremony in Key West. My dad seemed happy for me, but I knew by his reluctance to talk about my marriage that he was uncertain about whether I was doing the right thing.
For two years it was intoxicating. A lot of good memories, fun times, trips abroad, and building a relationship with Julie Ann. And then—well, then it just seemed to fizzle out. Or at least it did so on Chad’s part. Too many overseas trips and business meetings. He seemed to have little time for me or even for Julie Ann.
One weekend I got a call from Courtney. “I’m e-mailing you a pic. You’re not going to like this.”
“Of what?”
“Just take a look.”
I opened her e-mail. It was a snapshot from the New York Daily News, taken at a gala political fund-raiser. A pic of Chad and a mid-twenties glamour model with her arms wrapped around his neck. I called Chad.
“It’s nothing, Kath. The woman was just a guest. It was a fund-raiser.”
“What else did she raise?”
“Not funny.”
“I need more commitment, Chad. We hardly see each other.”
That’s when I heard the silence, and I knew we were doomed. “Kath, I just can’t seriously commit more time to us right now. I’ve too much business to take care of.”
I knew by his tone that the dance was over. In Courtney’s words, when a man says he can’t commit, there’s just one word you need to answer him with. Good-bye. We split, amicably enough, in the end. Once we did, I decided to revert my name to Hayes.
All in the past, as they say, even if the past keeps knocking on your door now and then.
But in fairness, Chad had helped ease my pain. He was just what I needed at the time. He had been a rock, caring and patient, and helped bring me out into the world again. And being around his daughter, Julie Ann, had made me feel what it was like to be a mother again, and I had cherished that feeling. I didn’t have any real bitterness at our parting, just sadness. No, actually, that’s a lie. I did feel bitterness. I was angry that Chad cheated on me, although he always swore he hadn’t. But all men will swear that. In the end, we remained civil to each other. No point in hurling bombs in a war that’s over.
He walked up the rise to join me. “Kath. Good to see you. It’s been a while.”
Chad had put on a little weight in the few months since I’d last seen him, his shirt collar was a little strained, and there was a touch more gray hair at the sides. Rarely did he look uncomfortable—Chad was a calm, composed guy—but today he appeared uneasy, rubbing one gloved hand with the other. There was no kiss on the cheek—that would have been too much, too intimate, in a relationship that was dead—but he touched my arm.
“How are you? I tried to get you on your cell.”
“I left it off.” I usually did when I came to the cemetery, not wanting the jingle to intrude. “What brings you here?”
Chad gave a fleeting, unhappy smile. “I . . . I need to talk about something important.”
His hesitancy set off alarm bells in my head. Chad’s voice was deep, Southern, alluring, but with a hint of New York, where he’d spent some time running his father’s various other business enterprises. To be honest, Chad sounded like one of those news anchors, the bass-voiced, tight-lipped macho brigade I always suspected had a third testicle. With that kind of throaty, masculine tone that had an instant effect on women.
Before he could say another word, my eyes drifted over his shoulder. I saw the Bentley’s rear door open. A striking dark-haired woman was seated inside the limo. She looked Middle Eastern. I glimpsed a tanned leg, a spray of well-cut hair, and then the rest of her. Perfect figure, pretty face, about thirty. It made sense. Chad was a single guy again.
Then a thirteen-year-old girl with almond-brown hair climbed out of the back of the Bentley and ran toward me. She was all smiles, a beatific face, like a Botticelli angel, gushing with excitement and energy.
Julie Ann was Chad’s daughter from his first marriage. For a rich kid, she was the sweetest thing you could imagine. Kind, well mannered, fun, energetic. She so reminded me of Amy. But it wasn’t all sweetness and light. Adolescence is a battlefield, no matter what part of town you live in. Wealth might cushion the blows, but it doesn’t let you avoid them. Once in a while, Julie Ann threw blazing tantrums that were like an array of rockets going off, but usually they were over quickly. Chad said she g
ot her fiery temper from her mother, who had died in a Jet Ski accident in Key West.
“Kath!” Julie Ann threw her arms around me.
She hugged me hard. I kissed her. “How are you doing, sweetheart?”
“Good, and school’s OK. What will we do for our next weekend?”
She was smart and pretty. I could see her being a boy magnet very soon. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Manicure and pedicure, movie and dinner?”
“Sounds good.”
“And a little gossip?”
“Why not?” I smiled back. Julie Ann delighted in gossip the way an adult Southern woman did. After our divorce, Chad still obviously had prime sole custody of his daughter, but I had her overnight two weekends a month. A prenup drawn up by his family’s lawyer meant that I agreed to only a modest settlement, but that didn’t bother me. I was never into Chad for his money. It made life interesting for a few years, that’s for sure, but the truth was, he reminded me of Jack in many ways. Except with more class and polish, as much as I hated to say that.
Chad touched Julie Ann’s arm. “Can you give us some privacy, honey? Kath and I have some things to talk about.”
Her face tightened a little, as if she’d rather have stayed but knew this was adult time. “Sure. See you on our next Saturday, Kath.”
“It’s a date. Take care, honey.”
A final kiss, and she was gone, back to the car, waving at me as she went.
“She loves you so much, Kath.” Chad met my eyes as he said it. I held his look. Something seemed to pass between us. Attraction or simply familiarity? Probably the former, I thought. Was the spark still there a little between us? Or was I fooling myself?
“You know the feeling is mutual. What brings you here?”
He glanced at his watch, as if there was some kind of urgency. “Actually, I drove out to your home first. I’ve been looking all over for you. I knew this was the anniversary, so I figured I’d drive by. I saw your car. Your dad isn’t here?”