“I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it!” she kept repeating as Higgins, the longtime family butler, looked on with suspiciously bright eyes.
“Higgins,” Judith managed as Travis set her back on the foyer’s marble floor, “run and fetch Sarah. Hurry! She won’t believe this, either.”
“Sarah’s here?” Travis asked as the servant left.
“For the weekend, yes.” His mother ran her gaze avidly over his tall frame. “You’re…you’re well, son? Your shoulder, it’s…”
“Good as new,” he assured her.
“Well, all right, if you’re sure…”
“I’m sure. See?” He swung his arm in a wide circle, to demonstrate, and gave her a wink.
She nodded and gestured him toward the spacious living room. He noted her hand was trembling and felt a moment of deep regret. How much grief had his actions caused her over the years of his rebellion? How much pain?
Curling an arm about her shoulders, he drew her to a halt just inside the living-room doors. “I love you, Mother,” he said quietly. “And though you haven’t asked, I’ll tell you right off. Yes, I’m here to make peace with him—if it’s at all possible. It’s time we were a family again.”
He meant it, Travis thought as they waited for Sarah. It was time. High time. He wanted this family. He wasn’t here simply because he found it convenient after deciding to return to medicine; the decision simply gave him a window of opportunity to heal the breach. A window he’d lacked before. He’d regretted the breach for a long time, to be honest. Now, if only he could get the old man to listen…
“DADDY’S CAR’S just comin’ up the drive,” Sarah said to her mother and Travis as she peered out the living-room window. She looked at her brother. “How d’you want to handle this? Should Mother and I make ourselves scarce?”
In the hour they’d talked since his arrival, Travis had informed them of his decision to return to medicine. Both had been astounded, then delighted at the news. Although he didn’t plan on becoming a heart surgeon, his mother felt it would nevertheless pave the way for a reconciliation with his father.
Travis wasn’t so sure. Marring their reunion was their awareness of Trent McLean’s fury about Sarah’s switch to law; their father, apparently, still blamed it on Travis’s influence.
“I think y’all had better leave me to face him alone,” he told the women. “Just have Higgins let him know I’m here and uh, keep your fingers crossed.”
While his mother offered a shaky smile and turned to leave, Sarah ran up and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “We’ll do more than that, love,” she told him. “We’ll pray—so hard, you’ll think there were a hundred trumpets soundin’ and the judgment day in sight!”
Which it might just be, Travis told himself gloomily as he watched them leave the room. He was by no means sanguine about the encounter with his father. The old man hadn’t yielded an inch in the past when Travis had tried to reason with him; why should he now? Still, it was something he had to try.
He was tired of living outside, like a pariah. With the discovery that he had a son had come the realization that family was important to him—this family, as well as the one he longed to nurture under his own roof. And like it or not, Trent McLean was a part of it. He was Matt’s grandfather, damn it, and—
”Who in the hell d’you think you are, bargin’ in here like this?” The icy voice had Travis turning to face the door.
Trent McLean III. With one of those odd flashes of memory, Travis recalled the only reason he himself wasn’t named Trent McLean IV was that there’d been an infant who’d died, who’d been christened with that name first.
“I wasn’t aware I’d done any bargin’,” he replied with deliberate mildness. He gestured toward a silver tea service Higgins had brought and from which his mother had poured. “Considerin’ the hospitality I’ve enjoyed from my mother in the hour I’ve been back,” he added, one hand thrust casually in his pants pocket as he leaned against the mantel over the fireplace, “I’d say I’ve been received most graciously…sir.”
Trent’s eyes flashed a warning as he moved into the room. The inflection in Travis’s “sir” hadn’t escaped him. When his children were young, he’d demanded they address him as “sir,” but he had no doubt Travis was mocking him with it now. “Don’t play games with me, boy!” he thundered.
Travis wanted to kick himself. He hadn’t intended the tiny insult; it had just slipped out. Can’t erase years’ worth of bitterness overnight, I reckon.
He took a moment to appraise his father as Trent went to the bar hidden behind a sliding mahogany panel and fixed himself a drink. The old man had aged. Not that he wasn’t still an impressive figure. The expensive cut of his hand-tailored suit outlined the tall physique that Travis had inherited and that Trent kept trim through regular dates on the tennis and raquetball courts. But there was a stoop to his shoulders that hadn’t been there before. The lines on his face, which once had been slight, merely lending it a suave maturity, were now deep grooves. And there was far more gray to his hair than blond.
Finally, as his father took a sip of the neat bourbon he’d poured and faced him, Travis noticed his eyes. This was where he seemed to have aged most of all. They were…bleak. Travis gave himself a shake. Bleak? The mighty Trent McLean? What in hell could possibly have—
“Don’t look at me that way!” the older man snapped. “I don’t usually have a drink in the middle of the afternoon,” he added defensively, “and you damn well know it!”
Do I? Do I really know anything about you after five ‘long years? Even way before that You spent so little time with us I doubt we ever really got to know you at all.
Trent was shaking his head. “I don’t know why I should be tellin’ you but, fact is, I lost someone on the table today.” He took a big swallow of the whiskey. “Someone I know—knew well, a friend, and I’m still not sure how it happened. It shouldn’t have happened, dammit!”
“Who?” Travis couldn’t help asking.
Trent downed the rest of the bourbon with a grimace, shook his head and let his eyes flick over Travis before looking away. “Wally Reston,” he said.
“Reston? My God, I just saw him a few—”
“I know. He told me ‘bout it when he called to ask if I’d perform this operation personally, as a special favor to an old friend.” Trent poured himself a second drink. “Said he knew it was just a simple bypass, but that he’d still feel better if I was the one did it. Said he trusted me…Oh, God! A simple bypass, and he died. Under my scalpel.”
A bitter laugh issued from him before he downed the bourbon. “The poor bastard trusted me, and I let him die.”
Travis didn’t know what to say. He’d never seen the old man like this. Then it struck him. Trent McLean, for all his aura of infallibility, was as susceptible to guilt and failure as any other mortal. For the first time in his life, he was seeing his father as human.
“I’m sorry,” he said, carefully feeling his way along unfamiliar emotions. “Truly sorry. I know the two of you went back a long way. I also know, if there was anyone could’ve pulled him through, it was you.”
Trent glanced at him sharply. “Y’do, do you?” There was a sneer on his face, a challenge in his voice. “What would you know about it?”
It took every ounce of control Travis possessed not to respond in kind. “I never questioned your competence as a surgeon, sir.” The final word was issued without mockery this time. “You’re one of the best—world-class. I simply didn’t want to be forced—”
“For no reason but sheer spite, what you wanted was to wallow in the mud of your infantile rebellion. Wallow! And rub my nose in it at the same time!”
Travis’s control finally snapped. “Wrong! And if you’d ever listened to a word I said, you’d know that. But you never did listen, did you? Not to me, not to Troy or Sarah, not—”
“Sarah! Don’t you dare talk to me ‘bout Sarah, you connivin’ ungrateful viper! You
put her up to this insane thing she’s done. You engineered this…this betrayal.”
“Wrong again! I had no idea—”
Trent slammed down his glass and whirled on him. “D’you deny your sister’s followin’ in your disgraceful footsteps? Indulgin’ in a childish rebellion? A childish rebellion, Travis, just like yours!”
“No,” Travis said quietly, regaining some control. “It was a childish rebellion—mine, that is. Sarah’s is another matter, but I swear to you, I had no hand in her decision, and I hope to God her motives were different”
For the first time in Travis’s memory, his father seemed totally taken aback. He stood frozen, a disbelieving look on his face as he faced his son.
“Am I to believe,” he said at last, his jaw working as he seemed to search for words, “that you’ve come here to admit you were wrong in what you did to me five years ago?”
Travis heaved a disgusted sigh and struggled to control himself. Trust the old man to see it all as a personal affront.
“No,” he corrected. “What I’m hopin’ you’ll understand is, I’m admittin’ that what I did—to myself primarily—was done for the wrong reasons.”
“I see,” Trent said tightly. “And what would you say were the right reasons?”
“The right reasons were the same ones I hope are motivation’ Sarah now—the pursuit of a different path for its own sake. Not from bein’ hell-bent on defyin’ you.”
“So you admit you did it to defy me!”
Travis smiled wearily. “That’s what I just said, didn’t I?”
His father’s smile was gloating. “Well, well, well. Can it be we’re makin’ some progress here? After all these years—”
“After all these years,” Travis said rounding on him angrily, “you still don’t get it, do you, Father?” He strode forward, closing the distance between them, until their faces were inches apart. “Well, let me see if I can spell it out for you.” He clenched his hands into fists at his sides.
“I don’t have to listen to this—” the older man began, but Travis cut him off.
“You don’t, but you will. When I’m done, you can have me thrown out, for all I care, but just this once, you’re gonna listen!”
It all came pouring out. The painful memories of a boy yearning for the father who was never there. The attempts to please, only to find them ignored when they failed to align .with the father’s vision. The anger and frustration thai simmered over the years, finally erupting in a boil that tore at the heart and fabric of a family. A dysfunctional family, because it was under the controlling thumb of a father who didn’t give a damn about anything but his own selfish ends.
“And the worst of it is,” Travis finished bitterly, “I’m as guilty as you are.” Tears were streaming down his face, but he didn’t notice. “In my need to spite you, I derailed myself from the more sensible course I might’ve taken. And I’m heartily sorry for it, Father. So damned sorry.”
“Wh-What?” Trent’s voice, sounding alien and thick with emotion, echoed in the sudden quiet. Swiping at his eyes with his sleeve, Travis peered at the older man with shocked awareness. His father’s cheeks were wet.
“What—” Trent blinked to clear his eyes “—what did you say?”
Not quite believing the pain and remorse he saw in his eyes, Travis prayed for the right words. “Father, I came here today to try to heal things between us. I’m not-very good at this, but…but I want you to know, I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you.” He paused for a breath. “You’ve gotta believe that what I did at the time I did because I felt it was right. I thought I was bein’ true to myself. Now I know otherwise. I did it mainly to thwart you, more than anythin’, ‘n’ for that, I’m sorrier than I can say. Can…can you accept that? Can you forgive it?”
“My God,” the older McLean whispered brokenly. And then he began to sob.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“SIT DOWN, SON.” Struggling to collect himself, Trent awkwardly gestured Travis into a chair across from him.
Son. He hasn’t called me that in decades. Stunned, Travis lowered himself into the chair. He felt a compassion he hadn’t thought possible as he watched his father grope for words.
He was at a loss for words himself. He knew how difficult this must be. His father, for all his faults, had always been a proud man; breaking down as he had, especially in front of his estranged son, had to have cost him plenty.
“I left the hospital today,” Trent said, staring at his tightly clasped hands, his voice raw and uneven, “as badly shaken as I’ve ever been in my life. It was as if…as if, in losin’ Wally, I’d reached some sort of…personal watershed. A crisis of monumental proportions.”
He raised his head, meeting Travis’s eyes. “When I stumbled out of that operatin’ room today, Travis, I could feel the weight of my own mortality on my back.
“Y’see, I’d already begun to question myself about…well, about many things. As a man gets older…” He shrugged, gave a self-effacing smile. “‘Course, you wouldn’t know ‘bout that yet, son.”
Wouldn’t I? I’ve done some heavy questioning of my own with the passing of time.
“At any rate,” Trent went on, “it was in this godawful vunerable mood that I came home to Sunnyfields. And then, to find you here! Well, I reckon it’s much easier to mask such feelin’s with anger than admit to ‘em.” He gave Travis a rueful smile. “And anger was par for the course, anyway, where you’re concerned.”
Travis nodded, managing a wry smile.
“Well, as I said, I’d already begun to question myself, doubt myself. And then came your bitter diatribe. No, son, let me finish. This has to be said.
“Y’see, your accusations—your rightful accusations—drove home, as nothin’ else could, those doubts I was havin’. Doubts about the values I’ve embraced to the detriment of things I should’ve placed first in my life, but didn’t. Things…! lost, because I’d thrown them away.” His gaze reached deep as it held Travis’s. “Like a son. Like a family.”
Travis felt light-headed. Was this really his father speaking?
“The last thing Wally Reston said to me before they put him under—” Trent’s voice trembled with emotion “—was that he prayed I’d have my son back again. That, when all’s said ‘n done, a man’s children are his only immortality. And that family is a gift too precious to sacrifice on the altar of pride and…and ambition.”
Travis swallowed thickly, a look of contrition on his face. “And I wrote the man off as a meddlin’ busybody. I hope I never pass such unfair judgment on anyone again.”
His father smiled at him. “Seems poor Wally’s given us each a gift, then, a lesson, and we’ve both been enriched by it.”
“A lesson?” Travis asked as he saw that his father was still smiling. A warm smile, open and kind. Taking it in slowly, he was aware he was seeing his father as he’d never seen him before. As perhaps no one had ever seen him.
“Travis…” Trent became choked up, had to begin again. “Son, I’ve wasted so many years. I…I love you, and…and I only hope it’s not too late to ask you to forgive me. God, I’ve been such a fool!”
Watching him bury his face in his hands and sob, Travis felt his own eyes fill again. “Maybe you’re not the only one,” he said gruffly. He swiftly knelt beside his father’s chair and pulled him into his arms. “And it’s not too late. I…I’ve come home and, dammit, I love you, too!”
HER FIFTY LAPS completed, Sarah lay stretched out on a large monogrammed towel beside the Sunnyfields pool. Water trickled from her short wet hair; a light breeze fanned the drops beading her sun-bronzed skin, raising gooseflesh. She scarcely noticed. Lost in thought, the youngest McLean tried to absorb the enormity of what had happened this day.
To say she’d been shaken by what she witnessed a few hours earlier was an understatement. Anxious about Travis’s meeting with their father and noting the worry in her mother’s eyes as the two women awaited its outcome, she’d tip
toed to the living-room doors and peeked inside. Never could she have imagined that scene!
The sound of Trent McLean’s sobs had been jarring enough; not once in her lifetime had she seen her father cry. But the sight of Travis clutching Daddy in his arms, his face wrenched with emotion, had nearly torn her apart. And filled her with unbearable joy.
Her memory of what happened afterward, was jumbled. She recalled running to the den to fetch her mother. And the look on Mother’s face while she tearfully babbled what she’d seen. The two of them deciding to give the men time to compose themselves, though dying to know what had happened. And finally that moment when father and son, arms about each other—arms about each other!—came to the den to announce a miracle.
Sarah shook her head, still hardly able to take it all in. Daddy was a changed man. That alone was hard to digest, though his story about his dead friend made sense. But even more incredible was what Travis had explained: that his reconciliation with Daddy had come without a word being mentioned about his decision to return to medicine!
Instead, Travis had saved that piece of news until the two of them joined the women. And then Daddy had protested, of all things! Travis didn’t need to do that, he’d said. It was all Travis could do to convince him he’d reached the decision quite apart from his desire to reconcile with his father.
“Better put some gunk on those shoulders, Pumpkin.” Travis’s voice broke into Sarah’s thoughts. “That ol’ sun’s hotter ‘n Hades.”
“Where are you off to?” Shielding her eyes with her hand, she peered up at him, noting the car keys dangling from his fingers. “What’s up?”
“Oh, this ‘n’ that,” he said enigmatically.
“Travis McLean, don’t you dare be mysterious with me!”
He grinned at her. “Well, among other things, I just got permission to borrow the Sarah Anne for a few days.”
Sarah pushed herself to her knees. “From Daddy?” The Sarah Anne was the family’s yacht—all 130 feet of her—and Trent McLean’s pride and joy; he never let anyone sail on it unless he was aboard.
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