The Once and Future Father

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Hello, old man.”

  The cracked, parched lips parted, emitting a harsh, raspy sound. The tubes in his nose mitigated a once-powerful baritone, reducing it to a rattling whisper. “You came.”

  “Yeah, I came.” There was so much to say and nothing to say. Years of unspoken questions jumbled in Dylan’s brain, all demanding to be asked at once. He gave voice to the most immediate one. “Why are you calling me?”

  A reedy, thin hand, the same hand that had once pummeled him, the same hand that had shoved him, screaming, into a closet and locked the door, leaving him there for hours to deal with the dark and his terror, barely lifted up from the bed in a hopeless gesture. It fell back, pressed down by the weight of the plastic tube attached to it.

  “I wanted to see you.”

  That begged more questions than it answered. “Why?”

  His father struggled to push the words out. “To tell you…to tell you… I’m sorry.” As he spoke, moisture trickled from the corner of his eye, sliding down toward his ear.

  Crocodile tears, Dylan thought, shed by a crocodile. He wasn’t taken in. “I don’t need your apology, old man.”

  A faded spark that could have once been anger glimmered for a fleeting moment in Harry’s eyes, then disappeared.

  “But I need to give it. To ask…”

  Even now, he couldn’t say it, Dylan thought cynically. His father couldn’t ask to be forgiven. That was what he was after, absolution. Before he met his Maker. It looked as if his father’s two-pack-a-day habit had finally caught up with him. Funny how a leafy plant could lay him low while destroying the life of a good woman had had no effect on the man.

  “To ask for what?” Dylan prodded. “Forgiveness? Why, because you’re dying?”

  The fight, always so omnipresent in his father’s countenance, had been drained out as the poisons that were shutting down his system had spread. The air he sucked into his lungs rattled there. “Yes.”

  Dylan’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not Mom.”

  “But you have her eyes…. And her smile.” More tears followed the first, sliding faster down the trail that had been forged. “Your mother was a beautiful woman, once.”

  “You killed that, just like you killed everything else.”

  A sob escaped the cracked lips. “I know. I couldn’t help it. God, I am sorry, but I couldn’t help it.” Harry raised his hand again, reaching for his son. He grasped only air. “You have to believe me.”

  “You could have helped it, old man.”

  Dylan wanted to hate him, the way he had hated him all these years. But he couldn’t. Instead, he felt the anger and contempt he had come armed with being nudged aside by pity. He could almost hear his mother whispering in his ear, the way she had countless times when she had been alive, asking him to forgive his father because he “didn’t mean it.” He needs our understanding, Dylan, not our hate. “You could have tried to get help.”

  “You’re right.” The man began to sob in earnest, his body fairly shaking with the sound.

  Poetic justice would have had him walking away without a backward glance. But Dylan discovered that, after all this time, he was still too much his mother’s son to do it. Vengeance was a hollow thing. It served no purpose to walk away, withholding the one thing the man wanted from him. The triumph would have been empty, the victory without celebration. It wouldn’t be avenging his mother, who was years past gaining any benefit from it.

  Extracting vengeance would have made him, Dylan realized, as little a man as his father had been. With a sigh, Dylan gave the old man what he wanted and cleared him from his conscience.

  He took the hand that had found only air seeking his, and held it. The watery eyes refocused, a pathetic gratitude shimmering in them as Harry looked up at him. “I forgive you, old man. You’ll have a higher court than me to face pretty soon.”

  In place of a reply, his father began to cough. The cough racked him, threatening to rip out all the tubes that were in him. Dylan drew his father into a sitting position, afraid he would choke. He was surprised at how paper-thin and frail the man actually felt.

  When the fit finally subsided, Harry sighed with relief and exhaustion. Dylan lowered his father back against his pillow. Harry held on as tightly as he could to his hand. “Stay with me?”

  Dylan thought of Lucy. A call to the shop on his cell phone had assuaged his concern. Lucy and Elena had arrived right on schedule and were fine. Watley had promised to cover for him at the surveillance, telling him to take all the time he needed. As usual, there was nothing doing at the restaurant. If there were any illegal transactions going on, they were so covert that they remained undetected.

  Dylan wrestled with his conscience. His conscience won, even though the man in the bed had done nothing to merit an ounce of charity. But his mother would have wanted it this way. It was for her, not his father, that he remained.

  “Okay.” Still holding the emaciated hand, Dylan pulled over a chair and sat down beside the old man.

  He hadn’t said a word to her.

  The entire trip home from the shop had been marked with his stony silence. Beyond a faint noise Lucy took as a grunt, Dylan hadn’t responded to any of her attempts to get a conversation going between them, or at least some sort of acknowledgment. It made her uneasy.

  Dylan had walked into the shop at the usual time and stood, like some inanimate, godlike clone, waiting for her to get Elena and come home with him. The only response he’d made to Alma’s bantered greeting was to look in her direction. Nothing more.

  Now, sitting beside him in the car with her baby dozing in the back, Lucy came to the only conclusion she could. He was leaving. The thought brought a sudden sharp chill that passed over her, scraping clammy nails along her body. Twisting her heart.

  Well, if he was leaving again, he was going to have to do better than this in letting her know. She turned in her seat to face him. “If you’re auditioning for a stone statue, you won the part hands down.”

  Dylan glanced in her direction, then looked back at the road. They had almost reached her house.

  She didn’t know how much more of this she could stand. “You’re carrying this strong, silent type bit too far, don’t you think?”

  Still he said nothing and she blew out an angry breath. Ten months ago, she might have remained quiet, but she had done a lot of growing up since then. They were going to have this out like adults. She wanted to know what had caused this complete withdrawal after they had come so far last night and this morning. She refused to believe he was just being perverse.

  “Look, if you think that I’ve done something, I want to know what it is. Tell me,” she insisted.

  “You haven’t done anything.”

  Her hand flew to her chest. “He speaks, be still my heart.” And then the semismile faded from her lips. “All right, if you’ve done something, tell me that, too. I have a right to know why you suddenly have become a complete mute. This is quiet, even for you.”

  Dylan pulled into her driveway and yanked up the hand brake before cutting off the engine. He didn’t want to tell her, didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe if he ignored it, what had happened today would just evaporate from his memory.

  But he knew there was little chance of that. The emotions that were churning within him threatened to push the walls of his dam too hard, breaking them down. Dylan got out and slammed the door on his side a little too firmly. The jarring noise woke Elena out of her dozing state. He cursed himself for his oversight.

  “I saw my father today.”

  Lucy had gotten out of the car and was unstrapping Elena. She gave no indication that the information startled her. She’d been sure he was going to continue to ignore the other man. Taking the baby out and holding her, Lucy looked at him. “And?”

  The image of his father lying in the hospital came back to him. He tried to shut it out. “He’s dying.”

  “Oh, Dylan, I’m sorry.” Lucy quickly rounded the hood to reach him.<
br />
  He saw the sympathy in her eyes. His face hardened. “Don’t be. He deserves to die.”

  Without another word, he took Elena from her and strode into the house. Stunned, she stared at his back before hurrying in after him.

  “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t even bother turning around. Instead, he walked toward the rear of the house and the nursery. “She needs to be changed.”

  Watching him disappear, Lucy felt as if her limbs weren’t quite solid. If there had been a breeze passing through the house, she was certain she probably would have fallen over. Biting her lower lip, she began to follow, then forced herself to remain where she was.

  Maybe after what he’d just been through, Dylan needed this time alone with a brand-new, shiny life. Needed the baby to help make him feel whole again. She accepted the fact that being with Elena right now could help him the way she couldn’t.

  Lucy smiled to herself. At the very least, Elena wouldn’t ask him any questions he didn’t want to answer.

  With a resigned sigh, Lucy retreated. She went into the kitchen to attempt to do something useful while she waited for Dylan to come out of the nursery again.

  It was a long wait.

  She tried talking to him again after dinner. “I know you’re not given to talking.”

  Dylan silently raised his eyebrow at her as she cleared away the plate in front of him. He’d hardly eaten anything, even when she’d urged food on him. In desperation, Lucy had turned on the radio to fill in the silence. It hadn’t really helped. She wanted to hear the sound of his voice. She wanted him to share with her whatever it was that was bothering him.

  The man was infuriating, but she loved him and she wanted to help.

  When there was no more response forthcoming than his raised eyebrow, she stood looking at him. “I’ve gotten more conversation out of teakettles than you, but if you do want to talk, I’m here.”

  Dylan looked away, wishing she would back off. He’d felt pity for that shriveled old man today. Pity, dammit. He didn’t want to feel anything but hatred, to acknowledge anything but contempt. Pity opened up other emotions. Pity weakened him and ate away at his defenses. “I don’t want to talk.”

  Lucy felt like hurling the dishes she was holding against the wall to make him sit up and take notice. She was trying to open up lines of communication and he kept applying wire cutters to them. With effort, she restrained the exasperation she felt and tried again.

  “Don’t you think you should?” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s obviously eating at you, this thing about your father.”

  He shrugged it away, missing the look of pain that came into her eyes. “I can deal with it on my own.”

  When he turned away, she put herself squarely before him again, lowering her face to his. “But you don’t have to. Don’t you see that? You don’t have to. You can talk to me.” What did it take to break through that damn shell of his? “Everyone needs to talk.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Yes,” she insisted, getting in his face again when he tried to turn from her. “You do.” She intended to keep getting in his face until he finally talked to her. “You need to get whatever’s bothering you out. Don’t you understand? It’s a poison, and if you don’t get it out, it’s going to keep on festering inside of you until it destroys you.” Her eyes narrowed, pinning him. “Until you become some bitter old man who hates the world.”

  She’d used the exact same phrasing he had once flung at his father. It had earned him a split lip and a mouth full of blood. Dylan resented the comparison. Resented more the reality that he could easily turn into his father.

  Turn into everything he had hated for so long.

  Well, wasn’t that why he had left Lucy to begin with? Because he was afraid that he would turn into his father? That he would wind up hurting and destroying the very person he loved more than life itself?

  Disgusted, he rose abruptly from his chair. It toppled over. Dylan ignored it, trying to get away from her. Away from what she was saying. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  But she was there, in front of him again, her chin raised like a tempting target, her eyes blazing. Giving him no peace.

  “Then tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me what I’m talking about.” The anger at his stubborn refusal faded a little, softening as she added, “Please.”

  He couldn’t resist her.

  Not when she lay herself bare like this before him. Not when she seemed so determined to absorb the pain that was eating away at him so that he could be free of it.

  “Dammit, woman, why won’t you back off when I tell you to?”

  “Because I love you.”

  The words broke him. “Dammit, Lucy, you don’t know what you’re saying.” Cursing the empty shell that had once been his soul, Dylan roughly framed her face and pulled her to him, sealing his mouth to hers.

  Emotions spun wildly through her as she felt the despair, tasted the need, the desperation that was taking hold of him. She did what she could to assuage it while her own needs battered relentlessly at her.

  Needing to come up for air, Lucy sighed against his lips. He wasn’t going to tell her anything, she knew that.

  Her body already heating, her arms entwined around his neck, she look up at him. “Well, I guess that’s communication. Of a sort.”

  She kept finding a way to get through no matter how hard he tried to block her way. And right now, his defenses were far too tattered and frayed to offer any resistance. Dylan rested his chin against the top of her head. “Anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?”

  “You,” she murmured. She could feel his heart hammering against her cheek. It filled her with a warmth that nothing else could. “All the time.”

  With his crooked finger beneath her chin, Dylan raised her head so that she could look at him. “Then why don’t you listen?”

  The soft smile crinkled the corners of her eyes. “I’m forgetful.”

  He looked at her then, startling her with the entreaty she saw in his eyes. “Make me forget, Lucy. Just for tonight, make me forget about everything else.”

  Her heart quickened, going out to him. Lucy tightened her arms around him, wishing with all her soul that she could erase the pain she saw within him. That she could somehow magically take away all the things he had lived through that had made him the isolated man he was today.

  But all she could do was give him her body.

  And her love.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Her best was good enough.

  Once started, the lovemaking was fast and furious, mimicking a flaming string attached to explosives that swiftly burned toward its final destination.

  He wanted to feel the rapture. He wanted to savor the road.

  Unable to contain himself, Dylan stripped her quickly of her clothes, almost spinning her around to get her out of them. He needed to feel her body against his, to touch it and lose himself in the reality of her flesh, her softness. He needed, more than anything else, the innocence she brought to him. The goodness. It helped to cleanse him and smother the pain that shouldn’t have been there, but was.

  His lips and fingertips anointed and shared every part of her, discovering her as if she were a new treasure, returning to her as if she were the only haven in a world grown cold.

  Her motions mirrored his ardor as she yanked off his shirt and then pulled his jeans from his taut, hard body.

  Each movement—his, hers, theirs—only served to heighten the excitement pulsing between them and infused the demands vibrating within their bodies by underscoring their anticipation.

  Lucy could have sworn she felt herself almost peaking just from the way Dylan looked at her, just from the way he wanted her.

  He’d never made love with her this way before, with an urgency that was breathtaking. He made love with her as if tomorrow was going to go up in flames and they had only moments left of today.

  But even in his h
unger, his roughness had a gentleness to it. He didn’t want to hurt her, and that excited her almost more than anything else. That even now, when his soul was so obviously troubled, when he was just telling himself he was seeking solace of the body, he put her needs ahead of his own.

  For all this and more, she loved him. And it would be this gentleness in the eye of the hurricane of passion that she would remember.

  Remember when he was gone.

  Chapter 15

  Morning peered in, scattering sunshine like so many rose petals throughout the room.

  It had nothing on the sunshine she felt pervading throughout her entire body. She’d been awake for a while now. Raising herself up on her elbow, Lucy smiled as she continued to watch Dylan. He was sleeping beside her, the way he once had before the world had turned ugly and she’d had to forsake some of her optimism.

  Several times during the night, she’d gotten up to tend to Elena. Each time she returned, she’d found Dylan awake and waiting for her. Waiting to re-create what they had shared on the kitchen floor. Made love with wild, passionate abandon. And each time, there was a little less abandon, a little more tenderness.

  She resisted the urge to run her fingers through his hair. She loved watching him sleep. His face was devoid of the tension that so often made his profile rigid, his expression unapproachable. Relaxed, he made her think of the boy she knew in her heart still existed somewhere inside.

  If she hadn’t already been in love with him, she would have fallen in love now.

  “Is this the part where you start interrogating me?” His eyes opened to look up at her. She might have known.

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  He’d woken up hungry for her again and awed by the thought that he really couldn’t seem to get enough of her. Why was that? He’d always been satisfied with so little, why was having her never enough, only creating a need to have more?

  Dylan toyed with the ribbon that held the front of her nightgown together and toyed with the notion of making love with her again before breakfast. “Haven’t you heard? Cops never really sleep, they just pretend.”