Bobby snorted. "I could give a s.h.i.t what that b.a.s.t.a.r.d wants, dead or alive."
"You have to forgive him, Bobby, the way he"s forgiven you."
Uh-oh, Dinah thought, almost sorry for Jeffie.
Almost. She kneaded bread and wondered where Kate was. For some reason Kate was the only one among them who didn"t send Jeffrey Clark into pontifical orbit. Maybe he"d fallen into pa.s.sionate, unreasoning, uncaring love with her. Maybe he"d marry her and whisk her home in lieu of his brother.
Maybe Kate would find whoever burned her cabin down and not hurt him.
Meanwhile, back at the front.
"Is he in pain?" Bobby said.
"Yes," Jeffrey said.
"Good," Bobby said, with a grim kind of relish.
"You don"t mean that."
"The h.e.l.l I don"t!"
Katya, used to Daddy"s bellows, was unacquainted with the tenor of this one. Her face puckered. Bobby plucked her from the middle of her toys and cuddled her. He dropped his voice but from fifteen feet Dinah could still hear the venom in it. "Lynnie is dead because of him."
Jeffrey"s voice sharpened. "Lynnette Adams is dead because she committed a mortal sin, and when she was called to account for it, tried to wipe it out by committing another, and then the worst one of all. She was d.a.m.ned from the beginning."
Dinah froze, wrist-deep in dough. Where was the first-aid kit, exactly? Bathroom, that"s right, above the sink.
After a moment of silence that positively sizzled, Bobby spoke in a tone that was a mixture of silk and razor wire that Dinah had never heard before. "Don"t let me hear you say anything like that again, Jeffie. Not ever. Lynnie was a sweetheart, my sweetheart. We had plans, Lynnie and me. Because we got ahead of ourselves and she had an abortion doesn"t make her a sinner."
"Dad didn"t hold the razor to her wrists in that bathtub, Robert."
"And it wasn"t Dad calling her a wh.o.r.e from the pulpit, either, I suppose?"
Dinah, chilled to the bone by the menacing purr issuing forth from the man previously known as her husband, found herself holding her breath. She looked over her shoulder at the gun case standing in one corner of the room. Still locked. Good.
The silence was broken by a tiny whimper. Dinah risked a look over her shoulder and saw her daughter hugging as much of her father"s neck as she could get her arms around. "Daddy mad," she said in a tiny voice. "Daddy mad. Don"t be mad, Daddy. Please."
Both men, glaring at each other, were recalled to the present. "It"s okay, baby. Daddy"s not mad at you. Daddy"s never mad at you." Bobby rocked his chair back and forth with a hand on the wheel. Her arms relaxed and her head drooped to his shoulder. Dinah noticed she didn"t let go of her father"s neck.
In a more civil tone, Jeffrey said, "Mom needs you."
"Yeah, well, I needed her when I was sixteen and she was nowhere to be found."
A brief pause. "She gave you life."
"I didn"t have a vote in that, Jeffie. That was their choice. This is mine."
"Robert-"
Dinah gave up the pretence of blissful ignorance and came around the corner, hands cupped so she wouldn"t dribble flour all over the floor. "Give it a rest, Jeffrey, why don"t you. Go on back to Auntie Vi"s. Take a drive, see something of the Park while you"re here." And give my man a break, she thought.
He turned his head and stared at a point somewhere above her left shoulder. In three days he had yet to look her in the face. She would never forget the shock in his when Bobby had introduced them, and the repugnance in his voice. "You married a white white woman?" woman?"
"All right," he said now, still staring straight past her. "I"ll be back this evening."
"Don"t bother," Bobby said.
Jeffrey left without replying.
There was a whole lot of quiet going on following the muted slam of the door behind him. Everyone listened intently to the footsteps going down the steps, over the gra.s.s, the opening of the door to the battered blue Nissan truck Auntie Vi had rented to Jeffrey at a more extortionate rate than usual, the starting of the engine, the sound of it receding over the creek and down the road.
"So." Dinah blew out a breath. "That could have gone better."
Bobby cracked out a laugh. "You"ve said that every day since he came."
"I"ve meant it every day since he came."
He gave her an incredulous look. "For chrissake, woman! The man has yet to call you by name! Don"t f.u.c.king tell me you"re on his side!"
She went back to the kitchen and started kneading dough.
She heard the squeak of rubber on wood as he followed. "Dinah?"
"Jeffrey"s right about one thing."
"Oh? And that would be what, exactly?"
Dinah took a deep breath and prepared for the storm. "He is your father. He gave you life. He wants to see you. You owe him."
She closed her eyes and braced herself. When he said nothing, she looked around.
He was weeping.
Katya raised her head from his shoulder and stared. She touched the track of one of his tears with a pudgy little finger. "Daddy sad?" she said. Her voice broke. "Daddy sad," she wailed, and started to sob, a horrible, heartbroken sound that struck both parents to the core.
Dinah gave her hands a quick wash, made up a bottle, and stashed Katya in her crib where, thankfully, for once Katya subsided without complaint and fell asleep with a milky face. Dinah marched back to her husband, shoved his chair into the living room, ordered him onto the couch, and curled up half in and half out of his lap. She put her arms around him and she hung on and that was all she did for about an hour, listening to the beat of his heart against her ear, feeling the intermittent shudder in his body when his breath caught. She hung on and she wouldn"t let go and she wouldn"t move. Slowly, steadily, he began to relax, one muscle group at a time. He rested his forehead against her shoulder. "I can"t go back, Dinah."
She burrowed closer. "A day"s travel, a day there, another day to get home. Three days you"ll be gone, tops."
"I don"t want to."
"He"s your father." She raised her head and searched his face. "Bobby, don"t you have one good memory of your father? Did he take you fishing, or hold you on your first bicycle, or cheer you on during a baseball game? Did he read you a story over and over again, or hold you when you were sick, or let you crawl in with him and your mother when you had a nightmare?"
He let his head fall back against the head of the couch and closed his eyes. "Maybe. One or two of those." He opened his eyes. "Maybe all. But Lynnie"s dead because this supposedly good man called her a wh.o.r.e in front of her parents and her family and her friends. And me."
Dinah chose her words carefully. "They called you a fornicator, and a sinner."
He said nothing.
"And you didn"t kill yourself."
His laugh was brief and bitter. "No, I let the Cong take care of that for me."
She straddled his lap and took his face between her hands. Never before had she noticed how white they were against the black of his face, and she could and would curse his brother loud and long for that. "Bobby, what if he dies? What if he dies and you don"t say good-bye?"
"I said good-bye a long time ago, Dinah."
"What about your mother?"
He shook his head. "I always came second to Jeffie. He was the oldest, the smartest, the most gendemanly. If she has Jeffie, she won"t want me." He looked at her with a ghost of his old twinkle. "Jeffie got a full scholarship to MIT, did you know?"
"I think I heard him mention it twelve or fourteen times."
They both laughed a little.
Kate walked in, followed by Johnny with a full daypack over his shoulder. "Don"t tell me, let me guess," she said. "The evil brother strikes again."
Bobby managed a smile. "And how was your day, dear?"
Johnny let the screen door slam behind him. "Kick him out, Bobby."
"I did, squirt."
"Good. Look at what we"re studying in science, Bobby. Light is both a particle and a wave, did you know that?"
Bobby was more than glad to have the subject changed. "Explain it to me, squirt."
The men folk retired to the central console and bent over Johnny"s textbook. Bobby"s voice eventually regained full volume.
Dinah poured Kate coffee and set about trying to salvage the bread dough. "Want some fry bread?" she said over her shoulder.
Kate moaned. "Auntie Vi stuffed me full earlier today."
"Does that mean you don"t want any more?"
"Did I say that?" Kate pulled out a large skillet and poured in oil and set it over a medium flame. She took the plateful of round patties of bread dough and fried them until both sides were a golden brown. She set the first batch on the table along with b.u.t.ter, powdered sugar, honey, and three kinds of jams and said, "Come and get it!" stepping back quickly so she wasn"t trampled in the rush.
She returned to the stove where the second batch was already in. "So?"
"Same old, same old." Dinah sighed and closed her eyes briefly. "He"s only been here three days, Kate, and all I can think of is how nice it would be if our friendly neighborhood grizzly would just... kill him and serve him up for Sunday brunch to her cubs."
"Not much meat on the man," Kate observed.
"Not much incentive for a hungry bear," Dinah agreed. "d.a.m.n it."
"Want me to get rid of him?"
Dinah eyed her. "And how would you do that?"
Kate shrugged. "I"d figure it out." She saw Dinah"s expression and choked on a piece of fry bread. "I didn"t mean I"d kill him," she said, laughing out loud.
"What did you mean?"
"I don"t know. Sneak up on him one dark night, throw a sack over his head, and trundle him out to the airstrip, where I"d have George standing by ready to fly his a.s.s to Anchorage and dump it on the first plane south."
Dinah examined Kate carefully. It wasn"t braggadocio she saw on her friend"s face, it was sincerity and determination. "I believe you would."
"Say the word."
"You tempt me greatly," she said, and sighed again, wistful. "But no." She looked over her shoulder at their two men, one of whom was instructing the other in the fine art of pirating a little radio wave for the broadcast of Park Air. "There"s a lot Bobby"s been waiting to say to his family. I think he needs to."
Kate was surprised. "You sending him home?"
"This is his home," Dinah said firmly. "Katya and I are his home. But we are who our parents make us. His father"s dying. If he doesn"t say good-bye..." She let her voice trail off.
"Will he go?"
"He says not." Dinah looked at her husband.
"Want me to take Katya and Johnny and clear out for a while?"
Dinah shook her head. "No, I"ve already said all I"m going to." She gave a wan smile. "The rest is up to him." She shook herself. "Enough of that. How the h.e.l.l was was your day, dear?" your day, dear?"
Before Kate could play along, there was a knock at the screen door and they looked up to see Jim Chopin standing there.
"Hey, Jim," Dinah said. She sounded less than friendly, which surprised Kate, because Dinah, while never having numbered among the legions of Jim"s lovers, was not immune to his manifest charms, either.
"Hey, yourself." He looked at Kate.
Kate met his eyes without a trace of her usual discouraging scowl.
He looked confused, and then alarmed.
"Chopper Jim Chopin, long time no see," Bobby said. "Must be all of twelve hours."
Maybe it was the lower decibel level, maybe he didn"t want to see what was on Kate"s face, but Jim actually looked away from Kate. He frowned down at Bobby. "Who died?"
"My father," Bobby replied. "Or the son of a b.i.t.c.h is about to."
It was a toss-up who was more surprised at the words, Bobby or any of the rest of them.
"Screw it," he said. "Let"s get drunk and go dancing."
They commandeered the big round table in the back corner, Bobby and Dinah and Jim and Kate. Katya had been dropped off with Auntie Vi, who had taken one look at Bobby and made plans for keeping the baby overnight, overriding all obligatory, if feeble, parental objections. Johnny had made a vigorous bid to stay alone at Bobby"s-"I"m too old for a baby-sitter!"- which suggestion had been summarily squashed by Kate, and was also at Auntie Vi"s.
Bernie brought over a round, took the temperature of the table, and departed at speed with the barest minimum allowable bonhomie.
"Drink up," Bobby said, and upended a bottle of Alaskan Amber like it was the last bottle in the last case Bernie had in stock.