Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [199]
“You do when you make an accusation,” Kaveh told him. “And that’s what you’ve done. You can try to pretend you haven’t, but that’s not going to work. So why don’t you tell me what you mean.”
“Why don’t you keep driving?”
“Because, like you, I don’t have to.”
Tim had desired this confrontation, but now he wasn’t sure he really did want it after all. There he was in an enclosed car with the man for whom his father had destroyed their entire family and wasn’t there a sense of menace here? Wasn’t the case that if Kaveh Mehran had been capable of walking into Tim’s birthday party and laying down the bald facts like a hand of cards, he was capable of pretty much anything?
No. Tim told himself he would not be afraid because if anyone was going to be afraid, it was Kaveh Mehran. Liar, cheat, rotter, and everything else.
He said, “So when’s the wedding, Kaveh? And what’re you planning to tell the bride? ’S she going to be brought into the picture of what you’ve been up to in this part of the world? Or is that why you’re getting rid of me and Gracie? I don’t s’pose we’ll be invited to the wedding. Guess that’d be a bit much. Gracie’d like to be a bridesmaid, though.”
Kaveh said nothing. Tim had to credit him for thinking a bit instead of blurting out something like his plans being none of Tim’s business. He was probably madly going through responses since the one thing he didn’t know was how Tim had managed to winkle out the truth.
Tim added, “Did you give Mum the news? Let me tell you, that’s not exactly going to make her day.”
What surprised Tim was what he was feeling as he spoke. He didn’t know what to call it. It was filling him up inside and making him want to do something to make it go away, but he couldn’t name what the feeling was, and he didn’t want to. He hated it when he felt something as a result of what other people did. He hated that he reacted to things. He wanted to be like a sheet of glass with everything rolling off him like rain and the fact that he wasn’t, that he hadn’t managed it yet, that there was no indication that he’d ever manage it …This knowledge was just as bad as feeling something in the first place. It spoke of a kind of condemnation: an eternal hell of being at the mercy of everyone else and no one being at the mercy of him.
“You and Gracie belong with your mother,” Kaveh said, choosing what was the easiest route for their conversation. “I’ve been happy to have you with me. I’d continue to be happy to have you with me, but— ”
“But the wife might not be so happy about that,” Tim sneered. “And with the parents as well, I guess the place would start getting a little crowded, wouldn’t it? Man, this worked out perfect for you, didn’t it? Like you even had it planned.”
Kaveh went perfectly still. Only his lips moved. They formed words and the words were, “What exactly are you talking about?”
There was something behind those words that was unexpected, that sounded like anger but more than anger. Tim thought in that instant that danger was anger with a d in front of it and maybe that’s where danger came from, born out of anger and what people did when anger came upon them, people like Kaveh. But he didn’t care. Let the bloke do anything and what difference did it make? He’d already done his worst.
“I’m talking,” Tim said, “about the fact that you’re getting married, having decided— I s’pose— that taking it up the shoot from a bloke got you what you’d wanted from the first and now that you have it, you’re ready to move on. You reckoned the farm is a good enough payment for what you had to do to get it, so you can bring on the wife and the kiddies now. Only, of course, there’s the problem of me and what I might say in front of the wife and in front of the parents, like ‘What about you and blokes, Kaveh? What about you and my dad? Why’d you change over to ladies, then? Arsehole getting stretched out of shape or something?’”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kaveh said. He glanced over his shoulder at the coming traffic. He signaled his intention