Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [148]
“You don’t know what to say to me?” he asked, giving me the full weight of those deep-set eyes.
“Not really,” I said.
He smiled, and squeezed Jason’s leg at the same time. “But you admit it, most people wouldn’t.”
I shrugged. “I’m not most people.”
“I heard you killed three men to save Jason,” he said, and this time he looked at Jason, not at me.
“Two vampires and one man, yes.”
He looked back at me, when he asked, “Does it matter to you that two of them were vampires?”
“Vampires are harder to kill; it makes the story more impressive.”
He almost smiled. “You are a strange woman.”
“Would any other kind be able to keep up with your son?”
He looked at Jason then, and a look more tender than anything I’d expected to see filled that harsh face. “We’ve always been too different to get along. I blamed, well, you know what I blamed.”
I had no idea what he blamed, but I kept it to myself. I had the sense that I might learn something if I kept quiet.
“Why did they do this to Jason?” he asked.
“He took another beating for Keith Summerland, just like in school.”
“They did this because they thought Jason was Keith?”
“Yes.”
“Why did they want to do this to the Summerland boy?”
“Apparently, Keith was messing with someone else’s wife, and the husband took exception.”
Something crossed Frank Schuyler’s face, some pain that flitted through those dark, hooded eyes. “You know, don’t you?”
“I know a lot of things,” I said. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
He reached up to Jason’s hand, which was still in mine. He hesitated, as if he might put that large hand over both our hands. That seemed disturbing, so I moved my hand. I left Jason’s hand empty, and Frank Schuyler wrapped his big hand around Jason’s. He held his hand as if they were any father and son. It was a shame that Jason wasn’t awake to see it.
“Iris and I had separated. My fault, I’ve always had a temper. We dated while we were separated like most couples do, and when she got pregnant with Jason, we got back together. He was our reconciliation baby.” He held Jason’s smaller hand in his large one, and stared down at his son.
“A lot of people get back together that way,” I said. I wasn’t sure where the story was going, but I wanted to hear it.
“I thought I finally had a son of my own. I thought that he just looked like Iris, until I saw the Summerland twins. Then I knew, I knew she’d been with Summerland.”
“Have you seen the kids in this town, Mr. Schuyler, most of Jason’s friends look like they were chipped off the Summerland block.”
He gave me an unfriendly look. “I asked Iris, and she didn’t deny that she’d dated him. The Summerlands were separated at the same time we were. It was a rough year in the town, tempers short. We all got back together because we thought we were going to have children.” He rubbed Jason’s hand with his fingers.
I realized then that I’d been slow. Jason had hinted at it, and there had been other things, but so many of the girls in the wedding had looked just as much like Jason. His mother looked like the Summerlands, for God’s sake.
“Jason said you were always mad at him, no matter what he did.”
He nodded. “That’s fair. It wasn’t just that he looked like the twins. He didn’t do sports. He danced. He was just so…”
“Not the son you wanted,” I finished for him.
He gave me an unfriendly look again; this one had some real anger back in those dark eyes. “You have no right to say that.”
Maybe it was because I was tired, or because I loved Jason and couldn’t understand why his own father didn’t love him, but I said what I was thinking, “I said it because it’s true.”
He glared at me, and I gave him empty cop eyes back. I was too tired to be angry. Finally, he looked away. “Maybe, all right, yes. Every man dreams of what his son will be like. I guess I wanted someone to carry on, and he seemed to be carrying on the Summerland values, not mine.” He kept holding Jason’s hand while he said it, though.
“Jason’s values are just fine,” I said.
“I’ve half-hated him all his life, blamed