Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [42]
“What will you tell Aaron?”
“The truth, so far as I know it.” She took a sip of coffee, then put her cup down. “One thing I’ve learned out of all this pain, Dad, is the importance of the truth. I strive to raise Aaron with that in mind.”
Paull studied his daughter. He didn’t know whether to pity or admire her. Perhaps it was both. That’s how life was, anyway, he thought, always a series of choices, always a series of contradictions, some of which could be untangled, others not. It was learning to distinguish one from the other that proved to be a bitch.
But, he thought now, just the fact that he felt pity toward her was a prime example of how long he had lived in the shadows, because one couldn’t survive there without learning to lie. Where he toiled, lies were a necessity. And very soon—so soon, in fact, it was disorienting—lies became the norm. That was where he was at when he began manipulating the man Claire wanted to marry. The result? She had told him to go fuck himself when she found out, married the man without Paull knowing, and then divorced him. In the meantime, his wife got old and sick, and he just lost interest in everything.
That’s what had happened to him, he reflected, and to so many of his compatriots. The ones who it hadn’t happened to were dead. So, too, his wife, but he had been given a second chance with Claire and with Aaron, and he meant to make the most of it.
He couldn’t take his eyes off Claire. She was so beautiful he had difficulty believing that he’d had a hand in creating her. She didn’t look like either him or Louise. Maybe like one of Louise’s aunts, or possibly a little like his own grandmother, his father’s mother, who was definitely a looker. Despite her looks, she had no one. She’d left her idiot husband and now wanted nothing to do with him. Aaron despised him, so happily there was nothing more to say on the subject.
“Are you seeing anyone new?” he said.
“Oh, Dad…”
“Just asking.”
She considered for a moment, turning her cup around in its saucer. “Okay, there is someone.” She held up a hand. “Before you start the inquisition, I’m putting the subject off-limits. We just started dating and … Well, there’s nothing more to tell.”
“Okay.”
She cocked her head, her deep gray eyes inquisitive. “Really?”
He nodded, smiling. “You’re a grown woman, Claire. You can make your own choices.”
She put a hand over his again. “Thank you, Dad.”
Sad commentary on their past relationship, he thought, that she felt she had to thank him for considering her an individual. He sighed internally. More muddy water under the bridge, one more sin to atone for.
He rose. She looked as if she were about to say, Leaving already? but instead she bit her lip and, rising as well, produced a bittersweet smile and kissed him on the cheek.
“Be safe,” she whispered.
He headed for the door. “Tell Aaron I love him.” He turned back to her. “You, too.”
That bittersweet smile was still in place as he walked out the door.
* * *
“WHAT THE fuck happened here?”
McKinsey said it, but Naomi felt it. They had arrived at almost the same time as the first state police responders, having done their best to follow Jack’s reckless driving. On their obligatory tour around Henry Holt Carson’s country estate, Naomi was gripped by trepidation. The place was crawling with state police investigators and forensic personnel. A veritable armada of official vehicles, including SWAT armored trucks, filled the driveway, overflowing onto the immaculate lawns. Surely an overreaction, she thought, until she saw the havoc wreaked: the cook and gardener recovering from being knocked out cold by person or persons unknown, one guard’s chest burned to a crisp and a second one with a broken nose, and the third …
“I have a bad feeling about all of this,” she said as she stared down at the corpse of Rudy Laine.
“Join the club.” McKinsey, glancing up, got rainwater in his eye. “Once again in the fucking trees.”
“The fun never stops.” Naomi knelt down beside the body. “As advertised, dead as a doorpost.”
“And twice as ugly.