Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [15]
“Um, a month,” Mark said. He folded the little paper ring that had circled his silverware and napkin. He unfolded it and folded it again. This time he compressed it into a smaller rectangle. “He got early release for good behavior. After I wrote back, he called me. He wants to reconnect with his family, he says.”
I was sure that (entirely coincidentally) Matthew also wanted money and maybe a place to stay. I wondered if Mark truly believed his father, if he could really be that foolish.
Tolliver didn’t say a word.
“Has he been in touch with your uncle Paul or your aunt Miriam?” I asked, struggling to fill the silence.
Mark shrugged. “I don’t know. I never call them.”
While it wasn’t technically true that Tolliver and I were each other’s only adult family, with the exception of Mark it might as well have been. Matthew Lang’s siblings had been hurt and disgusted too often by Matthew to want to maintain any relationship with him, and unfortunately that exclusion had spread outward to include Matthew’s kids. Mark and Tolliver could have used help—could have used a lot of help—but that would have entailed dealing with Matthew, who had been too difficult and frightening for his more conventional siblings. As a result, Tolliver had cousins he barely knew.
I wasn’t sure exactly how he felt about Paul’s and Miriam’s self-preserving decisions, but he’d never made any attempt to contact them in recent years, when Matthew had been safely behind bars. I guess that spoke for itself.
“What’s Dad doing?” Tolliver said. His voice was ominously quiet, but he was holding together.
“He’s working at a McDonald’s. The drive-through, I think. Or maybe he’s cooking.”
I was sure Matthew Lang wasn’t the first disbarred lawyer to work the drive-through window at a McDonald’s. But given the fact that while I’d lived in the same trailer with the man, I’d never seen him cook beyond popping something in the microwave, and I’d never seen him wash a single dish, that was kind of ironic. Not enough that I’d bust out laughing, though.
“What happened to your dad, Harper?” Mark asked. “Cliff, was that his name?” Mark felt it was time to point out that Matthew wasn’t the only bad dad around.
“Last I heard, he was in the prison hospital,” I said. “I don’t think he knows anyone anymore.” I shrugged.
Mark looked shocked. His hands moved involuntarily across the table. “You don’t go see him?” He actually sounded amazed at my heartlessness, which I found almost incredible.
“What?” I said. “Why would I? He never took care of me. I’m not going to take care of him.”
“Wasn’t it okay before he started using drugs? Didn’t he give you a good home?”
I understood this wasn’t about my father at all, but it was still really irritating. “Yes,” I agreed. “He and my mother gave us a nice home. But after they started using, they never thought twice about us.” There were lots of kids who’d had it worse, who hadn’t even had a trailer with a hole in the bathroom floor. Hadn’t even had siblings who were willing to watch their back. But it had been bad enough. And later, awful things had happened when my mother and Tolliver’s father had had their crappy “friends” over. I remembered one night when all of us kids had slept under the trailer, because we were so scared of what was happening inside.
I shook myself. No pity.
“How’d you know to bring up Dad, anyway?” Mark asked. He looked sullen. Mark had always been a transparent sort of guy. It was clear I wasn’t his favorite person at the moment.
“I saw a letter from him on Iona’s table. It took me a while to remember where I’d seen the handwriting. I wonder why he wrote her. Do you reckon he’s trying to get Iona to let him see the girls? Why would he be doing that?”
“Maybe he thinks he ought to see his daughters,” Mark said, and he flushed, a sure sign he was angry.
Tolliver and I looked at our brother, and neither of us said a word.
“Okay, okay,” Mark said, rubbing his face with his hands. “He doesn’t deserve to see them. I don’t know what he’s asking Iona for. When I saw him,