Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [16]
“There’s a reason for that,” Tolliver said.
“He’d seen some website that tracks her,” Mark said, nodding toward me as if I were sitting far away. “He said you-all’s website had an email address, but he didn’t want to contact you through her website. Like he was a stranger.”
The waitress came up with our food then, and we took the little ritual of spreading napkins and using salt and pepper to regroup.
“Mark,” Tolliver said, “is there any reason you can think of that I ought to make any effort to include that man in my life? In Harper’s life?”
“He’s our dad,” Mark said doggedly. “He’s all we’ve got left.”
“No,” Tolliver said. “Harper’s sitting right here.”
“But she’s not our family.” Mark looked at me, this time a little apologetically.
“She’s my family,” Tolliver said.
Mark froze. “Are you saying I shouldn’t have left you-all in that trailer? That I should have stayed there with you? That I let you down?”
“No,” Tolliver said, astonished. We exchanged a quick flicker of a glance. “I’m saying Harper and I are together.”
“She’s your stepsister,” Mark said.
“And she’s my girlfriend,” Tolliver said, and I smiled down at my salad. It seemed such an inadequate term.
Mark’s mouth hung open as he stared at us. “What? Is that legal? When did this happen?”
“Recently; yes, it is; and we’re happy, thanks for asking.”
“Then I’m glad for you,” Mark said. “It’s good that you have each other.” But he still looked doubtful. “Isn’t it kind of weird, though? I mean, we grew up in the same house.”
“Like you and Cameron,” I said.
“I never felt like that about Cameron,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “But this is the way we feel. We didn’t start out this way, but it’s the way we ended up.” And I smiled at Tolliver, suddenly feeling ridiculously happy.
He smiled back. Our circle closed.
“So what do you want me to tell Dad?” Mark said. There was a little desperation in his voice. I couldn’t imagine how Mark had pictured this conversation going, but it had not turned out to his satisfaction, obviously.
“I thought I’d made myself clear. We don’t want to see him,” Tolliver said. “I don’t want him to get in touch with me. If he emails us through the website, I won’t answer. That last year . . . you were lucky you were out on your own, Mark. I’m glad you were old enough to leave, to start your life. I’ve never blamed you for leaving, if that’s what you’re thinking. Even if you’d been in the trailer, you couldn’t have stopped anything that happened. And you brought us food and diapers and money when you could. We were glad one of us had made it out into the real world. My job at Taco Bell wouldn’t have been enough.”
“You don’t think I was just running away?” Mark sawed on his steak, his eyes on his knife.
“No, I think you were saving your life.” Tolliver put down his fork. His face was serious. “That’s what I really believe. And that’s what Harper believes.”
Not that Mark was so concerned with my opinion, but I nodded. It had never crossed my mind to think any differently about it.
Mark tried to laugh, but it was a pretty pitiful attempt. He said, “I never intended this evening to get so intense.”
“It’s your dad reappearing. Not your fault.” I smiled at him, trying to will him to lighten up.
But that seemed to be a lost cause. “You really haven’t visited your dad?” he asked me. He was wrestling with my attitude.
“No,” I said. “Why would I lie about that?”
“What is his illness?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has he heard your mom died?”
“I have no idea.”
“He know about Cameron?”
I thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, because some of the newspeople tracked him down and talked to him when she went missing.”
“He never came to see . . .”
“No. He was incarcerated. He wrote me a few letters. My foster parents gave ’em to me. But I didn’t answer. I don’t know what happened to him after that. More of the same, I expect. I never heard from him, or about him, until he got so sick. Then the prison chaplain wrote me.”
“And you just . . . didn’t answer?