Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [124]
Then he turned back to Reginald White. “Now I want to hear all about Shona and her breakthrough. You have good reason to be proud of your daughter.”
“IT GETS worse?” Paull said.
Thomson nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
As if on cue Benson returned to the chesterfields, but now he sat beside Paull, rather than opposite him. “Now comes the chapter and verse on General Brandt.”
“Not until I see my daughter and grandson,” Paull said.
“We don’t have time—”
“You’re the one who brought my family into the mix, Benson.” Paull stood. “I have enough to go to the president, which will save him, but not, unfortunately, the two of you.”
Thomson, alarmed, rose as well. “If you let us explain fully—”
“Be my guest,” Paull said, “after I see my family and after I tell them that I’m not dying.”
“Consider,” Benson said. “They might not then wish to see you.”
Paull shook his head. “You really are a piece of work.” He cocked his head. “Now I think about it I’m not going to make this easier for you. You’re going to tell them I’m not terminal. It’s your lie, you wriggle out of it.”
Benson looked bleakly over at Thomson, who gave him an almost imperceptible nod. Then he got up heavily, straightened his jacket, brushed down his trousers, and sliding open the pocket doors, led the way across the hall to a somber study, devoid of sunlight.
Paull was at once terror-stricken. He hadn’t seen his daughter in seven years, hadn’t ever laid eyes on his grandson—Aaron, he had a name to which Paull was about to put a face. He realized that he could take Claire’s rejection, she had become for him a shadow, an image in a photo, slightly faded from time and the slippage of memory. She had become, in a way, like Louise, shut away in her own private Petworth Manor, as if she, too, suffered from Alzheimer’s, her forgetting him not of her own volition. It was easier, or at least less painful, to think of her as debilitated, ill, not in control of her mind or her emotions. In this way he had frozen her like a butterfly in amber, a small child he could still remember sitting on his knee while together they recited the words to Goodnight Moon.
But now here she was, rising from the floor where she had been sitting beside Aaron, smoothing down her skirt as Benson had smoothed his trousers, a small but telling gesture both of propriety and of nervousness. He both recognized her and didn’t recognize her because the photo in his mind had become faded and fragile, thin as rice paper.
They stood looking at each another, silently assessing the damage and wear time had assessed on human flesh and the human heart. Claire was older, yes, but also more beautiful, as if when he’d last seen her the Great Sculptor hadn’t quite finished his work.
“I’m sorry about Mom.” She spoke first, her voice subtly deeper and richer than he remembered it, but also stiff and awkward, as if she wasn’t sure who she was addressing.
“It’s for the best. She’s peaceful now, herself again.” His voice was just as stiff and awkward, and he realized with astonishment that it was quite possible, likely, even, that he had faded from her consciousness as surely and inevitably as she had from his own.
“My grandson,” Paull said, almost against his will, because it would be Aaron’s rejection he could not bear. His throat felt tight and parched.
She looked down at the boy with a jerky little motion of her head, as if her mind and her body were not quite in synch. “Aaron, please stand up.” Her voice changed, became clearer, declarative when she addressed her son.
The boy—Aaron—unfolded from his position on the floor, where he had been using an iPhone application and turned, stood facing Paull in ranked row with his mother.
“Aaron,” Claire said, “this is your grandfather. His name is Dennis.”
“Hello,” Aaron said.
The boy was taller than Paull had imagined, but