Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [147]
“Tomorrow I promise we’ll be off to do some celebrating.” He was looking at sleepy Aaron, but he knew Claire understood he meant it for both of them. “Would you like that, kiddo?” He used to call Claire kiddo when she was Aaron’s age.
“I sure would, Grandpa.” His grandson looked around and yawned. “Where are we gonna celebrate?”
Paull grinned at Aaron’s image in the rearview mirror as he put the car in gear. “It’s a surprise.”
“BEFORE I saw you and Aaron this afternoon,” Dennis Paull said, “I thought it was all slipping away from me, everything I had ever wanted out of life, that even before I died there would be nothing left, nothing to live for. Everyone had left me prematurely: your mother, you, and Aaron, who I’d never seen before today.”
The three of them were in the spacious room at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Maryland Avenue where he was putting Claire and Aaron up for as long as they wanted to stay after the funeral. His first instinct had been to invite them back to the house, but on second thought he decided it was presumptuous. The house where he and Louise—mostly Louise—had raised Claire was crammed with too many memories, good and bad, for both of them. Better, he felt, to take it slow.
“But you had your work,” Claire said without rancor, as she closed the door to the bedroom where she had put Aaron to bed, “and it seemed to us—Mom and me—that was all you cared about or needed.”
Paull felt as if he had been set on fire by his own guilt. “Yes, I can see how I must have given that impression so many times.” He took her hand. “I’m so very sorry, Claire.”
“Don’t be sorry, Grandpa.” Aaron stood in the doorway, speaking with the meticulous seriousness only a seven-year-old could display. He was wearing Buzz Lightyear pajamas. “Mom and I will take care of you.”
This elicited a burst of laughter from Claire. “Oh, Aaron.” She went over and kissed him on the cheek. “Now go on back to bed, honey.”
Paull bit his tongue so that he wouldn’t say what he was thinking: No, I’ll take care of you and your mother, because he knew Claire would hate that. He had to get used to her being grown up, an adult who could take care of herself.
“We’ll make the arrangements for your mother’s funeral tomorrow and do the service early,” he said. “I promised Aaron a celebration.”
“You’ve changed.” Claire could not keep a touch of wonder out of her voice.
“Surprised?”
“Frankly, yes, Dad. I didn’t think you could, or rather that you might want to.” She sat in a plush, upholstered chair. “What happened?”
“I got older and wiser.” He perched on the corner of the coffee table as if to reassure her that this was her room, her space. “That may sound facile or a cliché, but in my case it’s true. I guess I had to get to be a certain age to understand what I was missing, to understand what I’d done wrong, but until today I didn’t know what to do about it.”
“You mean the president doesn’t need you twenty-four-seven?”
“No, he’s got Jack McClure for that.” Paull took a quick glance at the bedroom door, which was still slightly ajar. “Besides, even if he did I’m with my family now.”
This was absolutely true as far as it went; however, and most unfortunately, at the moment catching up with Claire and his grandson weren’t the only things on his mind.
“I think it’s time for you to get some sleep.”
“I’m not tired.”
“All right,” he said, “then tell me what your life has been like these last seven years.”
She sighed and put her head back against the cushion. “We’re living in Baltimore, which I don’t particularly like.”
“Then why are you there?” Paull asked.
“I have a good job—great, really—that pays really well. I create greeting cards that are sold over the Internet.”
“Surely you can do that anywhere,” Paull said. “You could move back here.”
The instant the words were out of his mouth he regretted it. Claire’s face clouded over and her gaze went to the closed drapes