Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [95]
But then one day, Sean McKnight called Walter Fieldings. At first, Mr. Fieldings wouldn’t talk. He told McKnight to contact his attorney and was about to hang up, when McKnight said a few words that changed everything. “Your son, Laddy,” McKnight had said. “I know about his extracurricular activities.”
Eden sat forward on the couch at that point. “Dad, I think that’s enough.”
Her father snorted, waved her away with a quick gesture of his walking stick. “I’m not talking about the drugs, Eden. We could have gotten over that.”
“Ms. Sutter,” he said, turning his gaze back to me. “What I’m about to tell you is private family business. I have no reason to trust that you’ll keep this confidential, since your father couldn’t, but I’m old now, my company is gone, and frankly it doesn’t matter anymore who knows. So I’ll tell you.”
I made a barely perceptible dip of my head, unable to tell him to stop, unable to encourage him to continue.
“My son, Henry, who I called Laddy in private, was a sweet boy.” He rubbed the top of his walking stick, his knuckles turning pink from the tight grip. “He was a little too sweet, unfortunately. Took everything personally, if you understand me. He was very sensitive. His mother and I managed to get him into a university out East. We were hoping that college and some time away from home would toughen him up. He was supposed to help me run the company one day. But he didn’t handle college well, either. Got mixed up with the wrong folk, started taking drugs. Cocaine, they tell me, which I consider a fool’s drug. But then it turned out that my son was a fool.”
Mr. Fieldings took a breath. He rubbed his hand over the top of his walking stick some more. “Goodness,” he said, “this is tough, even after all these years.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was still waiting for my father to come back into the story. When I glanced at Eden, she was looking down, twisting a napkin in her lap.
“We got a phone call one night from the police station near the university. They’d arrested Henry. He was involved in some…” Mr. Fieldings rubbed his lips together, seemingly searching his mouth for the right words. “I don’t know what you’d call it. A ring, I suppose. A prostitution ring for men who like other men.”
Eden made a tiny gasp. Her father looked at her implacably. “Not now, Eden.”
“Will Sutter,” he said to me, “was the first person I called. He was doing well for me, so I thought, and I asked his advice. And he handled the Henry situation for me. He had the charges dropped, the records sealed. We got Henry into a drug center. We still had hopes for him. We thought he could clean himself up and get his act together. And life returned to normal for a while, until McKnight called me that day. He knew about Henry.”
“Mr. Fieldings,” I said, relieved to find my voice and a point that I could argue. “That doesn’t mean my father told him the information. Mr. McKnight could have easily learned about your son’s arrest from an investigator.”
“I’m not a fool, my dear,” he said. “Obviously, I thought of that. But you see, it was that first phone call from McKnight that made me realize he had learned this from your father. He called my son Laddy. That was my nickname for him, no one else’s, and I didn’t use the name in public. But I’d told your father that when I called him upset that night. Your father knew.”
“I’m sorry, but I still don’t think that’s enough. I’m sure you’re mistaken.”
“I confronted your father. He admitted to me what he’d done.”
“What?” I said. My voice was too loud, echoing through the parlor.
Mr. Fieldings’s wrinkled face seemed to tighten around the jaw with the memory. “He would never tell me why, but he admitted it.”
“Then why didn’t you call the Attorney Disciplinary Committee if you were so sure? Why not turn him in?”
“My dear, don’t you see? If I turned in your father, then I would have to come clean about my son. And if I did that, my family would have been ruined. I still had hopes that Henry would take