The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [44]
Marion remained silent. Between her fingers, the cigarette trembled.
“He was wrong, you know,” J.T. said. His fingers spun away the glass in front of him. “He should’ve let you compete, Marion. The orienteering, the Civil War Reenactment Society. I taught you how to read the compass, do you remember that?”
“No.”
“What about my percussion rifle? You watched me carve out the stock from the black walnut during the afternoons. Do you remember that, or did you block that out too, Marion? Did you leave all the memories behind?”
Marion remained mutinously silent.
“I remember,” J.T. said softly. “I remember you watching me forge the barrel and locks. Took me a year to carve out that damn rifle and you watched every day. I remember you trying to pick it up—you must have been ten or eleven. But at four and a half feet long and a front-heavy twelve pounds, it was too big for you. You couldn’t get the end of the barrel off the ground. So you poured the powder in it instead and rammed down the patch and ball with the rod. Then I lifted the rifle waist-high so you could half cock it, place the percussion cap, and move it to full cock. All that was left for me was to raise it to my shoulder, aim, and fire. Do you remember that, Marion? Do you remember any fucking thing?”
“You’re lying.”
“Why, Marion? Why would I lie about that?”
“Because that’s what you do, J.T. Invent fantasies.”
“About percussion rifles?”
“You can’t stand the truth. You can’t stand knowing just how much Daddy gave you, just how much Daddy favored you, and just how badly you fucked up anyway.”
J.T.’s knuckles whitened. Then abruptly J.T. pushed away. “Sure, Marion, that’s it.” He stood and began gathering dishes. “Everything happened the way you imagined and Daddy’s only crime was shutting you out. You do have follow-through. If you’d done orienteering, you would’ve won the trophy.”
“We’ll never know, will we?”
“No, we won’t. At least you have trophies from dressage.”
“Who the hell cared about dressage?”
“You did, Marion.”
Marion rose. She wouldn’t look at J.T. She grabbed three plates, creating more noise than necessary, then stalked through the sliding glass door.
J.T.’s gaze remained on the door. His hands held two glasses in midair.
“You’ll have to forgive her,” he murmured after a bit. “She can be very intense.” He gathered more dishes, his movements short and choppy. “Wanna hand me that bowl?”
“I’ll help.”
“You don’t have to—you must be sore as hell.” He wouldn’t look at her. His gaze fixed on the table, his voice brusque. Still, she could see the darkness rolling upon him, bunching the muscles on his neck, rounding his shoulders. The patio lights washed over his face but couldn’t penetrate the shuttered look masking his expression. Just his hands moved, long, callused fingers reaching, grasping, stacking. Thrusting, lifting, slamming, rapping out a staccato beat of frustration and anger that ran all the way through him and deep into the ground. “Take some Advil,” he commanded crisply. “Get some rest. You got a helluva lot of work ahead of you, Angie. None of it’s going to be easy.”
“All right.” She still didn’t move.
“Get in the house, Angela.”
“I could carry something in.”
“I don’t need any help.”
She remained standing beside him, not sure what she wanted and not sure why she stayed. She studied his face, looking for something that eluded her. His expression didn’t offer her any miracles. “You . . . you and your sister, you grew up doing this stuff, didn’t you?”
“What stuff?” He finished stacking all the plates and bowls. Now he gathered silverware.
“Orienteering and the Civil War reenactment. Horses and hunting. Swimming.”
“I did it, not Marion. The colonel was more interested in his son than his daughter. It worked for a while. Then I got too old and stubborn, stopped winning the trophies, got sick of shooting Bambi. And maybe the colonel stopped trusting me with a gun in his presence. The colonel wasn’t stupid.”
Tess shivered.
“No