44
SCOTT HAD SEEN how panicked Sydney became when she realized Richard had seen her with him, and it hurt. And it angered him. He had taken her under his wing when another love had gone wrong for her. He'd showed her how to be strong and how to get what you want out of life. He'd built up her confidence and taught her how to set goals and take the necessary steps to achieve them. The way he figured it, she'd have nothing today had it not been for him. He glanced at her. She clutched her purse with one hand and grasped the door handle with the other.
"I told you I've come into some money recently," he said, pausing to let her respond. She didn't. "It's a lot of money, Sydney, and I thought how fantastic it would be for us to just pick up and go. We could go anywhere you'd like—anywhere in the world—and you'd never have to work again."
"I don't want to leave here. I love my work and I love my studio."
"You say that now, but you'll grow tired of it. And in a few more years—"
"No, I will not!"
"Trust me. In a few more years, you're going to hate it. Then you'll be wishing you'd come, but it'll be too late, Sydney. This is a once-in-a-lifetime offer." The car stopped for a red light.
Sydney looked at her watch. "I'm sorry, Scott. I really am. But, I—really, I—can't."
"Why not, Sydney?" He raised his voice. "Why not?"
Sydney turned away from him and faced the side window. She knew if she didn't answer, he'd be more likely to calm down.
"Don't think I don't know what the hell's going on here, Sydney." He banged a fist against the steering wheel, and snorted, "I can't believe you could be that stupid!" Sydney checked the time on her watch. "He's a murderer, Sydney. He rapes young girls and then murders them!"
"No he does not!" In one swift move, Sydney unbuckled her seatbelt, opened the door, and rolled out of the car. "You're his attorney and this is the way you think?" The light turned green and the traffic began moving around her. She slammed the door, cut between cars, and stepped onto the median in the center of the six-lane thoroughfare. Up the road she could see her studio through the haze of tears in her eyes. The parking lot was jammed with cars and she needed to be there. Pulling her purse strap over her shoulder, she watched for a break in the traffic.
"Sydney!" a voice called behind her. She turned and saw the face of Sylvia Whitford, one of her students' moms, staring back at her from the window of a white Dodge Durango. "Get in." Sydney rounded the car amid blasts from horns and jumped in. "Going to the studio?" Sylvia asked, the vehicle rolling forward.
"Yes. Thank you."
"What happened to your head?"
Sydney had held up through the accident, the hospital treatment, seeing the stunned look on Richard's face, and Scott's proposition. But now, as her legs trembled, she placed a hand over her mouth and let the tears go.
"Hey, hey!" Sylvia piped, whipping a tissue from an overhead holder and passing it to Sydney. "You're okay now. You're with me. We're going to the studio."
IT WAS QUARTER PAST TWO when I stepped into Dad's room and stood at the foot of his bed. The room seemed darker than before. His right hand moved around as if searching for something. "What are you looking for, Dad?"
He opened his eyes, but didn't seem to be looking at anything in particular. They were weak and cloudy. The light seemed to bother him and he shut them. "Nothing," he uttered. "Just stretching out a little."
I shoved my hands into my trouser pockets, drew a heavy breath, and stepped closer. "What was Uncle Charles like, Dad?"
His chest rose high, then fell. After a minute, I took a chair.
"He was a lot like you, Richie," he said, his voice faint. "Same easy disposition, same smart looks."
The monitor over his bed wrote an endless oscillating green line across its screen jolting with each heartbeat. "You said he was my father. How did that happen?"
"Jesus, Rich." His arm swept back and forth across the sheet. "They were together for two years."
I laid my head back and expelled all the air in my lungs. "Okay. I get it."
"No, you don't." His voice was weak, his breathing labored. "Pearl and Charlie's wedding was only three weeks off when he—" His hand moved to his face and clamped over his eyes. "—when he had the accident." His dry, cracked lips moved without words as if rehearsing the story until he took a deep breath and continued. "He was getting the car ready for their honeymoon. A trip to the mountains—Asheville, I think—and I was supposed to put new pads on the brakes." He gulped a breath and swallowed. "He left me the car that morning and told me I had to be finished before three 'cause he needed it after that. I set it on blocks, pulled all the wheels, and was about to install the new pads when Buster Diggins came by with a gallon jug of moonshine whiskey and a girl he'd picked up hitchhiking. He said she needed a ride to Raleigh and he'd give me a hand with the brakes if I'd go with him and drive."
The beep on the monitor sped up. His head flopped left and right. "The two of them had already made a dent in that jug and by the time we finished the brakes, it was more 'an half gone and not one of us was fit to drive. We took off anyway and when I got back home late that night, I learned about the accident."
I stayed quiet when he paused, not wanting to interrupt the flow. His hand continued to whip back and forth as he told the rest of the story.
"The investigators said it was caused by brake failure—that the brakes had been installed wrong and everyone blamed me for what had happened." His head flipped to the other side. "Charlie was dead and it was my fault and nobody was going to let me forget it." His moist eyes opened, rolled in a circle, and closed. "I couldn't take it no more. I ran off and stayed drunk for more than a month—until my mama found me and told me Pearl was pregnant with Charlie's baby. With you." His voice now a whisper.
I reached out and laid my hand on his arm.
"You don't know how it was back then, Richie. In those days, a woman with a baby and no husband had no chance of a normal life. I'd taken that from her. Mama said I had to do something to try to make up for it. She told me I had to marry Pearl, to make things right for her. So I went to her and told her I'd marry her and take care of her and the child, myself, as best I could. I don't think she wanted to, but she married me anyway. But she never loved me—least not the way she'd loved Charlie."
A tear appeared on his cheek. I leaned forward and kissed his forehead. "Thanks, Dad."
He grabbed my arm and pulled me down close. "Don't you be pressing your mama on that."
I nodded. "I won't."
There was a brief moment as we stared into each other's eyes that we connected. Man-to-man, friend-to-friend. Something passed between us—something real. I felt clean, fresh, energized. We just stared at each other with tears in our eyes. Why could we not have had this moment twenty years ago?
As I left the room, I paused in the doorway and looked back. His eyes were still watching me and I felt for the first time in my life that I really knew him. I nodded, turned away, and left.
Scott had told me to call him later, so I went looking for a phone.
Finding a pay phone in the lobby, I rang Scott's office. When I got him on the line, I asked him if he'd gotten a copy of Albert's fingerprints.
"You know I can't do that, Mr. Baimbridge." His answer surprised me, but then he added, "but I do have something here you need to see. Can you run by here? Now?"
"Sure. Be right there."
WHEN I WALKED INTO HIS OFFICE, Scott stood with his back to me looking out a window at the Cape Fear River. He had a drink in his hand. "What is it that you want, Richard Baimbridge?" He sipped from his drink.
"Didn't you have something you wanted to show me?"
He turned toward me. "Out of life, man. What do you want out of life?"
I had to think about that. "I...want...my sister to walk again. I want to get the police off my back. I want to direct theatre on Broadway. I want my dad to get better and come home."
He took a sip of his drink. "What do you want from Sydney?"
The question caught me off-guard. I wasn't sure how to answer. "I just want her to be happy."
He chuckled under his breath, then tossed the rest of his drink down. "Women can be awfully fickle, Mr. Baimbridge."
"I suppose."
"And exactly what is it that you want from Mr. Willett?"
"Who?"
"The man from the beach house. Albert Willett."
"Just his fingerprints."
He continued to gaze out the window. "His fingerprints?"
"I told you. It's for my sister. She's looking for the guy that shoved her off that window ledge and left her paralyzed."
He lifted a file folder from his desk and waved it in the air. "And she thinks it might have been Willett?"
"A fingerprint from that house matched one from her assailant."
"I see." He rotated the folder around, tossed it back on his desk, and turned back to face the window. "Well, you know I can't be involved in anything like that."
There was a yellow sticky-note attached to the folder. I leaned closer to read it. "I understand."
He didn't turn around. "That's the kind of thing that could get a lawyer disbarred."
I leaned further over the desk toward the note. "Certainly. I understand."
The note read, McLeod Hotel. 8 p.m. Room 306.