Safe in Noah's Arms. Mary Sullivan

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СКАЧАТЬ “I’m just trying to understand this space alien who’s tearing up my radishes.”

      Audrey huffed out a laugh and then grew serious. “Okay. Here goes. Losing a parent so early leaves a hollow spot in your life along with a low-grade sadness. It doesn’t matter how deeply you bury the sadness, it’s still there. Often, you feel like you don’t have anyone to talk to about it, even your other parent. My dad was grieving, too, but didn’t know how to express it.”

      “What about Billy?”

      “I think he dealt with it by ignoring it, by surrounding himself with friends. By becoming the class clown and making sure that everyone, including himself, was always laughing. Plus, when it happened, he was older and less dependent on Mom than I was.”

      “That makes sense.” Noah picked at his egg sandwich. “Monica felt that way, too?”

      “Yes. She also understood that it makes you different from your classmates and friends who still have both parents. Mother’s Day is particularly hard.”

      Finished with her salad, Audrey passed him her empty jar. “Knowing that someone else in the world understood how I felt gave me a measure of comfort, even though I was already a teenager by then.”

      “Okay,” Noah conceded. “She might have more depth than I’ve given her credit for, but she pulled up eight of my baby radishes before I caught her. It frustrates me, Audrey. That’s food that won’t make it onto some hungry person’s plate.”

      Audrey sobered. He knew she admired his passion for feeding the needy. Of all of the people in his life, she truly understood him.

      “She said she thought they were weeds,” he continued. “They were the only plants in a row I’d already weeded.”

      “Sounds like a problem with communication.”

      “Yeah, there was definitely a problem. I communicated. She didn’t listen.”

      He stared at Audrey, begging her to understand how screwed he was.

      “What am I going to do about her, Audrey? I’m thirty-seven years old, a sane and reasonable grown man, but I’ll be seeing her nearly every day this summer and I might as well be back in high school.” He added miserably, “Déjà vu all over again.”

      * * *

      AT LUNCHTIME, MONICA headed to the bar at the end of Main Street, knowing her father had his midday meal there every day. She wanted to question him about his relationship with the judge.

      She’d tried to contact him last night, but he’d been out and hadn’t been answering his cell, leaving her with the strange suspicion he was avoiding her.

      In the courtroom yesterday, she’d been upset by the judge’s lack of professionalism. His sly looks, the pleasure he seemed to take in convicting her, had irked her and yet, he had agreed to the plea bargain that got her sentence reduced. So confusing. She meant to get to the bottom of it.

      The scents of fried food made her mouth water, but Monica was watching her figure.

      When she slid into the booth across from her dad, he didn’t seem surprised to see her.

      She ordered a cup of coffee with skim milk and a toasted bagel with light cream cheese. Her father picked up his glass of Scotch to drain its contents, looking everywhere but at her. Curious.

      “What was that all about?” Monica asked.

      “What?” He stared at a point behind her left shoulder.

      “You know what, Daddy. I heard the noise you made when Judge Easton entered the courtroom and sat on the bench. When he passed down my sentence, he actually smirked.”

      Milton Ian Accord rattled the ice cubes in his glass. He hated his first name. Everyone in town knew him as Ian. Why on earth the Accord family used such old-fashioned names was beyond Monica. Monica. Case in point. An old-fashioned name.

      They used names of ancestors that had been handed down from generation to generation. She supposed it was simply tradition.

      Ian carried his age well, but signs of unhappiness, of discontentment, hovered around a sullen mouth. Whatever was bothering him had come on lately, but he wouldn’t share it with her.

      She stared at him hard. She wasn’t going away. He finally gave in. “Gord Easton and I went to high school together.”

      “High school?” That old man and her dad?

      He nodded.

      “Same grade?”

      Another nod.

      “That’s hard to believe. He looks a lot older than you.”

      “Gord likes sun, whiskey and cigars, and has the money to indulge as much as he wants.” Tone derisive, he glanced around as though checking to make sure the man wasn’t sitting nearby. Was the drink making him paranoid? Lately, there’d been a lot of this furtive checking-his-surroundings behavior. He wouldn’t respond to direct questions about it, though, and Monica had run out of ideas to get out of him what was going on.

      “He pampers himself with regular visits to the spa,” Ian continued, “but with his lifestyle, it’s like throwing a coat of paint on a house that’s about to keel over. He owns a boat in Florida and spends all of his spare time on it.”

      “That explains his too-tanned skin—the alcohol and cigars explain how dull it is. The guy needs a good diet and exercise regimen.”

      Her dad laughed. “That isn’t going to happen.”

      “So you went to school together. That doesn’t explain his animosity toward you.”

      Dad raised his glass and signaled the waitress for another. He ran his finger around wet rings of condensation on the table then said quietly, “It started in high school, but got worse over the years. We’re both competitive. I seem to have a golden touch where investments are concerned, a real knack that Gord lacks. He envies my skill.”

      “But how would that have started in high school? You were already investing back then?”

      “No. It wasn’t that. In school, we were both in love with the same girl.”

      “Mom?” On a dime, Monica’s mood became wistful. She wished she’d known her. Mom had died giving birth to her, and didn’t that just leave her feeling bad, even all of these years later. Monica figured that was the thing that continually felt missing from her life—her mom.

      With a philosophical shrug, her dad said, “I won the fair maiden’s hand in marriage. And that’s where the competition started. Gord was angry for years afterward. But how could we know the joke would be on the two of us?”

      When Monica realized her dad was slurring his words, her already low spirits plummeted further. How could he be drunk at only one in the afternoon? This was so recent, she didn’t know what to make of it.

      “Mom’s death was a joke?” she asked, her voice a sharp knife cutting the air.

      Ian СКАЧАТЬ