Distant Blood (4 page)

“Son, I love you.” I was still unloading the tray and I
didn't look up again. A twitchy discomfort arrowed through my body and I felt my face tighten.

“I haven't said them words to you in a long time. Not since after we—after you found out about me.” He'd murmured them in an intensive-care hospital room after taking a bullet while saving my life from a vicious killer. I'd held his hand, and like a little boy, I'd cried. But since then the topic of his paternal feelings for me had been avoided, a maelstrom to be carefully circumnavigated.

My mouth felt dry. I stared down at the jumble of torn lettuce, quartered tomatoes, and sliced onions in the salad bowl. The smell of the steaks had set my mouth watering, but I couldn't swallow past the dense block in my throat.

“It's okay,” he murmured. “You don't have to say nothing. I know you still have trouble seeing me as your father.”

I coughed past the blockage and glanced up at him. “Bob Don—”

“It's just that you coming to this reunion, God, it means the world to me. And I don't want you scared off by some idle worry that my people are gonna think that you're just gunning for Uncle Mutt's money. But after the past year we've had—getting to know each other, you letting me into your life more—I just want us to be able to acknowledge each other. To say publicly that we're father and son.”

I clanged silverware down on the table. My stomach, grumbling anxiously a moment ago for meat and potatoes, quieted like a hushed baby. I didn't look at him and I didn't know what to say. I wasn't ready for this, not yet. Not yet.

“You're sure keeping quiet. That's not like you,” Bob Don finally said.

“I—I don't mean to be quiet. You've just given me a lot to think about.”

He touched my arm, as gently as he might a baby's, and I glanced into the full want in his face. His voice was hoarse, rasped raw by emotion. “You're my child. I can never, ever regard you any other way now. I see so much of myself in you, of your mother—”

“And my father. My—other father,” I interjected quickly.
My real father
, I'd nearly said, and bit the words off just in
time. But the reality was, as far as the dictates of biology went, Bob Don had claim to that particular title.

He lowered his arm. “Yes, of course. You've got his kind streak. Most of the time.” He sat down and began to slice into his steak. “Sit down and eat, Jordan, before your supper gets cold.”

I took an uncomfortable seat. I was evading his demand, but he had neatly skipped past my question. I considered telling him about the cards, but knowing Bob Don, he would have insisted I stay put and out of any potential harm's way. I wasn't about to be skittered off by a sick threat. My own curiosity gnawed at me as to why someone was going to such careful trouble to frighten me off the family tree. If I pressed him for details on who in the family might be dangerous, I might need a reason to justify my queries. For now, I decided to keep my own counsel.

We ate in silence. The meat was meltingly tender, the potato creamily smooth and peppery, the salad crisp, but it all tasted like cardboard in my mouth. My bones felt like they were trembling inside the bag of my skin. I had been avoiding publicly acknowledging Bob Don for over a year, and he was going to force the issue. No pun intended.

I chewed a chunk of meat, my appetite fading. Why wasn't I ready? I snuck a glance at him, scooping out the buttery innards of his baked potato.

Because he wasn't my daddy. He was a nice man, a kind fellow with a big heart, but he wasn't the man who raised me and taught me and spanked me when I deserved it and hugged me when I didn't. He wasn't Lloyd Poteet, and he could never be. You cannot erase twenty-odd years of fatherhood with an announcement of true paternity. You can't push your daddy's memory deeper into the grave by turning to all folks you know and saying, “This man is my real father.” It's not possible. If our hearts are homes, some rooms can't be rented out once the occupant dies.

Thankfully, Bob Don abandoned the subject and we ate the rest of our meal with the drone of the baseball game on the radio as our companion. We drank beer and we talked of the weather. He did not tell me family stories and I did not
ask him to. He did not mention again that I was his child. He exhausted his collection of Aggie jokes and I made myself laugh through them all. But I felt a creeping, unfamiliar misery nestle in my chest.

I was saying goodbye to him in the den when Gretchen returned from visiting her aunt.

“Hello, hello,” she chimed as she came through the kitchen door. She gave her husband a cheek kiss and favored me with her uncertain smile. I've sometimes wondered if the long years of drunkenness wiped the memory of how to truly smile from Gretchen's mind. Her grin is half grimace and it never settles correctly into her face. “Did you boys enjoy y'all's dinner?”

“Yes, it was great,” I croaked, coughing for no reason. We made an odd tableau in this den: the very scene where a wasted Gretchen had brayed out her hatred of me, blaming me for her long years of inebriation, and finally the truth that I was Bob Don's bastard. His precious bastard. The times I came to this house, we did not linger in this room, as though its walls still held the faintest stain from her venom. It was still the spot on earth where my world unraveled for all time.

“Did you have a nice visit with your aunt?” I asked her.

She blinked at my inquiry—kindness from me was suspicious. “Yes, we did. Poor old aunt's not getting younger. But it was nice to see her.” She patted Bob Don's arm and I saw genuine affection light her face.

“I'll be going, then. Thanks for the dinner, Bob Don.” I feared for one long, unmerciful moment that he was going to mention his desire to claim me as his son; surely he had discussed this with Gretchen. Hadn't he?

He simply shook my hand. “You're still planning on coming to the reunion, aren't you?”

“Of course,” I assured him. I saw the corners of Gretchen's eyes crinkle in consternation, then her smile— her offish, odd smile—slid into uneasy place on her face.

I wished them good night and drove home, peering into the rural darkness. A blanket of stars unfurled above my head as a wall of clouds pushed onward toward the Gulf, clearing the sky of its low haze.

Gretchen hated me—or at least she had once. Could she be behind the cards? If I never became a part of Bob Don's family, I could not trespass on her territory. I imagined her hands smearing blood across a card, razoring a printed face, pasting letters with malice.

It scared me that I could easily see her hands busy with such work.

Two days before the reunion.

“I'd really prefer you not go,” I murmured into the soft spill of Candace's hair. She smelled of flowers, and of lime from the ceviche she made for dinner. Moonlight played along our bare bodies as we cuddled in bed.

“Why don't you want me there?” Her tone was measured, which meant I might be in trouble.

“Because it's going to be complicated enough, sweetheart. I think I need to face the Goertzes on my own.” I fib best when not having to look directly into Candace's face, and I examined the top of her head with intense concentration. As if knowing my thoughts, she shifted in my arms to turn her blue eyes straight on my face. I hazarded a smile.

“Is that it?”

“Yeah.” I kissed the top of her forehead. I could hardly say,
I'm getting vicious hate mail from someone in the family who doesn't want me around. And I don't want you to be in danger. So stay home.
That wouldn't work— Candace would be bodyguarding my butt all the way to Uncle Mutt's island.

“Strikes me as odd,” she mumbled against the tender flesh of my throat, “that you don't want to acknowledge Bob Don as your daddy, yet you're bound and determined to go to this reunion. Meet his family, let them meet you. If that's not acknowledgment, I don't know what is.”

I swallowed as she began to play her fingers through my hair. Her other hand began a slow exploration of my chest, grazing a nipple and sending a shiver through me. I didn't speak. “So what's up, Jordan? I suspect you're not telling total truth here.”

“Listen, darling, it's nothing to be concerned over, I just think it might be best if you didn't go.”

She ran her fingernails across my chest, in a sensual tippy-toe that left me holding my breath. She lingered near the nipple again, and grabbed with sudden force. I winced.

“Honesty time, hon. What's going on?”

I pried her hand off from its death grip. She kissed me quickly in apology. So I told her about the cards.

“Sweet God.” She sat up in bed. “That's a crime, Jordan. We're calling the police.”

I touched her shoulder. “No, we're not. I don't want Bob Don to know about this.”

“Let me see these cards,” Candace demanded. I retrieved them from their hiding place, and carefully using a cloth, she read them. She stared at the bloodstained greeting card with disgust, and shook her head at the mutilated model.

“This is god-awful sick,” she finally murmured. “And just why the hell weren't you going to share this problem?”

“I knew you'd freak. And I didn't want you to worry. Now you see why I don't want you to come—”

“And why do you want to go?” she demanded. “Why put yourself in danger, babe? If you don't want Bob Don for a father—and you can't seem to decide—” She ended in a shrug and gestured at the hate mail. “Why not stay away from this—this—psychopath?”

“I don't scare easy,” I said with a bravado I didn't feel, “and I'm not going to be warned off by idiotic pranks like these cards. I want to know why now—why is someone so determined to keep me from the reunion? Why?”

“Curiosity may kill more than cats,” she cautioned. “If you're going, I'm going with you. You'll need someone to watch your back.”

“You sound like a bad cop show.”

“I'm not joking, Jordan. I'm not letting anyone hurt a hair on your head.”

I blushed at the intensity of her words, which was somehow more revealing than our casual nakedness in bed. And I knew better than to argue. “Okay, fine. As long as you stay out of trouble.” My blood ran cold at the thought of
Candace near anyone who could send such missives, but we'd moved past the point of debate—I saw the stony set of determination in her face. “And not a word to Bob Don. I have my own plan for dealing with this sicko.”

“Tell me,” she murmured.

So I did.

I WONDERED IF ANY PASSING MOTORISTS WOULD
render aid if I leaned out the car door window and screamed.

“—and that's when I decided Sass and I would not only be sisters-in-law, but be best friends,” Gretchen continued. “She was just so kind to me, and chock-full of marital advice when Bob Don and I got hitched.”

“Lord knows she should have been,” Bob Don muttered. “Sass'd been married often enough. I half thought she was gunning for the world record for times down the aisle.” Even his normally jovial temper seemed strained by the long drive.

It was not an auspicious start to our family reunion. Mostly in that I did not want to be reunited anytime soon with my loved ones in this car, much less make the acquaintance of a whole passel of new kinfolks. For all his enthusiasm for this trip, Bob Don seemed itchy. Gretchen's paean to his family irritated him, and he'd snapped more than once at his wife. Candace was strangely quiet, offering no relief from the ongoing Gretchen monologue. Gretchen appeared determined to sparkle all the way to Uncle Mutt's home. Not even the stars in the sky glitter quite that long.

I don't mean to complain. Honestly. But my stomach had started roiling at the idea of being introduced to a bunch of complete strangers (although they were technically blood kin) and tension gripped my limbs. I wanted Bob Don's family to like me and accept me—but at the same time I wanted not to care about their reactions to me. I tried not to reflect overmuch that at least one of them
seemed inordinately displeased that a stray sperm of Bob Don's had ended up sentient, blond, and breathing.

A final card had arrived the day before, a last-ditch effort to avert my arrival at Uncle Mutt's. I had not even shown this one to Candace; it would have scared the bejesus out of her. At the moment the card lay safely contained in a bag in my suitcase, along with its fellow couriers of hate. I could nearly imagine a faint throb of evil emanating from the car trunk, like a telltale heart.

The card's designer had intended comfort; the front of the greeting, in flowery script, said
IN DEEPEST SYMPATHY.
Open it and you saw the rest of the sentence, hacked from magazine letters:

I wish I could say a cold shiver raced through me when I read those words; it seems the normal reaction, and I pray for normality in my life. But at this last, most bitter missive, I felt only a numb disbelief that someone hated me so. What crime had I committed, aside from the accident of my birth? (A crime I could hardly be judged and hanged for.) I'd spent the rest of the day in a quiet funk.

I had not rallied for this morning's drive to the coast. Bob Don's sudden silence, Candace's odd detachment, and Gretchen's prattling hadn't improved my mood. She rarely veered from discussion of her sister-in-law and she made no useful announcement, like “How's Cousin Herbert enjoying life outside the insane asylum?” If I wanted to identify my torturer, I would have to play investigator. Again. And people believe I go looking for trouble?