Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

We don’t want to be suing each other. You don’t want that either, do you?”

“That’s the same thing Cal said. You didn’t come barging in down here just to repeat what he said, I hope. Waste of time.”

She ignored the barging in. “I didn’t know you’d seen Cal.”

“He came to Romaine Street. Don’t you two talk?”

“All right,” she said, straightening up. “We won’t talk about that. Let’s talk about us.”

“Nothing to say.”

“But there is, you know. This wall of hostility you’ve put up against everyone: Can’t we do something about it?”

He started to respond and stopped. He turned to look around the yard, and she wondered if he had the same thoughts she’d had earlier about Brentwood. Probably not. He’d never been nostalgic as a child.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “The only hostility I feel is—toward you.”

It stung, but didn’t surprise. She felt the same way toward him and wondered about it—which is why she’d come: to see if there was a way out.

“Why?”

A little laugh escaped him, and he fidgeted in the chair. “Do we really want to go there?”

“You’re going to say I wasn’t a very good mother.”

“Oh, come on,” he snarled. “We’re beyond that. Maybe I wasn’t a very good son. Who knows? Who cares? Look, let’s lay our cards on the table. You remember that day in Brentwood when you told me what you and Aunt Maggie were doing with Grandpa Eddie’s estate? I asked if I shouldn’t have something to say about it, and you brushed me off. Got up and walked in the house. Do you remember that? I wonder if you do.” He leaned closer to her across the table.

“Did you really expect that after that things could be normal between us? How much are we talking about—forty, fifty million, and it’s none of my business? I don’t think so.”

She stared in disbelief. In all her self-reproach over countless missteps as a mother over countless years, never had she considered that money might be the root of the problem. Love, affection, involvement, those were the things she had thought about. Never her father’s estate. How naïve she’d been, how stupid! She sat stunned, embarrassed for him, angry at the venality of it, as if she was staring at the reincarnation of her father. She didn’t want to blurt out something she would regret, but wanted to set the record straight. “We are doing good things with that estate, Robby. Without your help.”

“You have no right,” he said, the voice louder now. “It’s not just yours. I am family, too. Do you know what Eddie Mull would say about what you’re doing with his money—he would say you’re dishonoring his memory, spitting on his grave. That’s why I asked you about it back then. At least I could have used the estate in a way that honored him.”

He stood up quickly, flushed, angry, staring hard at her. “And what about Grandma Nelly’s estate. She’s not going to leave anything to that stupid Didi, is she? That would be another insult to Eddie’s memory. I hear she’s had a stroke. Incompetent. You’re not manipulating her, I hope. I could sue over that, you know.”

Awful. She got up to go. There was no salvaging this. If she’d known money was behind it she never would have come, never would have wasted so much emotion feeling guilty. He had freed her, expiated the guilt. She just hoped she could get away without exploding. She saw Dominique watching from inside. She eyed a path along the side of the house. She did not want to have to go back inside. “I’m sorry. I’m leaving. This hasn’t worked.”

Scowling, he came up close to her. The vision of the little boy with the sour orange in his mouth came back to her. “Why did you come?” he demanded.

Her chest felt tight. She caught her breath. “Do you know, I had a dream that one day you would take over the foundation. Help us do all the good things we’re doing, atone for some of the evil done by my father.”

“The first thing I would do at the foundation is liquidate it. You are the enemy, Mother, and the sad thing is you don’t even know it. You and your little old ladies in tennis shoes and purple hair are standing in the way of progress. Your father would be ashamed of you.”

She shuddered, looked him in his blue eyes and hated what she saw. Could babies have gotten mixed up, switched at birth? No, he was too much like Eddie. He had become exactly what he wanted, free of inhibition, free of constraint, free of conscience, free to do what he wanted regardless of consequences. He hadn’t needed her help.

“I was wrong to think you would help,” she said. “You’re worse than he was.”

He slapped her face. “Eddie Mull was the only one of you worth anything.”

She felt the sting, felt the tears, tears of pain, not emotion, she wasn’t a crier. She’d never been slapped before. She held her ground, stunned, infuriated, repressing an instinct to slap back, something she’d never done.

The screen door to the house slammed, and Dominique ran out, shouting.

Chapter 48

“Rosie Roberts is here for your eleven o’clock,” said the voice on the intercom.

Maggie went to the door to meet her visitor. Rosie Roberts had called reception a few days earlier with a message that she had information that would interest the Mull Foundation. She wouldn’t say more than that. She identified herself as president of something called the Ballona Club and, no, they were not seeking a grant.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” said the attractive fiftyish woman holding out her hand. She had thick, short, straw-colored hair and wore a mint silk blouse over beige flare pants. A gold wedding band was her only jewelry. Her skin was delicate white with tiny freckles. Simple and stylish, something un-Californian about her. Also something familiar. Maggie stared, searching her memory.

“Charlie’s Market,” said