Shadow Notes by Laurel Peterson (cool books to read txt) 📗

fine. I’d rather have fun and make a difference in the world.” He came in close and lowered his voice. “Dad told me once that he wants to be President. I think he’d give up almost anything for that.”

I flashed on rumpled, freaked-out Jennifer. “What does your Mom think?”

The waiter cleared the salad plates, brought out entrees.

“Mom doesn’t think. She does what Dad tells her.” He slouched against the banquette, flipping his coffee spoon back and forth on the table top. “I wish she’d stand up to him, you know, make a life for herself or something, rather than running around after him.”

“Maybe that’s all she wants.” My wariness meter inched toward the red zone, and the slug started to wake up. Why would Junior trust me with such intimate information mere hours after I’d met him? I remembered from some distant psychology course the basic premise of self-disclosure: I tell you something and you tell me something of equal importance and meaning. As we trust each other more, we begin to reveal things of greater and greater meaning. I barely knew this guy and already he was revealing family secrets?

Paul’s words floated through my brain: Maybe you should just ask. “Why are you telling me this? Isn’t it confidential?”

“Nah.” He waved his hand dispiritedly. “It’s an open secret.” The waiter, thinking his gesture meant he wanted something, slid up to the table. Junior flicked a finger and he went away.

“Why is it important now? You’re grown up, living away from home.”

“I’m not sure I can vote for him. I know him too well.”

“You’re his son. Surely, there’s room for forgiveness?”

It was as if he suddenly saw me. He turned his body toward me, his knees touching mine under the table, his shoulder pressed into the banquette. His hand brushed my fingers and it felt like fire. I almost thought he’d blistered my skin. Then came an image of an inferno so powerful and hot I nearly shouted for people to run from the restaurant. The minute the image passed, I had another, puzzling and brief: Winters Senior, standing legs apart, arms crossed, staring at me. It was as if I could see into his mind, and he was puzzling over me.

“Clara!” Junior jarred me back to the present. “Are you okay?”

I became abruptly aware that I had pressed back against my seat panting. I slowed my breathing, made myself relax. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to react that way. You…did nothing.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.” He had a funny look on his face, the kind I’d seen before when men feel women have wronged them. I couldn’t tell him what I’d seen. He would think I was crazy. “You were telling me why you couldn’t vote for your father.”

He hesitated, unsure of me, then responded. “He’s a liar,” he said. “He promises things all the time, and they never happen. He said we would see Greece, Machu Picchu, Hawaii, and every single trip was cancelled, and we spent the summer in the moldy old house on Nantucket his relatives have owned since, like, 1776.”

The waiter silently removed our empty plates, offered desert menus. Junior ordered us coffee.

“So he broke a few vacation plans. What about the serious stuff, like paying for your college education or making sure you had a car or food on the table?”

“You don’t get it. We never saw him. He worked seven days a week, three-hundred-sixty-one days a year.”

I giggled. “Three-hundred-sixty-one?”

He looked wry. “He takes off Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. The office is locked down tight those days.”

“He must have a key. He owns the firm.”

Junior shrugged. “Those trips, that was time for him to get to know us, me and my little sisters. He didn’t want to, I guess. He never came to my lacrosse matches; he didn’t even attend my graduation from Harvard. It was just Mom and Mary Ellen. It’s always just Mom and Mary Ellen. Sometimes, I think they’re our parents.” He paused. “Your Dad died, right?”

“He’s been gone fifteen years now, hard to believe it’s that long.” My guilt corroded a hollow under my ribcage.

“He owned a landscape design firm?”

“Yes, landscape architecture, actually. He travelled all over for work. He brought pictures home to show us his gardens and the cities they lived in. He had clients as far away as Vancouver. I remember thinking that must be a magical place when I was a child.”

“Did you travel with him?”

“When I was little, we occasionally met him for long weekends when the job lasted more than a couple of weeks. In my early teens, Mother let me go alone once or twice. He took me to dinner like an adult, all dressed up, somewhere serious. During the day, we’d tour gardens.” I sipped the last of the espresso in my cup. “It was always better with me and Dad.”

A look of longing crossed his face. He said abruptly, as though he couldn’t bear to hear about my father anymore, “Mary Ellen says you know things.”

A living, breathing jolt ran through me. “What things?” It was the same question his father had asked.

“Like about people. Was that what happened when I touched you? Did you see something?”

Suddenly, I knew I couldn’t trust him. I didn’t know if he himself was untrustworthy, or if Mary Ellen had prepared him—or if it was because my images of him had been fiery like the ones Mother had warned me about. This knowledge saddened me, as I felt a kinship with him over the loneliness that came from being abandoned by a living parent.

I thought briefly of Chief Dupont’s cop eyes and deflected Junior. “You startled me, that’s all,” I said. “Your aunt must have me confused with someone else, maybe Hetty. I know she does psychic readings.”

He shook his head, but didn’t press it. Shortly, he called for the check. The waiter appeared as if from a genie bottle and deposited the leather folder on the table. Junior inserted several