Forever (11 page)

Apparently so. She sounded fine now, which made him think he’d over-reacted to her story the night before. In fact, he dared to think the friendship thing might work out all right.

Then he did an audio double take. “You mentioned my father. I guess I didn’t tell you he’s no longer living. But I have his books, and I’ll take a look at them this evening.”

“Oh, I misunderstood. I’m sorry about your father. Were you close?”

“Yeah. We were. He died when I was fourteen. I still miss him and think about him nearly every day.” Tom drifted in thought for a moment before he returned the courtesy. “What about your parents?”

“They’re both dead. My dad died when I was sixteen. My mom died three years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He said it to be polite, though her tone of voice indicated she didn’t consider the death of her parents a big deal. Her reference to being sixteen reminded him of something he’d meant to ask. “By the way, how old you are?”

She giggled. “Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a lady her age?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I asked. It doesn’t even matter.”

“I was twenty-nine in March.”

A quick calculation told him he’d been nineteen when she was born. He cringed at that bit of knowledge. Technically, he was old enough to—

“Age means nothing in view of eternity, Tom.”

“I guess not.” The possibility she’d read his mind prickled the hairs on the back of his neck.

“What about
your
mother? Is she living?”

“No.” His throat constricted painfully. “No, she died a few years ago.”

“I guess we’re just a couple of orphans.”

One of Tom’s crew chose that moment to interrupt; he motioned for the man to wait, realizing the rest of his questions for Annie would go unasked again. “Sorry, to rush off, but I’ve got a situation here at work that needs my attention. I’ll do a little reading tonight and let you know what I come up with. Okay?”

“Sure. Talk to you later.”

* * *

Julie was backing her car out of the garage when Tom pulled his truck into the driveway. Not stopping, she blew him a kiss as she passed. He found Lindsay in the kitchen with a stack of restaurant menus in one hand, the phone in the other.

“Where was your mother off to?

“She’s going somewhere with her dearest, best, very important friend tonight. You wanna order pizza or Chinese?”

“Pizza. And by friend, you mean Patricia, right?”

“Who else? You want me to call the order in?”

“Please. I’m headed to the shower.”

“I’ll go pick up the pizza,” she said. “It’s quicker.”

By the time he came back downstairs, Lindsay was gone. He took Max and a cold beer outside. He lit a cigarette, dismissing a twinge of guilt. He kept promising Julie he’d make good on his New Year’s resolution to quit smoking. He’d already delayed it over five months, but now still wasn’t the right time. Especially now. Now he had bigger worries than the bad effects of smoking. Though he couldn’t yet determine what they were, he was pretty sure the bad effects of simply being Tom Cogan in the summer of 2010 loomed larger.

Max ran up to him with a tennis ball in his mouth. Tom stubbed out his cigarette and played fetch with his companion until Lindsay called him in for dinner.

As they ate, he discovered that Julie’s irritation with Lindsay at the dinner table the night before had been for nothing. She’d already taken care of the college forms her mother had asked her about. In fact, she’d mailed the last of them a week ago.

“Why do you torment your mother like that?”

“Because she’s so controlling. I hate that.” Before Tom could say anything, Lindsay added, “And, yes, I
know
it’s because she loves me, but it still bugs me. Hey, can I take a friend down to Uncle Dave’s this year?”

He let the abruptness of her change of subject slide. “No, you can’t. You know our vacation time is family only.”

“Then, can I take some friends out to the lake for a weekend this summer? You know, sort of a going away party?”

“I’m still paying for the graduation party you had three weeks ago.”

“So we can’t use the cabin?”

“Yes . . . if I can chaperone.”

She stuck her pizza-coated tongue out at him, and they laughed together.

Lindsay went up to her room after dinner. Tom had just settled down to watch TV when he remembered he’d promised Annie to look up longrifles in his father’s books. As he climbed the stairs, his thoughts were on his father.

Jack Cogan had been a country boy, and never happier than when he was fishing or hunting. He’d also been a constant reader who seemed to know a little bit about everything—in the eyes of his sons, at least. The premature exit of his father from Tom’s life had left a wound that never healed, and pulling the box of his father’s books from the closet now was enough to cause the cavity to ooze painful memories.

His mother had sorted through his father’s things the day after the funeral. The way Tom remembered it, she’d made only two piles. One she declared trash to be burned and the other she classified bound for the Salvation Army. He and Dave had furtively snatched things from both piles. Tom’s rescued treasure was a box of books.

But that box was the second one he rescued. The morning after his father’s death, he sneaked into his parents’ closet and took the old shoe box his father kept in the back, hidden behind his old military duffle bag. Many times during Tom’s childhood, he’d seen his dad sitting on the edge of the bed looking at something from what he called his “box of memories.”

When Tom first got possession of the box, he saw the contents only as a collection of photos and an odd assortment of papers, but as he looked through the box at later stages of his life, his perceptions changed. His father had been selective when he compiled his photo collection. One professional print, labeled
RM/2c John T. Cogan
, showed his father dressed in World War II Navy whites. A few pictures were of his paternal grandparents and uncles and aunts, but most of them were snapshots of Dave and Tom, some with their father and some without.

“Whatcha doing?”

Tom looked up to find Lindsay standing in the doorway. “Just looking at some of my dad’s things.”

“Can I see?”

“Sure.” He scooted the box over to make room for her on the bed.

She picked up one of the photos and smiled. “This is you and Uncle Dave, right?”

“Yep.”

“It’s funny to see you as a kid. I mean, I know you
were
one, but it’s hard to think of you that way.” She picked up the Navy photo. “I’ve never seen Grandpa this young. He was really handsome. You look like him”—she grinned—“except for the handsome part.”

“Gee, thanks.”

She flipped through the stack. “How come there’s no photos of Grandma?”

For the first time, Tom realized there was not a single photo that showed his mother. His mother had not been camera shy; in addition to the usual snapshots, she’d posed for numerous studio portraits. And even if she’d been the one behind the camera for some of the snapshots in the box, Tom distinctly recalled the picnic when a couple of these pictures were taken, and he knew there were other shots that included his mother because he’d seen them in her family photo album. His father had purposely excluded his wife from his private photo collection. Tom sympathized, but he would never admit that to Lindsay.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe Uncle Dave has them all.”

“Except the one of your whole family and your parents’ wedding photo that Mom framed.”

“Right.” Julie had insisted that, despite his feelings about his mother, Lindsay should see those photos.

Among the papers in the box was a letter, postmarked December 16, 1943, from his grandmother to her son “Jackie” telling him all the family news. Lindsay read it aloud.

“That was probably the first Christmas my dad had ever spent away from his family,” he told her.

“Awww, that’s sad but sweet.”

Next they looked at Father’s Day cards that Tom and his brother had crayoned during their grade school days. In a big yellow envelope, neatly trimmed and folded, were newspaper clippings from their high school sport days—Dave’s for football, his for baseball.

“Your mom saves stuff like this about you too, you know.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I get the message, Dad. Being bratty to her is immature. You know I love her, right?”

“Of course.”

She kissed his cheek and stood. “I’ll leave you to your memories. I’m going out to meet some friends at Dairy Queen.”

“Drive carefully.”

She turned back to him with a scowl and stomped her foot. “You
never
let me drive like a maniac.”

He shook his head, but he was smiling. “Get out of here.”

When Tom picked up the last thing in the box—a brochure for houseboating on Lake Cumberland—a lump formed in his throat. Six winters in a row, his father started planning that vacation, and every spring his mother vetoed it. That last winter, his father told his sons that “no matter what” they were going to Kentucky and renting the houseboat in June. But Jack Cogan died in April.

Once, it had occurred to Tom that in his grief and general teenage angst, he might have unfairly vilified his mother. But after further consideration, he decided that his mother truly was self-centered. A snob. A would-be social climber. And he believed something worse—his father had worked himself to death at the age of forty-four trying to provide the money her wants demanded. Her reaction to his death had been to rant and rave, angry that he’d “left” her.

At fourteen, Tom hadn’t known anger was a part of the natural grief process, but at fifteen, he understood that and something else. His mother’s anger was
not
from grief. She was furious that her husband had left her with a pitiful insurance policy, putting her back to square one in her social climb. Only two months into her widowhood, his mother started dating. Eleven months later, she remarried. Her marriage to a successful neurosurgeon elevated her to the social class she’d always envied.

By the time their mother remarried, Dave had an apartment of his own, and Tom moved in with him. Their mother uttered not one word of protest. Tom had never told anyone how much that single act of her neglect hurt him. He got a job with a construction firm that summer and hoped to stay on in the fall, but Dave insisted he return to school. After graduating the following spring, Tom took the construction job again. His career was set.

With a sigh, Tom set aside the small box containing his father’s memories. The box of books at his feet reminded him what he’d come up here to do. Twice he’d promised Annie that he would find out more about those hunters and their rifles. Jacob no longer mattered to him, but he’d honor his promise. He could take the book to work and photocopy a few pages for her. That reminded him of the copies she’d given him. He’d never looked at them. When he’d emptied his pockets that night before getting undressed, he’d stuck them in the drawer of his nightstand. They didn’t matter now. He reached for the book on longhunters. After he dropped off his photocopies at the theater, he’d have no need to see her again.

And he’d tell her that.

Eddie sat in his car facing Tom’s house. He’d parked a block away, which didn’t matter because he was listening as much as watching. In none of his human lives had he reared a child. Now, overhearing Tom’s side of the conversation with Lindsay made Eddie consider that he might have underestimated that bond. Tom would fight hard to protect his daughter. Then again, Eddie could make excellent use of that weak spot. And such a pretty little weak spot she was.

Conjuring up Lindsay’s image and thinking of what he’d like to do to her aroused him. His hand crept to his crotch. He was just getting into it when the object of his lust opened the garage door and got into her car. Hmm, what better way to get a message to her father than to follow Lindsay and show up wherever she was going. When she reported back to him that she’d had a conversation with the man Tom detested, he wouldn’t like it, even start to fear, but not quite know why.

Eddie zipped his pants and started his car. He’d backed into a side street before Lindsay’s car flew past him. His excitement grew as he followed her, devising how to approach her, what to say. He had a bad moment when she pulled into another residential area and stopped in front of a house. But when she only honked the horn, his hope rose again. He couldn’t help laughing when another sweet young thing ran from the house and jumped in Lindsay’s car. If only it were time. Two for one would be almost more delight than he could take. Almost.

Five minutes later, Lindsay pulled into the Dairy Queen parking lot. Eddie parked and was reaching to turn off the engine when the girls joined a crowd inside. His mood blackened. It wouldn’t do to approach her when she was surrounded by several girls—and damned boys. Even he couldn’t manipulate that many minds at once. To say what he’d planned would alert too many, might even get him reported to the police as a potential sex offender. Despite his anger, he was smiling at that description as he left the parking lot.

June 11

W
hen Tom arrived at work the next morning, he found that Bonnie, three years past retirement age and tickled that he referred to her as his office girl, had stuck a fluorescent green sticky-note to a stack of forms on his desk.

Catch up on these TODAY!!!

He rifled through them. Some of these were three days old. It wasn’t like him to let his paperwork slide for three days. Three? He couldn’t remember
ever
deliberately leaving his work undone. Disgusted with himself, he worked on the backlog of forms while he fielded phone calls.

One call came from Julie. “Would you please try to make it home for dinner tonight? It’s important.”

“I’m trying to catch up on paperwork, but whatever it takes, I’ll be home by six.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” It wasn’t until he ended the call that a lead weight dropped into his stomach. Evidently, tonight they’d have
the talk
. Julie had finally agreed with Patricia that she could do better. She would tell him, and rightly so, that she’d counted far more than three strikes against him, and he was out. O-U-T. And he wouldn’t just be sent back to the dugout; he’d be thrown out of the clubhouse. Cut from the team.
See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya
.