“I guess I want to make a difference. Pay it forward. Tell messed-up people that life is peachy even if you’re as weird as me.” Harry stopped and scrunched his mouth into a thoughtful pout. “Dad, did you ever have a friend like Max?”
Sometimes the trajectory of Harry’s thoughts was as mysterious as the unexplored depths of the ocean. “I didn’t need one,” Felix said. “I had a big brother.”
“Most people wouldn’t see that as a good thing.” Harry grimaced and blinked, grimaced and blinked.
“I wouldn’t have survived my childhood without your uncle.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“The shrink is in?”
“I’m a good listener, Dad.”
“But I’m not a good talker. I never talk about Tom.”
“Yeah, but you’ve mentioned him loads since Mom had her, you know, thing.” Harry’s elbow flapped.
“Heart attack, Harry. She had a heart attack.”
“I don’t want to use those words.”
“Weren’t you the one who told me the things you’re too frightened to face are the things that grow into monsters?”
“I guess.”
Felix drew in a huge breath and closed his eyes. He exhaled slowly. To say the words, to shine a spotlight on his own weakness, his own failure, would change everything between them. He might just as well strip naked, show Harry his scars, and ask for pity. Felix opened his eyes. “Your grandfather whipped me. With a riding crop he kept in the bottom drawer of his desk.”
Harry slammed his fists onto the table and Felix jumped. “The . . . the . . . bastard.” Harry’s head and upper torso convulsed. “The f-fucking bastard. I-I’m glad . . . I never . . . never met him.”
“I’m glad you never met him, too, Hazza, because you’re right. He was a bastard.”
Out in the forest, a pair of hawks cried back and forth, their screeches bouncing off the trees like sonar. The tic passed, and Harry slumped back in his chair as if he were a punctured inflatable snowman, one of those horrendous holiday decorations that littered people’s yards every year after Thanksgiving. Felix took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“I hate him, Dad. I hate him for what he did to you.”
Thank you. Felix slid his glasses back into place. “Now tell me what happened to your mother,” he said softly.
“She . . . she had a heart attack.”
“A big one. But she survived, and she’s surviving every day.” Felix sat up. “Just as I survived your grandfather’s brutality.”
Harry nodded.
“Your mother will move beyond this. And so will we, Harry.”
A week ago, he and Katherine had made a pact: only positive thoughts ahead. And he was trying. God only knew how hard. But someone had blasted his life to smithereens with a cannon. What if the remaining pieces were too small and too fragile to glue back together?
THIRTY-TWO
Five days later, Felix stood in the hall holding up Katherine’s sheepskin coat as she grappled to push her arms through the sleeves. She flicked her hair out of the collar and turned with a smile. “Right, I’m off to the store before panic shoppers clear the shelves. You’ll remember to check the news for school closings when you get up, assuming we still have power?”
“The prospect of freezing rain doesn’t bother me in the least.” Felix walked into the kitchen and moved Katherine’s wine glass to the sink. “Although I appreciate this means the entire Triangle will predictably shut down for days.”
And necessitate cancellation of the school Valentine’s Day dance. So much for the romantic dinner he’d planned for tomorrow night. The first time he and Ella would have celebrated February 14, and the weather gods were plotting against them. Well, his wife was bedridden and he could barely cook, so he used the verb celebrate with some irony.
“But you did go to the store and stock up?” Katherine said.
“I refuse to do so.” Felix washed the glass, then put it upside down on the draining board. “Southern histrionics about the mere chance of winter precipitation are a turnoff for me.”