Well, actually, that’s melodramatic. My leg is still attached. But for as much use as I get out of it, the damned thing might as well have been blown to bits. Just like everything else good in my life.
The anger of it all threatens to choke me. It’s been two years since I got back from Afghanistan, and the anger isn’t fading. If anything, it’s gotten worse.
But there will be tomorrow and every day after for self-pity. Now I focus all of my attention on figuring out what my father’s current game is. It’s not every day that the illustrious Harry Langdon makes the trek up to Bar Harbor, Maine, to visit his only son.
If I’ve learned anything in the past two years besides how to be myself, it’s how to accurately predict what these little visits will entail.
No warning call first. Check.
No greeting beyond a half-second glance at my left leg to see if it’s magically quarterback-worthy again. It never is. Check.
Avoidance of looking at my face. Check.
Passive-aggressive comment about my drinking. Check.
Which meant that next up on the agenda would be…
“Beth called me,” he says. “Says the latest one didn’t even last two weeks.”
Ah. So that’s why he’s here.
I give a rueful shake of my head and glance down at my whiskey. “Poor Beth. It must wear on her that her little care-for-the-meek underlings don’t have the stamina to make it out here in the wilderness.”
“It’s not—” Dad breaks off and raps his knuckle sharply against the ancient wooden desk in irritation. He doesn’t yell. Harry Langdon never yells. “It’s not the wilderness, for God’s sake. It’s a nine-bedroom chateau with two separate guest houses, a gym, and a stable.”
I hear the censure in his voice. I understand it, even. From where he stands, I’m a spoiled brat. But it’s easier to let him think that I’m a pampered pansy than to let him see the truth…which is that I wouldn’t care if the whole place went up in flames. That I hope I go up in flames with it.
Because if my dad finds out how truly dead I am inside, he won’t be satisfied with sending the token caretakers my way. He’ll have me committed to some crazy-person facility where I’ll have to drink out of paper cups and use plastic silverware.
I let my face slip into its default sneer. “Well,” I say, lazily climbing to my feet and hobbling over to the sideboard for more bourbon, “perhaps this Gretchen—or was it Gwendolyn?—wasn’t the equine-appreciating type. And besides, she had the voice of a hyena. She’d scare the horses.”
“It’s not the horses that scared her,” my father says, his knuckle hitting the desk harder this time. “It’s you. You ran her off, just like you ran off the seven people before her.”
Eight, actually. But I’m not about to correct him. Not when he’s in sanctimonious lecture mode.
“So how many is it going to take, Harry?” I ask, dropping another ice cube into my drink, bracing my hip against the sideboard, and turning to face him.
“Don’t call me that. I’m your father—show some respect.”
“Mr. Langdon,” I say, bending forward slightly, but keeping the bow small enough to be insulting. “How many?” I ask again. “How many babysitters have to come all the way out here only to scamper away when they find out I don’t need anyone to wipe drool off my face or read me a bedtime story?”
“Damn it, Paul—”
“Ten?” I interrupt. “Fifteen? I mean, you could keep them coming indefinitely, but eventually you’re going to run out of available caregivers, right?”
He continues to rap his knuckle softly against the wood, but he’s no longer glaring at me. He’s looking out the window, where the harbor’s just barely visible through the trees in the late-morning light.
I guess it’s a pretty enough sight, but I prefer the view in the late afternoon, when the sun’s just disappearing. Mostly because it means the day’s over. At least until it all begins again. And it always does. Begin again, I mean. No matter how much I may wish otherwise.