“Because I asked her to. To give your . . . that woman . . . a leg up. You know your mom. She’d do anything for anyone.” David’s voice took on a businesslike tone. “Look, it’s hard to do this on the phone. In any case, you need to get back home, son. There’s an election to be won, remember? This is the time to focus on the future, not on the past.”
Anton shook his head. The last statement was so typically David. But then the image of the woman in the yellow cottage rose before his eyes, and he felt a deep reluctance at the thought of pivoting to the future. Not so fast. He knew how easily he would get caught up in the gears of the campaign from the moment he landed back home. How easily he and David would resume their normal relationship, how the lovely Katherine and the comforts of his life would blur the memory of the woman who had sat upright, without flinching, while he had falsely accused her of lying to him. He had been hero-worshipping the wrong parent, it turned out. The true steel was in the tiny girl-like woman who had battled drug addiction, poverty, false sentencing, abduction of her son, and God knew how many other injustices in order to arrive at the moment when her grown son had called her a liar.
Something flashed in Anton’s mind right then, like a bright light, and he asked, “Does—did Uncle Connor know about this?” There was a long silence, and Anton felt the thudding of his heart reverberate through his entire body. “Dad?”
He heard the sharp exhale. “Of course. Connor was the prosecutor.”
“Jesus Christ. It was a damn conspiracy. All because—”
“Anton. Stop being melodramatic. We were just trying to—”
“Why’d you do it, Dad?” he yelled. “I mean, Jesus H. Christ, it’s lie after lie and deceit after deceit.”
David lowered his voice. “What would you have had me do, Anton? Risked returning you to that woman? And the next time she decided to sneak off hunting for drugs? What then?”
Anton shook his head. “She’s clean, Dad. She’s been clean all these years.”
David scoffed. “So she says. And in any case, hindsight is twenty-twenty. You know as well as I do what the recidivism rates are for crackheads.”
Anton flinched as if David had physically struck him. Crackhead. That’s how David saw his mother. As a statistic, a number, a data point. “You should see her, Dad,” he said. “She’s nothing like what you imagine. Just a good, decent workingwoman. The kind you’ve extolled in a million political speeches.”
David grunted. “Touché. A low blow, but touché. Though let me remind you that even a junkie can hold it together for a few hours.”
“She’s not a junkie,” Anton yelled. “And even if she were, nothing changes the fact that you stole from her. This is as bad a case of abuse of power as I’ve ever seen. You could be in jail for this, Dad.” His voice broke. “And you lied to me. You lied. You told me she’d given me up. You lied.”
“And for that I’m sorry. But I had no choice. You have to believe me.” David’s voice shook, but when he spoke again, his tone was urgent, pitched. “Goddammit, Anton. I’m human, too. I did the best I could, under very trying circumstances.”
“You had no choice? Of course you did. All you had to do was follow the law.”
David made an exasperated sound. “I couldn’t. Don’t you see? Because you . . . you were special. Such great potential. And I was the only one who could see it through. Hell, son, it would’ve been a crime, no, a sin, to have wasted that potential. No. Not in a million years. You were worth fighting for.”
Anton smacked his hand on the steering wheel. “Don’t. Don’t make this about me, Dad. This was about you. What you needed.” He closed his eyes because he was about to go where he knew he shouldn’t, to that cold, wet, dark place where James lay in a grave. “You needed another child to love, Dad. I get that. After James . . .”
“Anton, you don’t wanna go there. In any case, that’s not true . . .”
“I mean, it’s very sad what happened, but that didn’t . . .”
“Anton, I’m warning you . . .”
“. . . that didn’t give you the right to . . .”
“Goddammit, you little prick. Stop,” David roared in his ear. “What do you want from me? I’ve given you every fucking thing I’ve ever had. I’m about to give you the goddamn governorship of the fucking state on a silver platter. And you dare talk to me like this?”
Anton sat frozen in his seat. He could hear William’s concerned voice in the background and David saying he was all right and to please give him some damn privacy. Anton felt a moment of trepidation. Dad had a weak heart, and Dr. Carlson had told them repeatedly that he was not supposed to get too agitated about anything.
“Dad, listen,” he said. “Calm down. How about we talk when—”
“No, Anton, you listen. You want me to apologize for what I did? I’ll only say this once, so listen up: I won’t. I will never apologize for fighting to keep you in my life. Because guess what? You were worth it. You were worth all of it. And I will never apologize to you for you. Never.”
Anton had been beaten by the better man. He knew this. Even with a bad heart and diminished strength, his father was still twice the man he was. Because right or wrong, David had conviction. Whereas he, Anton, sat in the car vanquished while his father growled in his ear, “Now put all this nonsense out of your head and get the hell back into town and get on with your life,” and all he could do was reply, “Yes, sir.” He hung up the phone and sat staring straight ahead, not knowing whether or not to drive back to his mother’s house and, if so, what to say to her. He was acutely aware that he had failed in the most basic of tasks: getting David to apologize to Juanita Vesper for the grievous harm he had done her. She would not have even the smallest of civilities afforded to her.
Anton turned off his phone. He knew that David would try to call back or Delores would. He didn’t want to talk to any of them yet, not even Katherine. After a few moments, he turned the car around. He would say his goodbye to the woman in the yellow house and then be on his way home. There was nothing more to keep him here.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE