“But that’s what you’re scared will happen.” This time when Crawford didn’t respond, Conrad gave him a cagey grin. “Now I get why you came out here today. You want me to do the dirty work for your conscience.”
Crawford placed his hands on his hips. “Does what you just said actually make sense to you? Because to me that sounds like the rambling of a drunk.”
“I am a drunk. I admit it. But I’m not the one impeding a police investigation.”
“I’m not impeding anything.”
“That’s splitting hairs, and you damn well know it.” He leveled a hard look at Crawford. “As a peace officer, as a law-abiding citizen, you know what you’ve got to do. You knew before you walked through that door. You just want me to be the angel on your shoulder who whispers it in your ear.”
“Angel? That’s a laugh. Why would I come to you asking about matters of conscience?”
“So that when things go south, you’ll have me to blame for dispensing rotten advice. Soon as that shit storm starts swirling around you, you’ll curse me for being a drunken fool who you had the bad judgment to listen to. You’ll get to hate me for being the one who urged you to do the right thing.” He paused, then added, “Not that you need another reason to hate me.”
“You got that right.” Crawford turned abruptly and pushed so hard on the screen door that it swung wide and banged against the exterior wall.
“Son! Come back here.”
As Crawford thumped across the porch, he called over his shoulder, “Thanks for the fatherly advice.”
Most of his visits with Conrad—who, even in his private thoughts, he referred to by his given name, certainly not Dad—ended badly, which was why they were few and far between, and only when Crawford initiated one. A condition of him acknowledging Conrad at all was that Conrad was never to contact him. He’d lost that privilege years ago.
Once his mother had obtained a divorce and was free to remarry, she’d retrieved Crawford and taken him to live with her and her new husband in California. He’d resented that he hadn’t gotten a vote in the matter, and it had hurt even more that Conrad hadn’t put up a fight to keep him.
The severance had been permanent, the father-son relationship destroyed. But as he sped away from Conrad’s place, their conversation kept repeating in his mind like an earworm.
And, damn the derelict, he had been right in every respect. Crawford had needed to hear the old man advise him to do what he already knew he had to do, which was why it rankled so badly. The reprobate had taken the moral high ground ahead of him.
Fortunately, he was due to pick up Georgia, who would neutralize his anger. She always put things into perspective. Her giggles could reduce the importance of even the most serious problem.
“It looks like rain,” Grace remarked when she met him at the front door. Crawford agreed, but wasn’t going to let the weather cancel his and Georgia’s outing. Instead, he helped her into her rain gear.
Now, as they walked hand-in-hand toward the swing set, she said, “This is silly, Daddy.”
“I promised you a trip to the park playground, and do I ever break my promises?”
“No.”
“No. So here we are.”
“But it’s raining!”
“Naw, this is barely a sprinkle. Besides, even if you get wet, you’re not going to melt.”
He lifted her onto the seat of the swing and began pushing her. Her squeals and laughter were like music to his ears. Because of the inclement weather, they had the playground to themselves. They moved from one piece of equipment to another, until they’d made three circuits.
As he carried her back to his SUV, she looked down at her bright pink rubber boots. “I got them muddy.”
“They’re made to get muddy.”
“Grandma might get mad.”
“You can blame me.”
“Grandpa says you’re to blame for everything.”
Crawford never criticized Georgia’s grandparents within her hearing because he never wanted to be accused of trying to drive a wedge between them. Nor did he ever try to fish from her what they said about him when he wasn’t around.
Now, however, he was about to make an exception, because Joe had vowed to fight him, and it could be a dirty fight. As he helped Georgia buckle the straps of her car seat, he asked, “When did Grandpa say that?”
“Today while we were eating lunch. He was talking to Grandma.”
“How did he sound?”
“Loud.”
“Loud? Like he was mad?”
“Kinda. Grandma shushed him and said they would talk about it later. What are we going to do now, Daddy?”
Pinching the tip of her nose, he proposed an ice cream treat.
“At McDonald’s? They have a playground inside.”
“Mickey D’s it is.”
While she played, he shot video of her on his cell phone. It pierced his heart every time she called to him, “Daddy, watch me!” before going down the slide or climbing the rungs of the jungle gym.