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The Colonel
Por Beau North
Acciones del libro
Comenzar a leerLongitud: 510 página4 horas
- Editorial:
- Beau North
- Publicado:
- Jul 9, 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780578525693
- Formato:
- Libro
Descripción
“This isn’t a love story, but the end of one. The story of two ships forever passing in the night. This is the story of my father and the woman he spent most of his adult life loving, a woman who was never really his.”
1950: After letting his chance at love with Elizabeth Bennet slip through his fingers a second time, Richard Fitzwilliam loses himself in women, whiskey, and war as he tries to forget what he left behind. Putting oceans, continents, and decades between himself and his heartbreak, Richard seeks his future, only to be pulled back to the past again and again.
2002: Shaken by recent events, Ben Fitzwilliam has left everything familiar behind, walking away from his relationship, his Manhattan apartment, his career as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to return to his family home in Annapolis, Maryland. Struggling to navigate a world that makes less and less sense, Ben finds purpose where he least expected it: in his father’s private letters. With the help of Annapolis PD Officer Keisha Barnes, Ben attempts to uncover his father’s secrets, heal the rifts those secrets caused, and find the answers he seeks on far shores.
Spanning decades, continents, wars abroad and wars at home, The Colonel is the anticipated companion to Longbourn’s Songbird.
Content Warning: This book contains themes that may not be suitable for some readers, such as PTSD, Addiction, Suicidal Ideation and Violence.
Acciones del libro
Comenzar a leerInformación sobre el libro
The Colonel
Por Beau North
Longitud: 510 página4 horas
Descripción
“This isn’t a love story, but the end of one. The story of two ships forever passing in the night. This is the story of my father and the woman he spent most of his adult life loving, a woman who was never really his.”
1950: After letting his chance at love with Elizabeth Bennet slip through his fingers a second time, Richard Fitzwilliam loses himself in women, whiskey, and war as he tries to forget what he left behind. Putting oceans, continents, and decades between himself and his heartbreak, Richard seeks his future, only to be pulled back to the past again and again.
2002: Shaken by recent events, Ben Fitzwilliam has left everything familiar behind, walking away from his relationship, his Manhattan apartment, his career as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to return to his family home in Annapolis, Maryland. Struggling to navigate a world that makes less and less sense, Ben finds purpose where he least expected it: in his father’s private letters. With the help of Annapolis PD Officer Keisha Barnes, Ben attempts to uncover his father’s secrets, heal the rifts those secrets caused, and find the answers he seeks on far shores.
Spanning decades, continents, wars abroad and wars at home, The Colonel is the anticipated companion to Longbourn’s Songbird.
Content Warning: This book contains themes that may not be suitable for some readers, such as PTSD, Addiction, Suicidal Ideation and Violence.
- Editorial:
- Beau North
- Publicado:
- Jul 9, 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780578525693
- Formato:
- Libro
Acerca del autor
Beau North hails from the kudzu-strangled wilderness of South Carolina but now hangs her hat in Portland, Oregon. In her spare time, Beau is the co-host of the podcast Excessively Diverted: Modern Austen On-Screen.
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The Colonel - Beau North
Elegies"
Prologue
This isn’t a love story, but the end of one. The story of two ships forever passing in the night. This is the story of my father and the woman he spent most of his adult life loving, a woman who was never really his.
You can never know a person, no matter how much you think you might. I never presumed to know Richard Fitzwilliam. My father loved me, and that was always enough. He taught me how to play baseball and how to write a check, how to open doors and say please
and thank you.
When I was seven years old, I fell on the ice in Central Park and broke my ankle. My father picked me up and carried me the eight blocks to St. Luke’s. Later, when my mother demanded to know why he didn’t just get a taxi, my father would shrug and say he was faster than the Manhattan traffic. That was the man he was.
He was a man who sacrificed pieces of himself for his country twice over, earning not one but two battlefield promotions for his quick thinking and reckless bravery. Colonel Fitzwilliam was a man who didn’t just dance with Death but wined, dined, and outright romanced it.
In his youth, a bon vivant and connoisseur of bad habits, he loved extravagantly―and often unwisely. But I’m getting ahead of myself now.
I've told stories before. War stories, political stories, all the news that’s fit to print. This is my first time trying to tell a love story.
But like I said, this isn’t a love story.
But almost.
Part I
Only Son Of The Ladiesman
1
BEN
April 4, 2002
Times Offices
New York City
Ben checked his desk one more time, making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything personal. The framed photos of Fiona he threw in the trash without ceremony. He supposed he should feel bad that she’d taken the BBC job, but all he really felt was relief. Goodbye, Ben. Goodbye, Fiona. Don’t forget to write. Their relationship had been unbearably strained since…well, since September. He’d been on the ground that day, that perfect blue-sky day in September when his world tilted at an irrevocable angle. He’d seen things that he suspected would haunt him for life. His job now left a sour taste in his mouth. The drinking helped at first, but he lost the fire somewhere along the way, the fire he felt when presented with a new story. He tried, he could say that much, but he would wake up sometimes hearing the bang of bodies hitting the ground. He never could have imagined that sound if he lived a thousand years. To fall from such a height, he thought the impact would be muffled, or wet. It wasn’t. It was the sound of bones being driven into the earth. That bang would haunt him until his dying day.
In some ways, the days that followed were worse. The days that he’d come home coated in a layer of ash that used to be people, the ones who couldn’t get out and the ones who came too late. All those months later, he was still wiping away the layers of dust that would settle in his apartment, over and over, remembering who it was. He was carrying them with him all the time, and they weighed him down. He needed to get away from New York, away from the dust and the ash, away from the nights when he’d wake up hearing that sound. Bang.
"Why do you even have this job? Fiona had shouted the day she broke the news that she was leaving him, leaving everything.
It’s not like you need the bloody money!"
The thought hadn’t even occurred to him, that he could just quit. Fiona’s question began to tug at his mind day in and day out. Why don’t I quit? And so he did. He walked in to work on a Monday after Fiona left for the last time, went straight to his editor, and handed in his notice. He spent the rest of the day handing off projects to other staff writers and cleaning out his desk. I really must dash, but thanks ever so much for the nightmares. As the elevator doors shut behind him, Ben’s shoulders lifted, his back straightened. He’d even say he felt a little randy, which happened less often than he liked now that he was staring down the barrel of fifty. He was free.
As soon as he exited the Times Building, he took a deep breath, the ever-present city smell of car exhaust, food, and urine making him instantly regret doing so. He thought of the clean air in Annapolis and considered that maybe it was finally time to go home. The modestly sized Midtown apartment he shared with Fiona was all boxed up and neatly labeled. Her boxes would be shipped to London. His would go in storage until he found a new place. He’d planned to stay at a hotel for a few nights and then maybe the townhouse in Gramercy Park where his mother and aunt still lived. But when a person needed a change, a big change, he figured they might as well go whole hog.
He looked down at the box he’d packed at his desk—clippings, awards, a photo from the last of Clinton’s White House Correspondents’ Dinners—over twenty years of his career in one little package. What the hell. He tossed the box into a nearby trash bin and hailed a cab. He had one change of clothes and a toothbrush in his messenger bag. He had a wallet full of credit cards and a sudden, irrepressible need to get out of the city.
Grand Central, please.
The driver nodded and pulled into the afternoon traffic. Ben watched the city go on about its business outside his window. He loved New York. He’d been born there, grown up there. It was home—one of his homes—but it made him feel tired too. Too much growth, too much change. Ben needed for everything to stop, or slow down long enough, for him to get his bearings, but the city was relentless in its progress. The future was happening all around him all the time, but it was the past that beckoned him now.
He made small talk with the driver, learned that he was originally from Trinidad, where Ben had spent some time as a foreign correspondent in the eighties. Ben remembered his brief time there fondly, watching the schoolboys play cricket on the Queen’s Park green while eating doubles—channa sandwiches with hot pepper and mango—the soft, pillowy bara bread still hot from the fryer. It would singe his fingertips as he pulled back the wrapping, and the spicy channa would make his eyes water. In those moments he felt more alive and in the world than ever. It was a good memory.
Part of him knew he should be feeling panic. No more Fiona, no more apartment, no more job. But he did have a house, and money, and a brain in his head. It felt natural, right somehow, to go home. He was a time traveler, caught in a slip stream that pulled him back, back, back into the past, for better or for worse.
Three hours later, he was seated on the Northeast Regional in a first-class car with a Dashiell Hammett paperback and a vodka on ice, watching the passing scenery as it slipped into night. The clatter and sway of the train lulled him, and he closed his eyes, dreaming of Trinidad and the brown-skinned kids dressed in white, swinging their cricket bats in the evening dusk, their laughter ringing across the green, buffeted up and carried away on the warm, ocean wind.
Ben took a cab from the train station, but, rather than go all the way to the house, he asked to be dropped off at the end of the long, winding street. He needed to stretch his legs and fill his lungs with fresh air. He needed time to prepare himself to face the past. In no hurry, he ambled the quiet street. He took in the damp chill and the briny, muddy smell of the Severn River to the east, letting it sink into his blood and his bones. Crickets sang in the night, an eerie chorus to him after the years of New York noise. He was glad to see that he remembered the way back. The town was different, but it was also the same, and when he approached the house, he found it unchanged.
Ben checked the screen on his Nokia. Just after nine. New York felt like a million miles away. He stood across the street for some time, just looking at the house, remembering summers there with his parents and aunt. Sometimes his cousins Maggie and Tom would come stay for a week and his father would sail them across the Chesapeake Bay. He wondered when those visits had stopped. 1970? Before that? He wondered how Maggie and Tom were now, and what had become of his father’s boat. Ben thought no one was ever as cool as his old man on those days when he was at the helm, his lanky arms bare and deeply tanned, cigarette perpetually dangling from his lip.
The brass plate mounted to the exterior brick declared the house to be on the historic registry, embossed with a seal and the words Fitzwilliam House.
The house looked back at him. Hello, Benny boy. You took your sweet fucking time, didn’t you?
Calling it a house wasn’t entirely right. The main structure was a stalwart colonial construction, as tall and imposing as its owners had always been. Over the two hundred years since it had been built, other smaller buildings had cropped up on the property. Around the turn of the century, some clever Fitzwilliam had connected all the buildings with brick enclosures, so it couldn’t really be called a house. It was more like a maze. A compound.
He took out his keys, glad that he hadn’t tossed those into an Eighth Avenue trash bin. The lock stuck a little, but, after a few tries, he managed to push the door open, stumbling headfirst into the past. The dusty smell of disuse couldn’t mask the other smells: the lingering ghost of cigar and cigarette smoke, the smell of thousands of applications of linseed oil that had been applied to the home’s natural woodwork over the course of generations.
Ben scrambled to the light switch, banging his shin painfully against a table set up in the entryway. The lights snapped on. He took a moment to be grateful he still paid to keep the electricity connected.
He fell back against the door, letting out the breath he’d been holding. Not a thing had changed. It was a little like stepping into a museum. The same marine-colored walls, the same mellow wood floor. He knew, under the spectral shapes of drop cloths in the next room, he would find the same fine-crafted Federal furniture, and that nowhere in this house would he find a television set. His father always relied on the radio for the news or Yankees games, claiming the television caused headaches due to his impaired vision.
The house was cold, and it wasn’t just the temperature. He couldn’t explain how but he thought it felt...neglected. Lonesome, even.
He walked through all the rooms, a careful expedition of his past. He left the furniture covered. There would be time enough for that later. His father’s office was the only room he avoided entirely, wanting to save that room for the light of day. He found his old room easy enough, but as soon as he flipped the light switch, there was a bright sizzle and a telltale pop of the bulb going out. Before it went out, he could still see the posters he’d hung the last summer he’d stayed with his father. One was the poster for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the other was Cybill Shepherd from The Last Picture Show. He remembered being a kid of seventeen and looking up at that poster, eyes fastened to Cybill’s full bottom lip, feeling his body flush as he did what teenage boys do.
Ben laughed and shook his head as he made his way down the hall. Again, he felt the same twinkle of randy excitement he’d felt that afternoon. By Jove, there’s still life in the old boy yet. He and Fiona hadn’t had sex in months. He suspected she had someone else for that. The thought didn’t bother him as much as he thought it should…maybe because, at some point, they’d stopped thinking of it as making love and started calling it having sex. He suddenly missed that feeling: those first stirrings of attraction, of lust, the insatiable days when lust melted swiftly into infatuation and infatuation to love. There was a word for that feeling, he remembered. Limerence. Even the syllables felt attractive.
The light in his father’s room still worked fine. Ben felt a pang in his chest, a heartfelt longing for one day—one hour, even—with the man who’d occupied these rooms. He leaned against the doorframe and sighed. Oh, Pop.
A thin layer of dust lay over everything, though not as bad as it could have been. He had a caretaker who arranged for light cleaning every other week so the place didn’t go to seed. A group of framed photos stood sentry on the nightstand, the room’s only personal touch. The last time he’d been here, that nightstand had been cluttered with the detritus of the sick: bottles of medicines, get well cards, and scrawled reminders of doctors’ appointments. Ben had brought a portable CD player so his father could listen to his audiobooks. He’d bought those too, if he recalled. Compact discs of books by Elmore Leonard and Raymond Chandler, Patrick O’Brien and Tom Clancy, Dumas and Dickens and Wilde, even Bronte and Austen for good measure. His father found reading difficult enough with only one eye, impossible when that eye’s vision was impaired with age.
Ben crossed into the room and yanked the drop cloth off the bed. Dust plumed up from the motion. Tomorrow he’d get new linens and pillows, not to mention clothes and toiletries, food for the pantry. He should probably see if the old car was still in the garage and what he’d need to do to get it running again.
The linens in the closet were old and thin but seemed to have been laundered sometime in the last year. Ben turned the thermostat up and tried to ignore the burnt-toast smell of the heat coming on for the first time in ages as he put sheets and blankets on the bed. Memories were trickling back to him. His father teaching him how to make hospital corners―the way he’d been taught in the army―guiding Ben’s hands as he showed him how to tuck and fold the fabric, always smoothing the corners down with the backs of his fingers. Like this, Benny.
His father never lost patience. Ben copied those movements now. He felt like a ghost in his own memories. He turned off the light and stepped out of his shoes, climbing into the bed, unaware of the tears cutting tracks down his dusty face. He was asleep at once.
It wasn’t the knock at the door that woke him up. He’d actually been awake for what seemed an immeasurable amount of time. He was freezing. Too cold to move, too cold to check the time on his phone. It was still dark; whether it was morning or night, he couldn’t say. Had he even plugged in his phone? He’d need to call the caretaker about getting the furnace looked at, that was for certain. If he could ever get out of bed. He was too frozen to do anything but lie there and shiver, teeth chattering.
And then, someone started knocking on the door. Not just knocking. Hammering on the door. Ben managed to roll out of bed, still fully dressed but for his shoes. He shuffled through the silent house, across the semi-lit hall, down the stairs, and through the formal receiving room. He swung the door open to see a police car parked outside, its bubble lights silently flashing red and blue. The sky was pearly gray, telling him it was early morning. He could live with that. The officer who’d knocked looked him up and down, and Ben couldn’t help but do the same.
She was a petite black woman with large, brown eyes and a high, clear brow. Her hair had been pinned back in a no-nonsense bun. She was, Ben noted, astonishingly pretty. She was also looking at him with no small amount of suspicion. The name pinned to her shirt simply read K. Barnes.
Behind her, a hulking man, in the same police blues, stood looking bored.
Can I help you, officer?
Sir, we got a call that someone had broken into this house. Caller said that there shouldn’t be lights on since the house is unoccupied?
She said the last like a question but in a way that politely demanded he explain himself.
Ah, right. Hang on one second.
He reached into his pocket and produced his wallet, fishing out his ID. I’m Ben Fitzwilliam. I own the property.
Ben was fairly certain he owned the whole block but kept that part to himself.
Officer K. Barnes looked down at his ID and then back up at him, brows raised. Resident of New York State?
Her voice was smooth and lovely. There’s music in her voice and danger in her eyes. Where had he heard that before? An old song, maybe?
I just moved back. Took the train down last night.
Can you wait here for a minute, sir?
she asked. I’m just going to check this out.
Sure. Oh, here…
Ben removed a business card from his wallet and handed it over. That’s the caretaker; he’ll tell you.
Just a moment.
She took the card and his ID and walked back to the patrol car. She was economical in the way she moved and walked, not clipped or hurried, but not taking her time either. Ben asked the other officer if he’d like to come in and he shook his head, wordlessly. Okay, so we’ll all just stand awkwardly with the door open. Works for me.
Nervous energy brimmed through him, waking him up more than any cup of coffee could. Whether it was exhaustion or anxiety, he wasn’t sure; he only knew he wanted to go back inside and take the longest, hottest shower he could manage. He wanted to wash New York and the dust of memories old and new from his skin. Start over, start clean. Officer K. Barnes came back, handing his information back to him.
That checks out,
she said, still looking like she didn’t believe a word he said. But you’ll want to get your Maryland ID when you get a chance.
Thank you, Officer K. Barnes,
he said, smiling at her. He knew he most likely looked terrible, unshaven, and wrinkled. He was still somewhat fit and, he admitted, fairly good-looking, taking after his father in all but the color of his eyes. She was younger than him, beautiful enough that she probably got leered at by creeps all day, and—most troublingly—she was armed. But he couldn’t help himself. There was an air about her that commanded him to smile. The officer gave him an assessing look and nodded, her lips parted in a slight, coy grin that made him suddenly feel warm. Welcome home, Mr. Fitzwilliam.
The car was still there but wouldn’t start. Ben thought a dead battery to be the most likely culprit. He spied a hulking shape in the corner of the garage under a tarp. It was his father’s motorcycle, a relic from the 1940’s, and had been passed between his father and his uncle Will several times. He’d been there the day it was delivered to his father, on Christmas Eve of 1979. In the twenty-three years since, Ben had never forgotten the look on his father’s face when he saw that motorcycle, some combination of longing and humor.
It had been well cared for, once, but now sat as neglected as everything else. The round headlight looked to Ben like a milky eye, regarding him with cold patience. I can wait, Benny boy. Ben quickly threw the tarp back over it. He never knew why the sight of it had so affected his father.
After his early visit by the lovely Officer Barnes, Ben took a quick inventory of the house. Towels and linens would need to be purchased and a new mattress ordered. The fridge was clean but old. It would need to be replaced and stocked. The water heater, he was glad to note, seemed to work fine after a few minutes. The heat would definitely need to be looked at. Ben made his list from the small steno pad he always carried with him, an old habit he’d clung to even after tape recorders had become so compact and convenient. He called the caretaker, who didn’t seem terribly amused about getting a wake-up call from the Annapolis PD, but he agreed to come bring a new battery for the car. I’ll just add it to your bill,
he said grumpily.
The caretaker was Cal Holland, an old navy vet who made his living looking after some of the grand old properties like Fitzwilliam House. Annapolis boasted of several such homes, bought up when the market was good by people who might come occupy them for a few weeks out of the year or rent them out to politicians and Naval Academy staff.
When Cal showed up with a bag of McDonald’s breakfast and a large coffee, Ben could have kissed the old coot.
"I’m sure you’re used to more elegant fare," Cal said, handing the bounty over.
Just don’t tell my doctor,
Ben said as he tore into the food. It tasted like heaven. Salty, greasy heaven.
They managed to get Richard’s car—an aging Jeep wagon—started with the new battery, but Ben added full tune-up to his growing list. He could have stayed in New York and had all this prepared ahead of him, but he’d felt some irresistible pull telling him to come down and do it himself. He was surprised to find that he liked the prospect of making this house his home, having been virtually untouched since his father last breathed. Ben wasn’t romantic about the past. He was a journalist; he lived in the now. The past was for contextualizing the present, nothing more, but he couldn’t resist the notion that the house was haunted. Not by ghosts―but by secrets.
And he meant to unearth them.
2
BEN
April 7, 2002
Annapolis, Maryland
He was in Safeway two days later, standing in the frozen foods aisle and pondering the existence of a frozen dinner that proclaimed itself to be Mexican Lasagna
when he spotted a familiar face over by the ice cream.
Officer K. Barnes. Hi.
She seemed confused at first, as if an ostrich had just walked into the frozen food aisle and started complaining about the price of Lean Cuisines. He saw the light of recognition spark in her eyes a moment later. He supposed she hadn’t recognized him clean and shaved and not covered head-to-toe in the dust of yesteryear.
Oh, if it isn’t B&E,
she said, smiling her half-cocked smile.
Breaking and Entering, very funny. Ben, actually.
"Oh, I know who you are. I think pretty much everyone knows the great Fitzwilliam scion has flown back to the nest." She spoke teasingly. Ben was instantly and utterly smitten. She was even lovelier out of uniform, her hair worn loose in a mass of soft-looking curls. There was a beauty mark high on her right cheekbone that he hadn’t noticed before. Her clothes, jeans and a bright white v-neck, made her look younger than she had at their first meeting. Rein yourself in, old man.
People are talking already, are they?
She puckered her lips in a crooked smile. He tried not to stare. Don’t be surprised when you get dragged to every garden party from here to DC,
she said, plunking a pint of Ben & Jerry’s into her basket. Cherry Garcia.
I’m not much of a garden party type.
"What you are is single, straight, and rich enough to make Jesus weep. Not to mention your…Pulitzer."
"My, my, but people do talk."
That they do.
She noticed then his cart, piled high and threatening to spill over. Her brows raised.
Oh, I just got my new fridge today. I’m stocking up.
For who? Fraternity row?
She nodded at the cases of beer he’d stacked underneath.
Well, they’ve got a good selection.
Great. Now she thinks you’re a rich asshole…and a drunk.
Mmmhmm.
They stood there for a moment, saying nothing. It might have been awkward, but Ben felt perfectly comfortable just...standing there with her. He wanted to know everything about her. Who was she? Why was she a cop? Was Cherry Garcia her favorite ice cream? Had she always lived there? One question nagged him more than most.
Well I guess I should—
What’s your name?
he asked at the same time. He smiled apologetically. Sorry, you’ve got to go. I understand.
Thanks. I want to get this home before it melts.
Sure, enjoy,
he said, hating himself for sounding like the worst kind of teenage pipsqueak.
Ah
―she turned around―my name’s Keisha. Just so you know.
She gave him a lopsided grin that made his heart leap into his throat.
Nice to meet you. I mean, really meet you,
he stammered.
Was it now?
Maybe I’ll see you around town.
Maybe you will, B&E.
And with that she turned and walked away, leaving him grinning like an idiot while blocking the frozen desserts.
Keisha. He tasted the name like salt and sugar dissolving on his tongue. It was a common enough name; there’d been two Keishas and one LaKeisha at the Times. It had never sounded so pretty until he’d heard her say it. He looked down at the beer in his cart and frowned.
May 5, 2002
Fitzwilliam House
Annapolis
Hot damn, we did it, Cal.
Ben admired his handiwork. The desk was in shambles. Splinters of wood stuck out like porcupine quills along the edge of the drawer.
Probably just ruined some priceless antique―not that little Lord Fitzwilliam couldn’t afford another.
Ben smiled. The caretaker’s grumblings never bothered him. Cal had always been this way, even with his father. The two hadn’t been friends, exactly, but Richard had liked Cal a great deal. Like Ben, he’d always found Cal’s abrasive manners to be the height of amusement.
It was priceless only in that it was made by my great-grandfather. You can tell because this leg is a bit shorter than the others. It was never going to make it to Sotheby’s, dahling.
Hmph. Probably went to all that trouble just to unearth a couple of old nudie mags.
Ben grinned, tested the drawer again. It rolled smoothly enough considering he’d just pried it open with a crowbar.
"Well, those might sell at auction," he said, putting the crowbar aside. In the month since he’d been back, the office was the one room he hadn’t touched. The door remained closed while everything else was addressed. The house now boasted new appliances, new drapes in a cheerful yellow, new mattresses and linens. The gardens were being spruced up (a chore that Ben was surprised to find he loved) and several pieces of furniture had been rotated from the attics and refurbished. The house was...pretty much the same, but it bore his mark as it had once bore his father’s.
The office had not been the time capsule he’d been expecting. Most of the paperwork had been sent off to the attorneys and money managers and all the people who now handled what remained of the Fitzwilliam family empire. Most of the family money came from shipbuilding until his father had taken over the accounts and started investing. He’d had a knack for growing industries, though not all his investments had weathered the storms of the last fifty years. The steel mills died slowly and the publishing houses hung on as long as they could, proving that Richard Fitzwilliam had at least been an optimist.
Bookshelves lined the walls, now empty. The books had been boxed up and put into storage or moved to the Gramercy Park townhouse with his mom and his aunt. This room was dustier than the rest of the house had been, and the feeling of haunting was stronger here. He was beginning to give up when he tried the bottom drawer of the large, cherry desk. Past the front door, it was the only lock he’d encountered.
Ben called Cal to see if the caretaker had a key for the drawer, and he’d come, complaining the whole time. Ben didn’t really buy it. He suspected the old man was lonely. When no key could be found–perhaps thrown out when the house was cleaned and shuttered after Richard’s funeral four years ago–Ben had to resort to force. Hence the crowbar. The first thing he’d seen when he pried the drawer open was a pistol, gleaming and hungry, despite the decades in the dark.
You know what? I could eat a horse,
Ben said, closing the drawer enough so that Cal didn’t see the pistol. Let me make lunch for you. Steak? Burger? I’ve got some salmon.
"I’m a vegetarian, not that you’ve ever asked. The doc put me off meat six years ago."
No problem. I’ve got some veggies marinating, and I’m dying to give the new grill a test drive. How ’bout it, Cal?
Cal assented, and Ben had been happy to listen to the old man gripe about one thing or another while he manned the grill, never letting on the thrill he felt at the prospect of that now-open drawer. The sight of his father’s service pistol had only doubled his excitement, and by the time he’d sent Cal home with a full stomach and a check for your trouble,
he was fairly buzzing with anticipation.
Rather than rush right back to it, he went for a run. It was slow going after the months of stress-eating and drinking. He’d always been a runner; his one athletic accomplishment in high school had been track. In his prime, he ran the Central Park loop daily and the Hudson River Path every other weekend. For now, he was getting back into the habit by running in a loop through downtown Annapolis, starting by circling the State House and then down King George Street until it hooked onto the waterfront, turning at the gates of the Naval Academy and back home. He loved the pale stone chapel with its copper-domed cupola, restored in 1940, thanks partly to a sizable donation by his grandfather, the admiral. He loved the staid colonials and the red brick sidewalks, the steeple of St. Anne’s Parish that pointed up like a finger. It wasn’t the longest run, but he was out of practice. All the while, his mind still gripped the pistol.
He’d taken a detour down Craig Street, slowing to catch his breath and watch the people milling around the city docks. In the time he’d been back, parts of himself had slowly begun waking up. Maybe it was the freedom from his work, maybe it was cutting back on the drinking; whatever it was had Ben feeling a giddy sort of energy. He’d not forgotten Fiona—in fact, he’d only just begun to mourn the death of their relationship. Ten years was a long time to spend with someone, to learn their bodies and their deepest fears, to know the sound of their laughter against naked skin or the particular sting of seeing them cry and know that you are the reason for it. Ten years was exactly the time it takes to inure oneself to the rhythm of their sleeping breath so that when it’s gone, you find that you can’t sleep without it. And so he missed her, but he didn’t call her. Her heart was a house where he no longer let rooms.
His more immediate problem wasn’t his heart but his prick. The better his body felt...the better his body felt. He thought about sex with a distressing frequency, about slim fingers and full lips and the way Fiona would moan "Och, Christ" when he was at his very best. He slowed his pace to a walk, wiping the sweat from his face with his sleeve. It was late afternoon when shoppers and tourists milled around the waterfront despite the heat. Ben felt lonely watching them, the tourists holding hands, the midshipmen with their shorn heads. The families.
A loud woop startled him, and he turned around to see Keisha Barnes leaning out of the window of her patrol car across the street. She grinned her cocksure grin and waved at him. He jogged over to her, feverishly aware of the sweat that soaked through his running clothes.
Hey there, B&E,
she greeted him. She was alone in her car, her hulking partner nowhere to be seen.
What seems to be the problem, officer?
Are you sure you should be running like that? A man your age?
Well, so much for respecting your elders. This generation is a lost cause after all.
They shared a laugh, an awkward awareness between them. He admired her—desired her, even—and she knew it.
I’m just coming off duty,
she said. I was heading home when I saw you, and I couldn’t resist.
Actually, you might be able to help me with something,
he blurted. Jesus, Ben, what are you up to? I need the assistance of someone who knows how to handle firearms.
Her brows shot up, full lips puckering into an all-too kissable ruckle. You have my attention.
Can you meet me at my house? I’m sure you remember the address.
I can, or I can give you a lift.
The corners of her lips tilted up. You’d have to sit in the back, though.
I’m a journalist, Keisha, I’ve been in police cars before,
he said, trying to sound casual, worldly. He didn’t think he pulled it off.
Mmkay,
she said with a playful smile. Hop on in then. Let’s give the neighbors a thing or two to talk about.
He climbed in and pulled the door shut behind him. He wasn’t just bragging when he’d said he’d been in police cars before. He’d participated in ride-alongs and had twice been arrested. His first arrest was in 1974 when he was the tender age of eighteen, at a Chicago march protesting the Vietnam War. His second came in 1998 when he reported on anti-Lukashenka protest leaders in Belarus. He was one of the fortunate that had been expelled from the country. So when he told Keisha that hers was the nicest police car he’d been in, it was the honest truth.
We do okay,
she said as she turned onto Prince George. Ben sat back and watched her drive, admiring the way she became all business behind the wheel.
Can I ask you a personal question?
Shoot,
Ben said.
Why did you come back? After all this time?
Bang.
He felt the sound more than remembered it, a sharp ache like a cavity. He didn’t know how to begin telling her about that. Instead, he improvised.
I’m writing a book.
Oh yeah? What about?
My father,
he blurted, stunned by his own admission. He had to admit, the idea had legs. Who better to write about a twice-decorated war hero who took two bullets in World War II and lost an eye in Korea? A man who spent his life making every damaged soldier his brother, a man who never married but fathered a child out of kindness? Ben remembered the scores of women who’d shown up to Richard’s funeral, the way his aunt Georgie laughed through her tears when he asked her who they all were.
I doubt even he could tell you,
she’d said.
Keisha was silent for a few moments as they drove through the tree-lined streets of downtown. Finally she said, I knew him, you know.
No,
he said. "No,
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