“I hope you have something on under the flowers,” I said.
“Oh, Daddy, where’s your Halloween spirit?” She moved across the room and sat in my desk chair, facing me. “You got a hot date tonight?”
“It’s business, a CEO from Nebraska wants to see the sights of Greensboro.”
Shannon shot me the female don’t-jive-me look and said, “Have your little secrets if you want, I don’t care.” She picked up Maurey’s picture that I like to keep behind the typewriter. Maurey is sitting astride her horse Frostbite on a ridge above the TM ranch. Her hair is in braids and she looks like God’s own sweetheart. That photo has caused much resentment among my girlfriends. So much resentment that I had to hide it from Wanda.
Shannon studied the picture of her mother and said, “Dad, I need to explain options to you.”
“Options?”
“What I’m going to do and what your choices are next.”
This didn’t sound good. “What are you going to do?”
She touched Maurey’s face. Maurey was twenty-six in the picture, so Shannon could have been looking at an age-enhanced picture of herself.
“I’m going to live with Eugene,” she said.
All my liberal upbringing flew right out the window. I said, “You’re grounded, little lady.”
Shannon lifted her eyes and laughed. “Daddy, you can’t ground me.”
“I can’t?”
“I’m a grown-up now. You haven’t tried grounding me since high school.”
“That was two years ago.”
“You haven’t grounded me and gotten away with it since junior high.”
“You’re just like your mother.” Shannon could take that about six different ways, but unlike me, she wasn’t into endless nuances.
She looked from Maurey to me. “Okay, here are your choices.”
“Is breaking Eugene’s nose a choice?”
“No. You can fly off the handle, scream and yell and throw me out of the house, and estrange your daughter for life.”
“Eugene taught you that, didn’t he? To say
“Choice two: I live with Eugene in his apartment with the three male roommates.”
“I don’t like that one.”
“Choice three is Eugene moves in here and you treat him like the son you never had.”
It didn’t take much thought. “I choose number three.”
Shannon’s face sparkled, making the crap of living around Eugene the child molester worth the trouble. She crossed the gap between us and hugged me. “I knew you’d come through.”
“I don’t want him downstairs in his underwear.”
“Neither do I.”
I looked up into her brown eyes. “Shannon, you’ve been the only consistent, unqualified love in my life. I know you have to leave someday—that’s the curse of being a parent—but I’m just not ready to lose you yet.”
She smiled and said, “Daddy, you’re sweet.”
“Promise you won’t leave until I’m ready.”
“Forget it. You’ll never be ready.”
Shannon left to find her lover and light pumpkins and I sat in my room with the lights off, looking out at the rain. The steady drizzle matched my mood perfectly. Nothing was absolute anymore. Right, wrong, desirable, and undesirable had all turned on their heads. Amid the uncertainties, the one thing I knew for sure was I had to talk to Maurey.
Her lifesaving voice floated in from Wyoming. “Hello?”
I said, “The deal is falling apart out here.”
There was a short pause. “The deal isn’t so hot here either.”
“What’s the matter?”
She sounded flat. Maurey is normally upbeat, or at least interested. I worry when she’s down. “I can’t talk about it yet,” she said. “I’d rather hear your problems.”
“Actually, it affects both of us.”
“Shannon broke the news.”
“She told you first?”
“She asked if I thought you’d boot her out of the house. I said not in a hundred years.”
“I raised her but she confides in you.”
“Kids never confide in the parent they live with. Are you going to let the boy move in?”
“He’s no boy,” I said, “and of course he’s moving in.”
“You did something right for a change.”
“If I did, it’s the first right move I’ve made all week.”
“Shannon tells me you’re on a strange roll.”
“Bizarre is more the word.” I told Maurey about finding the fathers and what I’d done to Atalanta Williams and Clark Gaines and how I felt about Gilia. That part took a while. Maurey listened and gave the appropriate comments, but her mind seemed to wander.
“What’s the girl’s father blackmailing you for doing?” she asked.
“Nothing. Well, something. A detective researched my past.”
“And?”
“He found stuff.”
“Why do I feel like I’m only hearing part of the story?”
In listing the elements making me crazy, I’d left out Katrina and I’d left out Wanda. Ten days ago Wanda had been this thunderhead cloud smothering every thought and action, and now she didn’t matter. Eugene might be a pedophilic psych major, but his plan had worked. My mind was off Wanda.
“What’s the problem you can’t talk about?” I asked.
“I can’t talk about it.”
“Okay.”
“Pete has leukemia.”
The rain made falling-star streaks on the window. Beyond the glass, the Georgia hackberries dripped circles of water onto the lawn and the swimming pool speckled like a pond during a mayfly hatch. I tried to remember if leukemia is always fatal or nearly always fatal.
“He’s had it two years without telling me,” Maurey said. “It’s in remission now, but for some reason, he doesn’t expect it to stay that way. He and Chet argue positive attitude versus acceptance.”
Chet would be the boyfriend Lydia liked. “Is there anything I can do?”
Maurey was silent a few moments. “If he gets worse, I may need you to come home.”
I almost cried. Being needed is what I live for. “I’ll be there.”
“He has no insurance and he’s run up thirty-five thousand in tests and treatments—so far.”
“Don’t worry about the bills.”
“Thank you.” Maurey’s voice broke. “I’m sick of family dying. If I lose Pete, everyone I grew up with will be gone and I’ll be the last, which is a first-degree screw job. I don’t like it, Sam.”
“You still have me and Shannon.”
Now, she was fierce. “You better not abandon me too.”
Bonaparte’s Retreat was a fish and French place way the heck out Randleman Road, nice enough to qualify as special, but not so trendy as to make running into Skip’s golf buddies likely. Sea nets hung from the corners of
