McCorkle looked at Haynes. “Can this be June?”
He smiled. “For some perhaps.”
“A diplomat,” she said to Haynes and turned again to McCorkle. “My junior year?”
“At Heidelberg.”
“Well, there’s this very nice little man down in the basement of an administration building who, armed with nothing more than a Radio Shack computer, just happened to be running my midterm records through it and discovered I hadn’t been given nearly enough credits for the Heidelberg year. In fact, I have more than I need for a degree. So I said
McCorkle rose, went around the desk and gave his daughter a long hug. “I’m awfully damned proud of you.”
“You’re also off the fees and tuition hook.”
“And now your mother can have her warm winter coat.”
Her alarmingly sunny smile reappeared. “Where’s Mike?”
“He went for a swim,” McCorkle said. “Are you okay for dinner?”
“Of course. I only wish Mutti were here.”
“We’ll call her.”
“Around ten. It’ll be around three in the morning there. She’ll love that.”
His daughter went up on her toes to give McCorkle a quick kiss, turned to Haynes and said, “I’m glad we met. Steady spoke of you often.”
“I have to be going, too,” Haynes said.
“Can I give you a lift?”
He smiled then, the smile that McCorkle suspected could melt both rocks and female hearts. “If you’re heading out Connecticut.”
“Let’s go,” she said.
The sudden discomfort McCorkle felt as they left was in the region where his heart was supposed to be. For a moment he experienced a mild shortness of breath. The symptoms vanished as quickly as they came and McCorkle found himself hoping it was his first angina. If it weren’t, then he knew he had just suffered his first serious attack of male parentitis.
Padillo entered the office twenty minutes later to find McCorkle sitting at the partners desk, glumly drinking Irish whiskey.
“Somebody else die?” Padillo said as he located a glass and poured himself a measure of Bushmills.
“Childhood,” McCorkle said.
“Well, it couldn’t last forever—not even yours.”
“Erika’s. They somehow messed up her college credits and discovered she had more than enough to graduate now instead of in June. We’re celebrating tonight. You’re invited.”
“You’re sure it’s a celebration and not a memorial service?”
“You didn’t see the smile,” McCorkle said, once more staring into his glass.
“What smile?”
“The one Haynes gave her.”
“Ah. That one.”
“Exactly.”
“Don’t worry,” Padillo said. “The Haynes kid is four or five times as smart as his old man ever was, which is very bright indeed, and maybe ten times as honest, which brings him up to about average. But if you really need something to brood about these long January nights, think on this: who does Granville Haynes remind you of—other than Steady? Take your time.”
McCorkle continued to stare down into his drink. He was still staring down into it fifteen seconds later when he said, “Of you.”
“And somebody else.”
“Who?”
“Yourself,” Padillo said.
McCorkle only grunted.
“Erika could do worse,” Padillo said.
McCorkle finally looked up. “How?”
Chapter 8
They scarcely talked until Erika McCorkle stopped her five-year-old Oldsmobile Cutlass for a red light at Connecticut and R. She indicated the venerable Schwartz drugstore on the intersection’s northwest
