adult and had to know for sure one way or the other. Her fiance had been unfaithful, and if she’d caught him in the closet with a woman, she would have made the call too. Cheating was cheating. And despite what Sebastian had said, the fact that she didn’t have male “equipment” didn’t make it easier.
Her forehead felt tight and she raised her hands and massaged her temples. It wasn’t even ten A.M. and she had a massive headache. Her life was a mess and it was all Lonny’s fault. She had to get tested for something that could take her life, and she wasn’t the one who’d messed around. She was monogamous. Always. She didn’t hop into bed with…
Sebastian.
Her hands fell to her lap. She had to tell Sebastian. The thought made her throbbing temples just about burst. She didn’t know if they’d used a condom, and she had to tell him.
Or not. More than likely the test would be negative. She should wait to say anything until she found out the results herself. She probably wouldn’t have to tell him at all. What were the chances he’d have sex with someone else between now and Thursday? A vison of him dropping his towel entered her head.
Very likely, she concluded, and reached for a bottle of aspirin she kept in her desk drawer.
Four
Sebastian reread what he’d written and scrubbed his face with his hands. What he’d written wasn’t so much
He stood and sent the kitchen chair sliding across the hardwood floor. He didn’t understand it. He had his notes, an outline in his head, and a good workable nut graf. All he had to do was sit down and write a decent lead. “Fuck!” Something that felt a lot like fear bit the back of his throat and chewed its way down to his stomach. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
“Is there a problem?”
He took a deep breath and let it out as he turned and looked at his father standing just inside the back doorway. “No. No problem.” Not any that he’d admit out loud, anyway. He’d get the lead paragraph. He would. He’d just never faced this kind of problem before, but he’d work it out. He moved to the refrigerator, reached inside and pulled out a carton of orange juice. He would have preferred a beer, but it wasn’t even noon. The day he started drinking in the morning was the day he knew he had to truly worry about himself.
He lifted the carton to his mouth and took several long swallows. The cool juice hit the back of his throat and washed away the taste of panic in his mouth. He raised his gaze from the end of the carton to a wooden duck resting on top of the refrigerator. The brass plate identified the duck as an American wigeon. A Carolina wood duck and northern pintail rested above the fireplace in the living room. There were various wooden birds about the house, and Sebastian wondered when the old man had become so fascinated with ducks. He lowered the juice and glanced at his father, who was watching him from beneath the brim of his hat. “Do you need help with anything?” Sebastian asked.
“If you have a moment, you could give me a hand moving something for Mrs. Wingate. But I hate to interrupt you when you’re hard at work.”
He would give his left nut to be hard at work instead of writing and deleting the lead paragraph over and over. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and returned the carton to the refrigerator. “What does she want moved?” he asked, and shut the door.
“A sideboard.”
He didn’t know what the hell a sideboard was, but it sounded heavy. Like something to take his mind off his looming deadline and his inability to string together three cohesive sentences.
He moved across the small kitchen and followed his father out the door. Old elm and oak trees shaded the grounds and white iron furniture in deep shadowy patches. Sebastian walked beside his father across the yard shoulder-to-shoulder. A perfect picture of father and son, but the picture was far from perfect.
“It’s going to be nice today,” Sebastian said as they passed a silver Lexus parked next to Sebastian’s Land Cruiser.
“The weatherman said in the low nineties,” Leo replied.
Then they fell into an uncomfortable silence that seemed to blanket most attempts at conversation. Sebastian didn’t know why he was having such a difficult time talking to the old man. He’d interviewed heads of state, mass killers as well as religious and military leaders, yet he couldn’t think of one damn thing to say to his own father beyond making a perfunctory comment on the weather or having a superficial conversation about dinner. Obviously, his father found it just as difficult to talk to him.
Together they walked toward the back of the main house. For some reason Sebastian couldn’t explain, he tucked the ends of his gray Molson T-shirt into his Levi’s and finger-combed his hair. Looking up at all that limestone, he felt like he was heading into church, and suppressed the urge to cross himself. As if he felt it too, Leo reached for his hat and pulled it from his head.
The hinges on the back door squeaked as Leo held open the door, and the sound of their boot heels filled the silence as the two of them continued up a set of stone steps and into the kitchen. It was too late for them. His father was just as uncomfortable being around him as he was being around his father. He should just leave, he thought. Put them both out of their misery. He didn’t know why he’d come, and it wasn’t as if he didn’t have anything else to do besides sit around and not communicate with his father. There was a lot waiting for him in Washington State. He had to get his mother’s house ready to put on the market, and he had to get on with his life. He’d been here three days now. Enough time to open a dialogue. Only it wasn’t happening. He’d help his father move the sideboard and then go pack his things.
A huge butcher’s block dominated the middle of the kitchen, and Leo tossed his hat on the scarred top as he passed. White cabinets lined the walls from the floor to the twelve-foot ceiling, and late-morning sunlight spilled through the windows and shined off of stainless steel appliances. The heels of Sebastian’s Gortex hiking boots thudded across the old black and white tiles as he and his father walked through the kitchen and headed into a formal dining room. A huge vase of fresh-cut flowers sat in the center of a twenty-foot table covered in red damask cloth. The furniture, the windows and drapes, all reminded him of something he’d see in a museum. Polished and well-tended. It smelled like a museum too. Cold and a little musty.
A thick area rug muffled their footsteps as he and his father made their way toward an ornately carved piece of furniture on one wall. It had long spindly legs and a few fancy drawers. “I take it this is a sideboard.”
“Yes. It’s French and very old. It’s been in Mrs. Wingate’s family for more than a hundred years,” Leo said as he removed a big silver tea service from the sideboard and set it on the table.
Sebastian had figured it was an antique and was not at all surprised that it was French. He preferred clean modern lines and comfort over old and fussy. “Where are we moving it?”
Leo pointed to a wall next to the doorway, and each of them grabbed an end of the sideboard. The piece wasn’t heavy, and the two of them moved it easily. As they set it down in its new place, Joyce Wingate’s raised voice carried from the next room. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t know what to do,” a second voice Sebastian recognized answered. “I was in shock,” Clare added. “And I just left the house and went to Lucy’s wedding.”
“This doesn’t make any sense. How does a man just go gay? Out of the blue?”
Sebastian looked at his father, who moved to the tea service and got busy arranging the silver sugar bowl and creamer.
“A man doesn’t ‘go gay,’ Mother. In hindsight, the signs were all there.”
“What signs? I didn’t see any signs.”
