I held them up. “You mean these?”
He smiled and for the first time in days, he seemed stress free. This was the Tom I knew and had come to care about so much. He said, “I’ve got a drugstore pair for reading at night. I keep telling myself it’s those new fluorescent bulbs and not my vision.”
“Right. And my quilt stitches are just getting smaller every day.”
Tom laughed.
Finn said, “I’m taking Yoshi out back to run, okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “The outside lights are to your right before you go out the door.”
As soon as Finn and Yoshi were gone, Tom took me in his arms and kissed me. Then, with me wrapped in his arms, he swayed us and said, “Thank you for everything. Thank you for just being who you are—the most normal, caring person I’ve ever met.”
I pulled back so I could look at him. “Why didn’t you tell me about Finn before? About your marriage, your brothers, all of it?”
“Because I failed,” he said quietly. “I failed Finn, I failed at being married and I couldn’t solve my mother’s alcoholism or my brother’s problems. Another man rescued my mother from her addiction, a man who loved her for who she was. As for Bob? He’s a thief. I was a cop. Those two don’t mix well.”
“I can see how you might feel like calling yourself a failure, but I’m not so sure it’s justified,” I said. “How does it feel getting all of the old business off your chest?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s kind of like hunting through an attic you haven’t visited in years. There’s dust and cobwebs and surprises—and I’m not talking about birthday surprises, either.”
“I want to hear more. How about something to drink?”
“Finn tells me you stocked up on Dr Pepper.” He grinned and opened the fridge. Indeed, the door held can after can of Dr Pepper.
I stuck to sweet tea, but Tom popped the top on the soft drink and made a face after he took a swig. “Never did like this stuff. But if the kid likes it, I can pretend.”
We sat next to each other on the couch and immediately Chablis was in my lap. Did she have doggie radar or something? How did she know Yoshi was outside?
“You think Finn should be outside while his father could still be roaming around Mercy?” I said.
“I’ll give him a few more minutes,” Tom said. “He has the energy of an eighteen-year-old and can’t stay cooped up all the time. Besides, Yoshi will let us all know if there’s a problem.”
“He certainly will,” I said. “While we have a little privacy, why don’t you talk? Clean your attic.”
“My family is complicated,” he said.
“Millions of people know the feeling,” I answered.
He seemed to be staring into the past. “Where do I start?”
“How about chronologically? You’re older than Bob, right?”
He nodded. “My mother married my father in South Carolina back in the ’sixties. He died when I was four. She remarried right away—and Bob and Charlie came along a year later.”
“How soon did she remarry?” I asked.
“Within months,” he said. “Looking back, it was probably too soon. From how she talks about my father, she loved him, but jumped into another relationship right off the bat. Trying to escape the grief, maybe? She’s about as good at sharing her feelings as I am, so I can’t be sure.”
I thought about the grief I felt after losing John. It had paralyzed me, but it sounded as if Karen had taken the opposite approach. “How long did her second marriage last?”
“Couple years. Long enough for her to start drinking. See, my stepfather, Bob and Charlie’s father, Henry Cochran, was a successful businessman. He also drank like a sailor. So my mother joined him for all those cocktails at five. She, unfortunately, couldn’t hold her liquor. Her liquor held her.”
“Things got bad?” I said.
“Brandy in her morning coffee? I’ll say. She’s not a happy drunk, and she and Henry began to argue. Finally she left him when I was in the first grade. People think kids that young don’t understand, but I knew she had big problems.” His jaw muscles clenched, but he went on. “I remember her giving us this speech about new beginnings, but she had three boys to raise. The only thing she knew how to do was party, drink and marry men she didn’t love. I don’t even remember the next two guys we lived with. They paid the bills, though. I graduated high school in, like, the seventh school district I’d been in. Hard to make friends when you’re on the move all the time.”
“You survived, though,” I said. “No, you did more than survive. You found your way.”
“I always knew what I wanted to do. Help people. Fix problems. I was long gone when she met her final husband, Gordon. Went to the police academy in Virginia and stayed out of her life. Stayed away from Bob and Charlie, too.”
“Y’all didn’t get along?”
“That’s putting it mildly,” he said, adding a derisive laugh. “We beat each other up regularly. I stayed pretty angry with Bob. He was a shoplifter, plus he charmed every rich girl he could find. Charlie didn’t piss me off quite as much, but he was a do-nothing. Wouldn’t communicate with anyone, was flunking out of school and finally ran away to New York as soon as he could drive. If Mom had only been sober enough to see how much we were all hurting, maybe things would have been different.”
“But Gordon came along. Someone who finally helped your mother get sober, right?” I said.
“Yup. Don’t know how, but he did. Bob and Charlie and I had all left Mom on her own by then. She cared for Gordon, though I’m not sure she ever loved anyone as much as she loved my father. I’m not sure she even loves her own sons.”
“I don’t buy it, Tom,” I said. “I see how loving she can be—to you and to Finn. I guess that’s the reason I don’t understand her problems with Bob and Charlie.”
“Finn brought Mom and me back together. Like I said, Mom favored him. Loved him from the minute she met him. She finally had the grandchild she always wanted. Bob suddenly reappeared—like he realized he might be shut out, so he had to insert himself back into my mother’s life. Of course, what did he do? He stole the diamond earrings Gordon had given her.”
“Diamond earrings, huh? Are those what he referred to as
“He’s so full of it. For some reason he believed Gordon didn’t buy them. He thought Mom bought the earrings herself, with money she got from his father. See, Bob even lies to himself. True enough, his father had money.” Tom shook his head sadly. “Great guy who eventually died of cirrhosis because he had a worse drinking problem than my mother. She did find out he was sick, tried to help him like Gordon helped her, but it was too late. He left Mom money in his will. More money than he left Bob and Charlie, from what I understand. She never said how much, and I never asked.”
“Bet the reading of the will didn’t go over too well. No wonder Bob’s resentful,” I said.
“The earring theft happened around the time Hilary and I split up. Mom came racing to town—I was in North Carolina by then— and got involved. She thought she’d lose Finn. Bob was living with her at the time—guy’s never had a job for longer than a month. She’d just bought her little house in Mercy. Anyway, he took the earrings while she was gone.”
“He admitted it?” I said.
“I was a cop at the time. I know how to make a suspect talk—and I did. Can’t say I’m proud of how I’ve handled the problems with Hilary or with Bob. I was proud of my mother, however, for throwing Bob out when she discovered her earrings were gone. They were a sobriety anniversary gift. We couldn’t get them back, either. The pawnbroker sold them for cash. No way to find the buyer.”
I said, “You didn’t have your brother arrested, I take it? Because Morris, who’s been around probably since Mercy was founded, never mentioned he even knew about Bob or any legal problems.”
“Bob spent very little time here, never got to know anyone. My mother didn’t want me to turn him in. I reluctantly went along with her.” Tom took a long hit off his soda and made a face like he’d just drank lemon juice. “This stuff is not for me. Anyway, notice she has my father’s name now? She changed it back about the same time she and Bob became estranged. It’s her time machine mentality I was talking about before. When my dad was alive, everything seemed perfect in her mind. She still talks about him like he was a saint. Maybe he was, but I don’t remember him. Obviously his death wounded her enough she went down a dark path for years afterward.”
