tell you in person that I'm sorry I got you so upset last night.'
'You're making me feel worse. I was a total jerk.'
'Fine, let's put last night behind us, and I won't make any apologies.
What I'm trying to say is that I'll try not to let my own hang-ups get
in the way '
'Dad, you don't have any hang-ups '
'Please, Sammy, let me finish. All I was saying was that this woman
was surrounded by powerful people. I may not have stuck it out as a
cop, but I saw enough to know you'll be looking long and hard at
everything she was involved in. If you wind up stumbling onto
something, they'll make your life a living hell.'
So that's what this had been about. Dad wasn't afraid I'd get chased
around the city again by a wing nut he was worried some cabal of
'powerful people' would target me for annihilation. As long as I've
known him, Dad has had an almost delusional distrust of those who find
themselves at the top of the hierarchy of influence. I typically find
this characteristic endearing, but occasionally it makes me crazy. Like
at my rehearsal dinner in Manhattan, when he was so cold to my now
ex-husband's 'blue-blood' parents that I was afraid Roger was going to
call off the wedding. OK, in retrospect, that wouldn't have been so
bad. But now he was letting his paranoia get in the way of his pride
in my career.
I shook my head in disbelief. Part of me wanted to unleash to tell him
how much I resented the guilt I'd felt all day about last night, to
tell him he could keep his supposed apology. It only served to raise
the issue again in a whole new light. But I didn't want to say
anything that I'd regret.
Instead, I kept a measured voice. 'Dad, I told you before that the MCU
is where I want to be. That means I'll be dealing with bad guys, and
if some of them happen to be important and influential, so be it. In
fact, I would think that you'd prefer me to prosecute the
privileged.'
'I obviously didn't do very well getting my point across. I was trying
to explain what my worries had been, but that I know that you're going
to be better than I was at handling the pressures that might come with
a case like this.'
'Oh, come on, Dad. You know that's not true.'
'No,' he said, 'you said it last night I hung up OSP.'
'You were in a different situation. You had a wife, a child.' He
shook his head, and I could tell he wanted me to drop the pep talk. 'I
was old enough to remember what it was like. Mom was pressuring you
'
I stopped mid-sentence when I saw the look on his face. It was clear
I'd said something wrong.
'I'm not sure what you think you remember, sweetheart, but your mother
never pressured me.'
'Dad, it's OK. It doesn't make me think any less of her. She was
worried about you getting hurt.'
'Sam, just stop it. You don't know what you're talking about.'
'Then why did you leave OSP?' I asked. Once again, this conversation
was getting us nowhere.
'I don't want to talk about it. Let's get dinner started.'
Everyone close to me Grace, Chuck, Roger (back in the day) has always
complained that I change the subject when the going gets rough. I
guess it runs in the family.
'Not yet. I want to know what this is about. You're upset, and it
apparently has something to do with why you moved over to the forest
service.'
'I promised I would support you in your job, and I'm going to keep my
promise. Let's just leave it at that.'
'Dad, I remember you and Mom arguing right around when you changed
jobs. It was the only time you did argue, in fact. You tried to keep
it from me, but I'd hear you in your room '
He laughed. 'If you think we didn't argue over the years, we kept it
from you better than we thought.'
'Thick walls,' I said, knocking on the one behind me. He was changing
the subject again, and not very convincingly either. My parents'
marriage had been as solid as they come. Even before I made the
mistake of walking down the aisle of doom with Roger, I'd known that
we'd never come close.
Whatever was going on now, I could prod Dad all night and he would
still never budge. So I grabbed a bag of vegetables from the counter
and began chopping.
By the time Chuck arrived, the salad was tossed and the salmon was
