be home by eleven.'
I was on my way to my car a few minutes later when I noticed Warren's truck parked outside Teddy's bar. I guessed that he was probably drinking earlier and earlier, his usual pattern before plunging into a full-blown binge. In the past, I'd never been able to prevent his periodic dives, and because of that I had more or less stopped trying. But suddenly, faced with my own family problems, I found that I could see his more clearly. The contempt my father had so relentlessly heaped upon him had stolen away any shred of self-confidence he might otherwise have grasped, then the tragedy of Jennys death, and after that, my mother's fatal accident. Perhaps, I told myself, he was not so much one of life's pathetic losers, as simply a man who had lost a lot.
He was sitting in the back booth, his paint-spattered hands wrapped around a mug of beer.
'Hey, Bro,' he said as I slid into the seat opposite him. He lifted the beer. 'Want a frosty?'
I shook my head. 'No, I don't have much time. Meredith's working late, so I have to get home, make dinner for Keith.'
He took a sip of the beer. 'So,' he said. 'How's tricks?'
I shrugged. 'The same.'
'And this thing with Keith?'
'I have the feeling the cops are focusing on him.' I added no further details, and typically, Warren didn't ask.
Instead he said, 'They jump to conclusions, the cops. It only takes some little thing.' He laughed. 'But, that's the way we all are, right? Obsessed.'
'Why do you say that?'
'You know, the way some crazy idea won't stop nagging at a guy.'
Warren often spoke of himself in the third person, as 'a guy.'
'What crazy idea is nagging at you, Warren?' I asked.
I thought it was probably something about Keith, but I was wrong.
'For some reason I keep thinking about Mom,' Warren said. 'You know, how upset she was toward the end.'
'Well, why wouldn't she be?' I said. 'She was losing her house.'
'That wasn't it,' Warren said. 'She never liked that house.'
'She never liked the house?'
'No, she hated it,' Warren said. He took a sip of beer. 'It was too big, she said, too much to take care of.'
'I didn't know she felt that way,' I said.
'The house was for Dad,' Warren said. 'Part of the show. He wanted it because it made people think he was a big important guy.' He glanced away, then back to me. 'You seen him lately?'
'I see him every Thursday.'
Warren smiled. 'Dutiful,' he said. 'You've always been dutiful with Dad.'
He made duty sound oddly disreputable. 'I don't want him to feel abandoned, if that's what you mean.'
Warren took a hard pull on the beer. 'I dropped in on him this morning,' he said. He looked at me with a bitter grin. 'He said he never wanted to see me again.'
'What? Why?'
'Because of what I told you, that insurance guy.'
'Dad doesn't want to see you again because of that?' I asked unbelievingly.
'Yup,' Warren said, now trying to make light of it. 'Funny world, huh, Eric?'
I waved my hand. 'He'll get over it.'
Warren shook his head adamantly. 'No, he won't. Not this time. I really pissed him off.'
'But it was nothing,' I argued.
'Not to Dad,' Warren said. 'He got in a real lather about it.'
I recalled the look on my father's face when I'd broached the same subject with him, and suddenly I realized that the part of me that wished to avoid things, the part Meredith had long recognized, was dead. My suspicion had begun with a subtle itch, but now it was a raging affliction, a thousand bleeding sores I couldn't stop digging at.
'What's he hiding, Warren?' I asked bluntly.
Warren's eyes fell toward his hands.
'Warren?'
He shrugged.
I leaned toward him. 'You were there that summer,' I said. 'What happened?'
Warren looked up shyly. 'Dad thought she did something,' he said. 'Mom.' He glanced about as if to make sure no one else was listening. 'Something with this other guy. 'You know what I mean.'
'Mom?' I was astonished. 'What other guy?'
Warren took a sip. 'Jason Benefield. The family lawyer, remember? Used to come over with papers for this or that.'
I recalled him as a tall, well-dressed, and very courtly man with a great shock of gray hair, handsome in the way of old boats, rugged, worn, but graceful.
'Do you think it was true, what Dad thought?' I asked.
'Maybe,' Warren said. He saw the surprise in my face, how little I'd believed it possible that he noticed anything. 'I'm not stupid, Eric,' he said. 'I can see things.'
'What did you see exactly?'
'That Mom was ... that she liked this guy,' Warren answered. 'And that he felt the same way about her.' He finished the drink and waved for another. 'At first I didn't know what to think about it, you know? Mom and this guy. But then I knew how Dad treated her, like she was nothing except when his cronies came over. And so I just thought, Well, okay, good for Mom, you know?'
Peg arrived with Warren's beer. He smiled at her, but she didn't smile back.
'Bitch, huh?' Warren muttered after she'd stepped away. 'But then, they all are, right?' He gave a quick self- mocking laugh. 'At least to me.'
'What made Dad suspect her?'
Warren ran his fingers through what was left of his hair. 'Somebody tipped him off.'
'Who?'
He hesitated, and so I knew I wouldn't like the answer, but comfort no longer mattered to me. 'Who?' I repeated sternly.
'Aunt Emma,' Warren answered. He took a long drink, glanced into the dying foam, then looked at me. 'She saw Mom and Jason together. I mean, not in a bad way. Like in bed, or something like that. Mom would never have done anything, you know, at home. But one day Aunt Emma came over to bring some tomatoes from her garden. She heard Mom and this guy talking.' He shrugged. 'You know, the way people talk when there's something between them. You don't have to hear the words.'
'And Aunt Emma told Dad?'
Warren nodded, returned his gaze to the glass, remained silent for a moment, then looked up. 'He beat the hell out of her, Eric. I knew it was coming, so I took off. When I got back, Dad was sitting in the living room, drinking. Mom was upstairs. She didn't come down until the next morning. That's when I saw what he'd done to her.' He seemed to return to that grim day. 'I got real upset. I wanted to hit him. Like he hit her. I wanted to beat the shit out of him.' He shook his head. 'But I didn't do anything. I didn't even mention it.' His eyes glistened slightly. 'I never had any nerve, Eric. All Dad had to do was look at me, and I crumbled.'
I shook my head. 'I had no idea about any of this.'
Warren nodded. 'You couldn't have done anything, anyway. Nobody could do anything with Dad. Besides, he was good to you.'
'Yes, to me,' I admitted. 'But you had to—'
Warren waved his hand to silence me. 'Oh, don't worry about me and Dad. Then or now. Hell, I don't care if I never see him again.' He took a long pull on the beer, one that left no doubt that it was my father's anger that had hurled him off the wagon. 'Water under the bridge.'
Except that it wasn't. At least not for me.
