by Melody Clark
“You found out I hid your case,” Ken said simply.
Edward removed one of the two meal cartons from the bigger box and handed it to Ken. “You care to tell me why?” he asked, sitting down with his own carton.
Ken joined him in a chair at the table. He set down his breakfast before meeting his old friend’s eyes. “You want to tell me why you need it so badly?”
Edward laughed his sad, strained little laugh. He shook his head and opened his breakfast. He munched with perfunctory precision on a slice of toast. “I don’t generally pull rank on you, but I should point out that I don’t have to tell you anything, Ken. You’re my assistant.”
“I’m also your friend. Your good friend. For a lot of years.”
“Then be my friend and don’t prevent me from doing what I have to do. I have a ton of work ahead of me. I’m the only one who can do it. Those poor pool programmers my father brings in can’t handle this level of code. Can you?”
“There are more important things than doing this job,” Ken said. “Such as your health.”
“My allergy medications –”
“This isn’t about your damned allergy pills and you know it!” Ken snapped.
Edward looked away, finishing that piece of toast before picking up another. It took him that long to softly manage a reply, “Your big paycheck relies on my ability to work this hard. It always has.”
Ken slouched gradually back in his chair, like a man melting against his own resolve. He folded his arms tightly, kicking at something under the table. “You don’t think I know that? I have enough trouble sleeping because of it. Eddie, you’re one of the kindest and most generous guys I’ve ever known in my life. I will not stand back and watch you become as crazy as Wendell – or die trying. It’s one way or the other. There is no in-between. You have to know that by now. You’re smart enough to know you need help.”
“Can you afford for me to go cold turkey?” Edward asked. “I slept all those hours. Do you know why?”
“Because you’re crashing,” Ken said.
“Exactly. I can’t do this without my pills.”
“You don’t know that, you’ve never tried. That’s the addict talking –”
“I do know that! If you don’t give me what I need to continue, I won’t be able to do what my father demands of me. I have to do what my father demands of me or you don’t get paid. No one gets paid. I am the fucking front dog on the sled. It’s as simple as that.”
Ken craned his neck backward, staring up at the ceiling. Finally, he shook his head. “No, I won’t give you those drugs. I have arranged for something herbal –”
“Herbal? You can’t be serious!”
“They’re still chemicals. It’s a concentration of stimulants, Eddie. It’s supposed to be powerful, but it’s not as dangerous as the uppers and downers.”
“It’s not as dangerous so it’s not as effective.”
Ken looked him directly in the eye. “It will give you a boost – that and your energy drinks and caffeine, it will be enough to bring you to a reasonably normal cognitive level. I’ve talked to a doctor –”
“Who doesn’t know me? Who’s never examined me? Who has no idea of the huge tolerance I’ve built up?”
“I told him the basics. He assured me that, as long as you eat and sleep normally, you should be able to function at a reasonable level.”
“Reasonable to who?” Edward asked, doing minimal damage to his eggs.
“To most reasonable people,” Ken said, “and he says we need to get you into rehab as soon as humanly possible.”
“Wait, you said a doctor? You don’t mean Tad, do you?” Edward asked, throwing down his fork.
“No, not Tad. But if you don’t do as I ask, I’ll not only tell Tad all about your addictions – I’ll tell the whole Croftdon family. Everyone. In front of you even.”
“I would sooner die,” Edward said.
“I know that. So do what I ask and I won’t be forced to go that far,” Ken replied.
“And what if I can’t do what I have to do?”
Ken exhaled slowly, sweeping back his long black hair. “If you can’t – if you really can’t – I’ll reconsider then. And by the way, I called up and put a freeze on Tyana’s instructions from Arvo. If you don’t play fair with me, I swear to God, Eddie, I will tell all the Croftdons about everything. Your workload, your drugs, your breakdown –”
“All right,” Edward said, biting numbly at a piece of bacon. “I don’t have any other choice. I’ll play by your rules. I just hope I can finish this bridging project with any degree of quality. The whole project depends upon the two systems fitting together.”
“You’ll get it done,” Ken said.
“I had better. For both our sakes.”
Edward had to admit he had benefited noticeably from food and sleep. The slow and quiet drive, despite Arvo nattering while at the wheel, also helped. The breeze through the windows had calmed him despite the direction they were headed. Edward reached for his laptop out of the back.
“I still don’t like the idea of Ken contradicting –”
“It’s not your call, Arvo,” Edward said again.
“I just want to be on the record.”
“Already noted.”
Arvo scowled a little as he squinted at the road ahead. “I’ll be out here until I talk to New York. Then I’ll setup in the front great room like yesterday. If I see you being extensively interfered with by those people, I will step in and intervene, per my orders. I am to allow minimal interaction between you and the Croftdons.”
“I know that,” Edward said, as the car slowed down before Croftdon House.
Arvo looked at him for a moment. “How you feeling?”
“Like I’m going to a new high school on the first day. And I’m a freshman. With a target on my chest.”
“Hang tough,” Arvo said.
“Yeah, right,” Edward replied, opening his door and forcing himself to leave the car.
The herbal crap that Ken had found for him basically turned the mental night light on in his head, and Eddie suspected that might be his imagination. All the gains made the day before yesterday had been lost. All the minimal comfort he had amassed at being inside the house had evaporated. He felt like a stranger again. And more than that, a stranger who had lost face. In fact, he felt weaker than he had the day before, when he had walked into the home of the people who had rejected him at birth.
He knocked at the door. He shut his eyes and prayed to gods in which he didn’t believe for the door to be opened by Andrew.
The door opened and his eyelids lifted. An old man stared out at him. A staunchly polite if vaguely arrogant glare beamed back at him. It made everything so much better, Edward thought, adrift in an inner sea of sarcasm.
“You must be Edward,” the old man said, stepping aside for him to enter, “I was told you might grace us with your presence today. It seems we missed you yesterday.”
“You must be Mr. Croftdon. And that couldn’t be helped, sir,” Edward said, keeping his voice as flat and even as possible as he walked into this most frightening of houses.
“I trust that won’t be happening again,” the old man said, closing the door with a heavy thunk that almost sounded like a prison door closing.
“I trust it won’t, no,” Edward said, “however, I’m not an employee. I’m an independent contractor from a collaborating company. Our agreement states that the schedule may be subject to change.”
“I understand that, young man,” John Croftdon said, “I merely wish to be clear with you about my expectations of your work ethic. Your adopted grandfather was a great friend of mine. He was a highly disciplined person. I am also a businessman of rigorous standards of personal conduct.”
“As am I.”
“You had better be,” John Croftdon said, pulling a folded group of papers from his pocket.
“Mind you, I had your DNA tested to be certain we weren’t being sent a ringer, even though my son and his wife have kept tabs on you through the years, to be certain of your whereabouts. When dealing with vast sums of money, there is always the opportunity for fraud. You are indeed Thomas and Faith’s biological son. As such, you’ll be expected to meet rigorous family criteria.”
“You may expect as you wish, Mr. Croftdon,” Edward said. “Is Andrew here?”
“He will be presently. I have things to which to attend. Why don’t you have a seat there and you may wait for him?”
“Thank you,” Edward said, as coolly as possible, as he sat down at the end of a very deep, old chair. As he looked up, his gaze aligned with a photographic portrait, hanging on the wall. It was a woman in what appeared to be a white and yellow silk taffeta dress. Her blonde hair pulled back, it made her seem stately, if a little older than she appeared to be.
Edward knew, somewhere in his marrow, the woman was his mother. It wasn’t the color of her hair, which was his, or the narrow nose or chin, much like his, it was something even deeper.
“Yes, that’s Faith,” a familiar voice behind him said. “That’s our mother.”
Edward smiled around at Andrew. “Thanks, I had wondered.”
“You look a lot like her. As do I. It’s definitely where our hair color comes from.”
“Despite that fact, she’s beautiful,” Edward said laughing, shaking his head at the overwhelming reaction he was having.
“Yes, yes, she was. And more than that, she was a wise and brilliant woman,” Andrew said, sadly. He replaced the sadness with a smile. “You seem to be feeling stronger. When you rang, I spoke with the other people from our working group. They are anxious to hear the full presentation and get started. We have some time to waste so I thought I might show you around the grounds, unless there is something you wanted to work on first?”
Edward was suddenly compelled by a higher impulse. He glanced back at the portrait. “I wonder if I could see our mother’s grave, too.”
Andrew’s gaze grew gentle until he looked away for a moment. “Yes, of course. Certainly. I’m sorry, I should have thought to offer before now.”
With every step he took, Edward felt a little more at ease with the grounds. He followed Andrew out across the backyard into the divided garden that wended one way, while the opposing iteration of it unfurled into an overgrown ramble. That ramble forked off toward a rugged brick wall.
“This wall to the family plot is very old. It’s part of the lay of the original farm. It’s what gave the Croftdons our name. The original manor is over there.”
They had cleared a high coppice and Edward could now see what had been hidden by the sloping land and the tall trees. An old house. A very old house.
“My god,” Edward murmured, staring at it.
“Yes, that’s Croftdon Farm Mansion, the original home. Some parts of it date back to the fourteenth century. God knows how many generations of our family lived and died there.”
Edward wished he had some mastery over his expression just then. He had no will of his own over it or his words. To read 14th century on paperwork was one thing – to see it, entirely another. “It’s –” he said, incapable of further speech.
“It’s a monster of a money pit is what it is. Just a few weeks ago, Granddad was forced to sell it to a conservancy, just to be able to afford the upkeep on it. Heaven knows where they came from. It’s enough to make you believe in miracles. Plus, we’re still allowed full access to it.”
Edward pressed a hand against his forehead, balancing out the sense of wonder assailing him with a reminder of reality. “The fourteenth century? The 1300s?”
“Yeah, yeah. 1330, 1340 some parts of it.”
Eddie still couldn’t think of a word to express the feelings. Finally, he relented, saying, “There simply aren’t words enough for how astounding that is to me.”
“Really? Well, yes, I suppose it might be from some perspectives,” Andrew said. “I’ve always sort of taken it for granted.”
Edward shook his head, looking back to the other man. “You don’t understand. The oldest thing in my old neighborhood was the ice skating rink. It went all the way back to 1934. The oldest existing European structure in my whole state was built in the mid 17th century. It’s so old in US terms, it’s considered practically prehistoric in America.”
Andrew nodded and yet shook his head, too. “Living with all this history can be a challenge. Watching time erode everything. Trying to manage it. It crumbles away a little every year. But if you think the old house is something, wait until you hear about this. In the far distance, see that gray rock thing shaped like an anchor? Looks like it’s sunk into the ground.”
“Yes, yes, I see.”
“That is a 7th century monument of some kind. One of our ancestors built it. The name was de Croften or something like that back then. The monument is the remains of a crypt. It’s why they built the ancestral croft here in the first place.”
Edward’s mouth dropped open, his eyes widening even more. He took two steps back as if he needed a better vantage point from which to take all of this in.
“That’s astounding,” he said, having folded his arms against a chill that had come upon him not from the air temperature but from another inner shock of astonishment. He laughed and then walked back and forward again, all the while staring at the view in amazement. “I’ve seen Native American structures that are even older, of course, but not European. I’ve never seen anything connected to my immediate ancestors even approaching that antiquity.”
“I have to say, I think living in a new, clean city without age clinging to it would have its merits, too,” Andrew said.
“Probably,” Edward murmured, still staring in awe. “But this is so astonishing on a personal level.”
“Speaking of personal,” Andrew said, as he pointed the way up another path. “We can go see the family plot now, if you like.”
“Yes, of course, lead the way.”
The broken brick wall, that had settled itself into its own attractive symmetry wrought by time and weather, gave way to a gauged wicket on a half-gate that swung easily into the family plot.
“Here she is,” Andrew said softly. “Here is Mum. Impossible to believe it’s been ten years.”
The grave was right and regular, the plot devoid of weeds or encroaching plant life. The square stone that marked its place was a soft coral color: Faith Arlene Stuart-Croftdon, Wife and Mother.
Edward gestured to the grave. “May I touch the stone?”
“Of course.”
Edward knelt at the end of the plot, leaning forward to run his hand over the words etched into the flat marker. “Hello, Mother,” he said softly. “I so wish I could have known you.”
Andrew grinned at him. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you refer to any of us in a familial sense. It makes me feel closer to you.”
Edward smiled softly in return. “I lost my adopted mother when I was a boy. I had always hoped, somehow, that I’d be able to meet Faith one day. When I received word she, too, had died –”
“That must have been terrible.”
“It was.”
“It was awful enough to lose her having known her. Mum was very much the lady. She had an infectious laugh. She loved her horses. When she died, Dad sold the last of them. He couldn’t bear to look at them without her to ride them.”
Edward nodded slowly. “Did she know where I was? What I was doing?”
“Did she know?” Andrew said, laughing. “Eddie, she had a bloody shrine to you. She would show us photographs and read reports from the papers on what you had done. Your latest accomplishments.”
Surprised, Edward stood quickly and turned in Andrew’s direction. “You saw pictures of me?”
“Yes, of course we did. Dozens of them. You didn’t know that?”
“No, I didn’t know for sure that you knew I even existed. I wish I had been shown something substantive about all of you.”
“Well, we’ll just have to make up for that now, won’t we? And I’m sorry to say we really should be going onto the old house. Our grandfather helps fund upkeep by allowing access to private travel companies booking holiday packages. I believe there’s a procession scheduled to run through shortly, and I wouldn’t want us to be trammeled over by tourists during your first visit.”
“I understand,” Edward said, once again leaning over to study the inscription, “may I come back here to visit her at a later time?”
“Whenever you wish, Eddie,” Andrew said. “This whole estate is your home as much as you will have it.”
“Thank you. I really do appreciate that.”
“Shall we look at the old house now?”
