From Father to Son

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Used up one of your nine lives lately?” he asked.

  “Maybe.” Pause. “I got made. Had to dive off a fishing boat into the Sea of Cortez and swim for what seemed like miles with searchlights spinning overhead and bullets pinging every time I came up for air. Here’s the surreal part: I had a whale surface near me. About crapped my very wet pants when it blew.” He sounded cheerful.

  Niall shook his head, laughing and swearing both. He edited Conall’s stories for Duncan’s ears. Duncan didn’t need to know that Conall had what amounted to a death wish. Or maybe he only believed he was immortal, as if he had never matured from a stupid sixteen-year-old kid who played chicken with his buddies out on the highway in the middle of the night.

  Niall had scraped a few of those kids off the pavement when he was on patrol.

  “So how are you?” Conall asked. “Make any good arrests?”

  “I shot a bank robber.” As he told the story, he wondered how many men Conall had killed. Did you eventually get completely inured? He found he didn’t like the idea of the eager toddler he remembered having grown into a man cold-blooded enough not to feel anything when he killed someone.

  “That’s your second kill this year, isn’t it?” Matter-of-fact, merely curious.

  “Yeah. That makes me a statistical anomaly among cops. Most of us go a lifetime without having to use the gun on the job.”

  “It’s not your style,” Con mused.

  “No.” A shriek outside momentarily caught his attention, but he decided it was a happy one. “You should call Duncan,” he said abruptly.

  There was a moment of silence. “Why? Does he have terminal cancer?”

  “His wife is pregnant.”

  This silence felt different. “You’re going to be an uncle,” Conall finally said.

  “We’re going to be uncles.”

  “You can’t tell me Duncan gives a rip if he ever hears from me again.”

  Niall rocked his chair back on two legs. “He always wants to know if I’ve heard from you.”

  “Why do you care?” his brother asked with seeming genuine puzzlement. “You hated the son of a bitch’s guts every bit as much as I did.”

  “No. I pretended I did because I didn’t want to admit to anyone how pathetically grateful I was that he was there.”

  Conall spit out an ugly obscenity. “Don’t give me that shit. Duncan got what he wanted out of it. It was the ultimate high for him. Snap the whip and we had to stumble over our feet falling in line.”

  “No,” Niall said again. “Do you know how much he gave up? How desperately he wanted to be gone? He was more normal than either of us until then. He’d have gone off to college and partied and screwed girls and, yeah, gotten a four-point-O because Duncan didn’t let himself make big mistakes, but he’d have had a life. Mom killed something in him when she did what she did.”

  “That’s bull.” But Conall didn’t sound as sure as he wanted to.

  “We’re getting to be friends.” It felt weird hearing himself say it out loud, but good, too. “Real brothers. I’ve been…remembering. He was good to me when I was little and a pain in the butt. Even later. Do you know how many hours he spent with me helping me develop the shot that got me on the varsity team? How many hours he put in on that heap of junk car making it look good and run, too?”

  “The one he destroyed with a baseball bat?”

  That was a low point, sure. Not so long ago Niall would have said he’d never forgive Duncan for what he did. Maybe he’d truly become an adult at the moment when he realized his brother had done what he did out of love, not rage.

  Niall hadn’t had his license that long, and he’d started rebelling against his brother’s authority. The first six or eight months after Mom ditched them all, Niall had been too dazed to do anything but what Duncan asked. If eighteen-year-old Duncan had shrugged and left for college, Conall, then twelve, would probably have gone to a foster home. Niall, who’d already been in and out of juvenile hall half a dozen times, would have been sent to a group home instead. Even then, he’d known how utterly he would have been screwed. He’d already been lashing out trying to get his mother or father to notice. With any possibility of somebody really giving a damn gone, he’d have been lost. He knew himself well enough to recognize that.

  But he’d gotten cocky, actually believed Duncan would never desert them and that it was safe to rebel. Or else felt that inexplicable need to test Duncan. Are you really here to stay? Into drugs and alcohol and girls and showing how fearless he was by speeding and—yeah, even playing chicken a few times, and winning, too—Niall might as well have walked onto the Burlington Northern train tracks, waved his arms and said, “Here I am,” as the train bore down on him.

  Duncan had yanked him back the only way he could. Conall, too. Conall had been emulating Niall and one-upping him. He’d have been on the train tracks before long, too.

  Duncan grounded Niall, but didn’t ask for his car keys. He pretended not to hear Niall steal out of the house, but he was waiting when Niall got home around three in the morning, piss-faced and triumphant, because what did Duncan think he was going to do about it? Now Niall remembered the other emotions sliding under the surface like Moray eels, a ripple, a frightening dark slide of movement only half-seen. A part of him had been scared that Duncan wouldn’t do anything. That he didn’t care enough to take hard action any more than Mom or Dad had. That night had been Niall’s challenge. Make me clean up my act. Please.

  When he got home and sauntered in, glad to see the lights on in the house but secretly scared, too, Duncan had hauled Con out of bed, grabbed the baseball bat kept in the coat closet, marched both younger brothers out onto the lawn and ordered them to watch. Then he’d laid into Niall’s car. The car Duncan himself had helped lovingly restore. He’d smashed the windshield, the hood, the trunk, the roof. He’d utterly and completely destroyed the car while Niall and Conall stood out in the cold watching in shock.

  It had been the most terrifying spectacle of Niall’s life. Duncan had turned around, said, “You lost the privilege of having a car. From now on, when I tell you to do something, you do it. When I tell you not to do something, you don’t. Got it?”

  Niall had been trembling, Conall crying. Lights had come on in neighbors’ houses; somebody had called the cops, because they could hear an approaching siren. Duncan had had some major explaining to do.

  It was years before Niall realized there had been no explosion of rage. That, in fact, he’d been set up. Duncan had given him every opportunity to screw up because he’d decided the only way he’d keep the upper hand over his brothers was by scaring the shit out of them.

  It worked. It also destroyed any remnants of brotherly camaraderie. They obeyed, and hated him. He’d been willing to pay that price.

  Even then, Niall had loved him, too.

  But Conall, he thought, didn’t. Or had forgotten that he once did.

  “He did what he had to do,” Niall said now. “We wouldn’t have listened to him any other way. Mom let us run wild because she didn’t care enough to do anything about it.”

  “I know that.” Conall’s voice was tight, unforgiving. “I know I should be sending him goddamn Father’s Day cards, but I choose not to, okay?”

  “He’s changed,” Niall tried to explain. “Since he met Jane.”

  “If anything will ever get me back to your little corner of the world, it will be curiosity over how any woman could marry him. Do they have an electric blanket to warm his ice-cold blood at night?”

  He should let it go, but couldn’t. “We wouldn’t have had a chance without him.”

  “I know that!” his brother yelled. He breathed heavily. Controlled his voice if not his fury. Or was it pain? “But I don’t have to see him or talk to him ever again. Don’t t
ry to guilt me into something I won’t do.”

  Niall’s chair dropped back to the floor. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re right,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the past. Seeing it differently. But I don’t have to lay it on you.”

  More silence. He began to wonder if Conall had hung up on him. But then he spoke. “Something’s changed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You. I’ve never heard you sound like this.”

  “I haven’t changed.”

  “You have. God. Don’t tell me it’s a woman.”

  Niall’s gaze involuntarily went to the front window again. He heard a laugh outside. Rowan.

  He made a noise that was supposed to be scathing but didn’t quite come off. “Good thing you’re not a detective.”

  “That’s it.” Conall laughed in disbelief. “Not you. It’s got to be a temporary sickness. You’ll get over it, man. Who needs that kind of shit? Not us.”

  Niall got him off the subject. They talked for a few more minutes before ending the call. He dropped the phone on the table with a thunk and speared his fingers into his hair.

  You’ll get over it, man. It’s got to be a temporary sickness.

  It had to be, he thought desperately. A wife and family… He wouldn’t know what to do with them. How to make it work. How to stick, how to believe she would, that he could trust her not to walk like Mom did.

  How to believe that he himself was more like Duncan than he was like their parents; that he would be capable of sacrifice for people he loved.

  Duncan was all about responsibility. He’d made duty a grim word. But Niall had come to understand that his big brother cared. He would never let Jane down. No matter what. When his kids needed him, he’d be there.

  Niall’s throat felt thick. It was hard to swallow. He had the stunned realization that he’d never believed he had it in him to measure up to the man he admired more than any other in the world: Duncan. He’d spent the past fifteen years or so trying, but he was no closer to believing.

  Or am I?

  The thought was the equivalent of an earthquake, way down deep in his bedrock. Once he’d understood that Duncan loved Jane, Niall would have died to save her for his brother. He would have sacrificed his life if necessary to save the bank teller in the parking lot that day, and he didn’t even know the woman. He knew he’d do the same without question or hesitation for Rowan or her kids.

  If he was willing to do that, could he also change how he lived for them? Give up his solitude, overcome the gut-deep fear of tying himself down to anyone or anything, even a piece of ground and a house?

  He felt as sick as if he had a hangover. He couldn’t believe he was even thinking things like this. He’d kissed Rowan. Twice. Hung out with her and the kids a few times. Lost his head over a minor threat to Desmond. Stepped between her and her in-laws. Her and her dad.

  I want to stand between her and the world, when she needs me.

  And he was out of his flipping mind.

  ROWAN HAD LINGERED in her kitchen as long as she could without it looking weird. She didn’t know why she felt so shy with Niall’s brother and his wife, but she did.

  Yesterday Niall had asked a little awkwardly if he could barbeque in the backyard. “You and the kids can join us,” he’d said. “Jane’s having a baby. She might like to talk to you.”

  Uh-huh. Because she couldn’t find any other woman who’d had a baby before. Like mother, sisters, friends, coworkers, random women in line with her at the grocery store…

  But truthfully, Rowan was curious about his brother and the wife. She’d seen Duncan come and go, exchanged nods and greetings from a distance, but never talked to him. Otherwise Niall never had anyone over. If he got together with friends—or women—it was elsewhere. But here was her chance to be nosy. Maybe understand him better.

  And she was hiding in her kitchen under the pretence of finishing her potato salad and getting drinks for the kids.

  The back door opened and Jane MacLachlan stuck her head in. “Hi. Can I help?”

  At first sight, she’d intimidated Rowan. She seemed so confident. She was beautiful, elegant, graceful and easily six inches taller than Rowan besides. Rowan felt short and squat beside her.

  “Almost done,” she said cheerfully, scraping chopped celery into the bowl from the cutting board. “Sorry. I should have been organized.”

  Jane came the rest of the way into the kitchen, looking to see what she was doing. “Yum. I love potato salad. I brought baked beans. I hope you like them.”

  “One of my favorite foods, except I’ve never made them from scratch.”

  “Surely there’s something I can do.”

  Once they were bustling around the kitchen together, Rowan began to relax. “Your kids are darling. Desmond cracks me up. Is he ever shy?” asked Jane.

  Rowan laughed. “Very, very rarely. He’s the kid you see grinning at total strangers the second he learns how to smile. Anna is a little more suspicious.”

  “I like Anna. I’m more like her.”

  “Me, too,” Rowan admitted. She hesitated and glanced at the other woman. “Um…Niall tells me you’re pregnant.”

  Her hand fluttered briefly to her belly. “I am. Duncan and I gave ourselves almost a year after we got married, then decided to start a family.” She made a face. “I never expected to get pregnant the first month we tried.”

  Rowan grinned at her. “Haven’t you heard? All it takes is once.”

  “I guess I didn’t believe it.”

  “You and every teenager in America.”

  They both laughed.

  “Do you know yet whether you’re having a girl or a boy?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t decided whether I want to know.” She rolled her eyes. “Duncan does, of course.”

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  “He’s a control freak. He comes to every appointment with me and always has this list of questions. My doctor probably dreads seeing us coming. I can hardly wait to see Duncan when I’m in labor. He won’t be able to do a thing but hold my hand, and that will kill him.” She sounded as if she was savoring the notion. Jane’s gaze met Rowan’s. “I love him. I do. It’s just that, uh, he needs taking down a peg or two now and again.”

  “He and Niall look a lot alike.”

  “They do.” Jane propped a hip comfortably against the edge of the counter. The pregnancy showed when her shirt draped right. “Are you asking if they are alike?”

  Rowan nodded.

  “Then my answer is…I don’t know. I don’t think so. Niall doesn’t seem driven to control everyone around him the same way. But the truth is, I don’t feel as if I really know him. I remember one of the first times I met him thinking that he’s surrounded himself with an inpenetrable force field. He was relaxed, pleasant, sexy…” She grinned. “He does look like Duncan, after all. Anyway. I looked into his eyes and absolutely could not tell what he was thinking. Not a hint. I told myself he had his cop face on....”

  Rowan nodded at that; she knew exactly what Jane meant.

  “But if so, he lives behind that face all the time. Or at least, I thought he did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I looked at him a few minutes ago. He had Anna sitting on his shoulders. She was clutching onto his hair and giggling.”

  Rowan had seen out the kitchen window.

  “Meantime, he was roughhousing with Desmond and he was laughing and I had never seen anything like that expression on his face before.” She snitched a carrot stick Rowan had just prepared. “I saw joy.”

  And it awed her, Rowan could tell. She felt that now-familiar constriction in her chest. She ha
d seen both expressions on Niall’s face. Only she hadn’t known how rare that open delight was.

  “I think,” she said, “he really likes the kids. But he’s not sure he should. Sometimes he goes into hiding. We don’t see him for days at a time. It’s as if he can only take so much.”

  “It’s new to him,” Jane said gently.

  “Well, I have to admit I was looking forward to meeting you and Duncan. To give him some context. You know?”

  Jane laughed. “I know.”

  They ferried the rest of the food outside, where Duncan was flipping burgers on the grill while Niall manhandled the shrieking kids and occasionally grabbed the dog when he made a feint for the platter of hamburger patties.

  They all sat at the picnic table, Anna on Rowan’s knee and Des beside Niall, and chattered as they dished up and ate. Rowan watched the two brothers, astonished at a certain way they turned their heads or the echo of a mannerism. If there were major personality differences, they weren’t evident in this setting. Duncan threw back his head and laughed often; Niall told incredibly juvenile jokes that had Desmond in hysterics. Now, how would he know those? she marveled. Once in a while, Rowan intercepted a glance between his brother and Jane that made her cheeks flush. Once she saw him touch Jane with tenderness that made her chest ache with envy. Drew had loved her in his way, but he’d never looked at her like that.

  She’d probably never looked at him the way Jane did at her husband, either.

  Rowan was very careful not to look directly at Niall at all, except when he was talking and everyone was watching him. Those nights he and she had sat out on the porch, she hadn’t been able to see his expressions. Sometimes his voice was so gentle, or it lowered to a deep, velvety texture. When that happened, what would she have been able to see on his face?

  She shivered a little, and concentrated on dishing up more baked beans for herself and Anna both.

  “When are you expecting?” she asked Jane.