A Father for Philip (17 page)

“Not illegal, no, but the man being in a
position to pay out that kind of cash”—it was a dirty word the way Grant said
it—“has to make you wonder, doesn’t it, just where that cash came from? That
place didn’t go cheap. Rick said that’s why he’d had on his books were so long,
and he was so happy to get rid of it he didn’t ask any questions and even gave
the man a deal, as well, by cutting his own commission rate in half.”

Rick Forrest had obviously fallen in
Grant’s estimation. “He claims the guy didn’t so much as try to dicker. Rick
just called old lady Anderson’s granddaughter, told her there’d been an offer,
and she said “Take it.” She didn’t dicker, either.” He spread his hands in
disbelief, and continued.

“Not only did Davidson have the cash to
pay for the place when he came back, but he’d gotten rid of the flashy car, the
expensive clothes, and showed up again in a used truck, with a camper on the
back. He’d dressed down, wore work clothes. Charlie says, and he’s a pretty
shrewd judge of character, there’s something funny in all that. First, the guy
throws money around like he has a tree in of it the backyard, then all of a
sudden pulls in his horns and begins to live almost like a tramp. Charlie
thought maybe the guy figured he was making too big a splash and scared
himself, decided to lie low for a few months.”

“Lie low?” Eleanor knew quite well what
Grant was getting at but took pleasure in poking secret fun at him, just as
David had the other day. Why am I acting like this? I was furious with David
did the same thing… Wasn’t I?

“Yes. Lie low,” Grant repeated. “When a
man comes into a new district, saying nothing of himself, like where he’s from,
what his line of work is, and asks questions about who’s alive and who’s not,
and buys a secluded farm with no really near neighbors—you’re the nearest,
Ellie, and you’re separated from him by the hill and the woodlot, unless you
want to drive around five miles of the big bend in the highway—Where was I? Oh,
yes, well when a man does all that, and all of a sudden begins acting like an
itinerant laborer, no one could be blamed for thinking he’d come by all his
cash dishonestly and was maybe planning to get some more of it just as
dishonestly.”

“Oh! Maybe he’s a counterfeiter? Or a
bank robber? Is that what you’re thinking?”

“It wasn’t me thinking those things,
Ellie. You don’t need to be sarcastic. It was Charlie,” Grant said in a huffy
tone.

“But you must’ve agreed with him, Grant,
or you wouldn’t have come prepared to throw David”—she coughed—“son, out of my
house.” She deliberately stressed the pronoun. The picture of Grant doing that
to David was ludicrous, too funny to contemplate. She pushed it out of her
mind.

“Well…” Said Grant reluctantly, “it did
seem a bit odd, I mean after Charlie pointed it all out to me. I started
worrying about you. And the kid, of course.”

“Of course,” Eleanor murmured dryly.

“You show so little sense, Ellie. You
knew nothing at all about the man, yet you’ve been letting the kid hang around
with him all this time, even let the man come into your home when you were
sick.”

“But if you’ll remember, I thought he
was an imaginary friend, until he did come into my home, and at that point, I
was too sick to do any arguing about it.”

“But you let him stay, Ellie, when I
offered you a nurse to replace him. What kind of sense does that make?”

“None at all, Grant, I guess, except
that… he’s my husband.”

 “Of course none all— He’s your
what?

“My husband. David Jefferson,” she
replied baldly.

“Christ! What do we do now?”

“I don’t know, Grant. I honestly don’t
know what I’m going to do. I was sitting here trying to figure that out when
you came. I let you go on telling me about him in the hopes that it would give
me some clues about him.”

Grant lurched to his feet, strode to the
liquor cabinet—which he had stocked for her, or rather for himself, really, not
liking her scant offering of wines—poured a stiff rye and drank it down
straight. He poured another, then looked over at Eleanor. “Want one?” She shook
her head. She hated whiskey of any kind and he knew it.

“I’ll get you some ice,” she said and
took her time the kitchen to give Grant a few minutes to pull himself together.
I should’ve led up to somehow, she berated herself. I shouldn’t have just
blurted it out like that. But he made me so mad suggesting all those terrible
things about David.

She returned and gave Grant the glass
with three ice cubes bobbing in the whiskey. He took it without thanks and sat
back down. “Well,” he said again, “what do we do now?”

“I don’t see as how there’s anything you
need to do, Grant, and I’ve already told you I don’t know at this point what my
plans are.”

“Why? Why in God’s name did he come back
after all this time?”

“I guess, because he wanted to. He says,
because he loves me.”

“Where has he been?”

“In South America, as far as I know.”

“Why did he stay away so long… He
obviously wasn’t dead.”

Eleanor’s silence was eloquent and Grant
went on more quietly. “Ellie, have you asked him any of those questions?”

“Yes.”

“And he didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“Then what are we doing sitting here
like this? Hell, he’s probably a Colombian drug lord. You’ve got to divorce him,
Ellie. You simply must, now.”

“Not at ten o’clock in the evening,
Grant,” she replied wearily. “I have to think it out.”

“There can’t be anything to think
about,” he yelled.

She hushed him. “My son is sleeping.”

“Ellie,” he went on, though he did lower
his voice, “listen to me. If he won’t even tell you where he’s been, why he
stayed away, then you can’t still want him.”

“Can’t I?” she asked bitterly.

“No, of course you can’t!” Grant said,
his tone that of a man who knew what was best for her. “You may think you do,
and it’s understandable—he’s been your dream for all these years, but dream
time’s over, Ellie. Face facts. If he had loved you, he would have returned.
I’ve invested four years of my time waiting for you and I’m damned if I’ll sit
still and let him have you back after the way he’s treated you. What he’s done
is the most reprehensible thing a man can do. He walked out on you when you
were pregnant, and then when he decided to come back, he made up to the kid
first so you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. After all, what Philip wants,
Philip gets.”

“Now hold on, Grant. I have never given
my son everything he ever wants. He’s not spoiled as you would have everyone
believe. You are the only person in the world he’s failed to take to, and
that’s your fault. As far as I’m concerned, Grant, this is the best moment to
tell you that I will not be giving the slightest thought to marrying you. Not
now, not ever, regardless of what happens between David and me.”

Grant, forgetting germs, measles,
forgetting even his duty to the traveling public, moved with bulldog
determination to Eleanor, caught her under the arms and lifted her to her feet,
holding her with bruising fingers. His face was but an inch from hers as he
grated, “You don’t mean that. You’re just annoyed because you know I’m right
about how you give that damn kid what he wants, not what’s good for him. I
won’t take no for an answer, Ellie. You are my woman and don’t you forget it.
You had what…? A few months with that man? I’ve invested four years waiting for
you and your farm to be mine, Ellie, and—”

“
My
farm?”

He looked momentarily taken aback, as if
he hadn’t meant to say that, but plunged on. “Yes, damn you, your farm. You
know I’ve had my eye on it for some time. I do want you. Of course I do. You’re
a good-looking woman and will make a good hostess for me. You’re not stupid and
can carry on intelligent conversation. I’ve always liked that about you.”

“Well, thanks so much for that,” she
said, trying to jerk away. He reeked of alcohol. “But the farm is more
important, by the sound of it.”

“Not more important, but equally so.
I’ve wanted you and it for a long time. Property is of vast importance to a
businessman looking to expand and that farm is prime property.”

“That farm is in the Agricultural Land
Reserve.”

“You think there aren’t ways to get
around little snags like that? Believe me, nothing like that would hold me
back.”

“Except the fact that I hold title to
the farm,” she reminded him, her voice taut, her head beginning to ache again.

“Once we’re married, of course the farm
will become community property and as I said, I can put that land to much
better use than dairy-farming and growing a truck garden. Oh, you won’t suffer
financially in the deal. I’ll see to that. I’ll give you everything any woman
could possibly want, but I have plans to raze that old house and build another
tourist destination along with the golf course, a—”

“Grant! Listen to what are you saying!
How much did you have to drink before you came here?”

“I’ve said none of this because I had a
few drinks. I’ve said it because it had to be said. Because you needed to hear
it. You are a fool if you think that husband of yours has come back for any
reasons to do with you. Wherever he was, he must have had to run. Run from the
law somewhere—probably a Third World banana republic we don’t won’t let
extradite him because they have the death penalty and we don’t.”

“You have absolutely no reason to think
or to say that. And whatever decision I make about David will be between him
and me.”

“That’s what you think. I have ways to
find out where he’s been and what he’s been up to and why he’s come back.
Believe me, I will find them and I don’t think you’ll like what I find. I don’t
think you’ll want your son to grow up knowing whatever I discover about his
father. And since your precious little boy is more important to you than
anything else in the world, I believe you’ll protect him—even from knowledge
about his father’s past activities.

“So, my sweet little innocent Eleanor,
unless you want darling Philip hurt, you’ll give up any idea of going back to
that crook.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“I don’t make threats, Ellie, I make
promises. And when I make a promise, I keep it. I’ll give you one week to make
up your mind.” He shook her once then shoved her hard back into her chair and
strode off into the night.

~ * ~

The weekend was long and dismal for
Eleanor. Her son and the puppy spent every waking hour with David and she was
left to recover her strength by sitting in the rose arbor brooding. The dull
hum of the bees droning in the scented air, the warmth of the late June sun and
the residue of weakness from her days in bed made any profound thoughts
difficult to hold onto.

She worried over her conversation with
Grant on the Friday evening. Did owe him something for the four years he’d
“invested” in her as he put it, and if so, what? Consideration, respect? She’d
thought she did until he’d let slip that the farm had been as important to him
as she herself, so no, she owed him nothing. Nada. Zilch! But, on the other
hand, did she owe David consideration? Respect? She did not know yet her heart
told her she owed David to Philip. Her son deserved the father whom he loved
above everything, herself included, she sometimes thought, even if the child
did not know that man he called Jeff was his father. He would have to know
sooner or later.

Something else Grant had mentioned a
while back popped into her mind. Philip, in what seemed like a horrifyingly
short time, would be leaving her. If she continued to find it impossible to
accept David back on his terms, then she was in for a good many long, lonely
years. These thoughts, and more like them, kept her company all weekend, except
for a brief spell on Sunday afternoon when she moved out to the shade of an
apple tree in the small orchard near the cottage. David, determined, it seemed,
to go on making improvements on the place which he’d claimed needed a man’s
attention, was cutting the long grass with a scythe.

The grass under the trees was in
deplorable condition, Eleanor had to admit. She hadn’t trimmed it since early
spring when it first began to stand up again grow tall after its winter
snow-cover. She sat and watched David working with her father’s old scythe,
making steady progress in neat swaths from tree to tree. It was the sweet scent
of the newly mown grass that brought the lump to her throat, she thought, not
the sight of the smooth muscles rippling under David’s darkly tanned skin, or
the sight of her son working sturdily beside him. Philip was using a sickle—a
tool she’d kept well out of his reach—but he was using it carefully, trimming
near the trunks of trees were David could not go with the longer blade.
Clearly, David had taught him how, which was what she would have done—in three
or four years, maybe.

While they worked, David talked to the
boy. “Take it easy, sport. Slow and easy. If you take gouges out of the bark it
hurts the trees.”

“Will they bleed? Do trees have blood?”

“In a way. It’s called sap and they need
it just like we need blood. It’s what keeps them alive.”