Honesty - SF8 (26 page)

Ryan stood behind him, turning her head to survey her home as he did. She saw a tidy, organized space, completely devoid of any attempt to decorate in the traditional sense. The rooms looked like they had been furnished to stand up to a significant amount of rough use, and in fact, they had been. The fabrics were sturdy and man-made, the carpet the thin-piled industrial variety. Family photos were the main decoration, and they littered every bookcase and horizontal surface. A woman's touch was largely absent, even the colors looking like they were made to appeal to a masculine taste. Letting the images roll around in her mind, Ryan fought with the small inner voice that mocked the home her father had lovingly created for her and her brothers, knowing that Jim Evans’ servants enjoyed a much more opulent lifestyle.

"This is the longest I’ve ever been away from her." The words came from just a few feet in front of her, but she could barely hear them, his voice was so soft. "Is that her…
your…
room?" he asked, jerking his head towards Martin’s bedroom.

Taken aback by his odd demeanor, Ryan shook her head. "No. We…uh…our room is downstairs."

He cocked his head, torn between the business he had come to attend to and the deep longing that had hit him the minute he'd entered this unfamiliar space. "Can I see it?"

"Why…uh…well, sure, I guess so," she said, having no idea what was going through his mind. With Duffy right on her heels, she led the way, stopping uncertainly in the center of her room, watching Jim pace slowly around the perimeter.

He took in their bed, the center visibly sagging from years of use. Ryan had never told Jamie the history of the piece, but the bed had once belonged to her parents. After her mother died, her father had been unable to sleep in the bed he had shared with his beloved wife, the memories of their nights together giving him horrible insomnia. Eventually, he consigned the bed to the basement room and bought a new one for himself. Since the original had been a wedding present, the bed she and Jamie slept on was a full thirty years old, something that she knew would horrify her partner. The comforter was nearly as old, but the sheets were a more recent vintage, no more than six or seven years, if she recalled correctly.

As he leaned over and fingered the thin, faded pillowcase he mused, almost to himself. "You think you know her, but you don’t. She doesn’t even know herself." He gave Ryan a long look and said, "Maybe you don’t want her money." Looking away, he turned back to the bed and allowed, "Maybe you do have some pride, Ryan." A long, heavy sigh issued from his lungs as he added, "Either way, it really doesn’t matter. If you want her money, I’ll see to it that you don’t get it. If you don’t take the money that she’ll want to spend on you, she’ll eventually get tired of living like…this…and she’ll abandon you."

Unable to hold her tongue, Ryan said, "It’s not things that make her happy, Jim. If you really knew her, that would never cross your mind."

Laughing softly he said, "Ahh, the confidence of youth." Walking around the room he looked at each item of furniture, noting that no two pieces had any stylistic connection to each other. "So things don’t mean anything to her, eh Ryan? Then why does she insist that her mother buy her a new set of hand-woven linen sheets for Christmas every year? Why did we have to have our butter and fresh cheeses overnighted from France once a week? Why does she have most of her dresses custom made? Why did I just see a bill for over $25,000 for the little shopping spree that my wife took her on during their Newport trip?" Noticing the glimmer of surprise in the vivid blue eyes he sneered, "You didn’t think that she actually lived on that $2,500 a month that I give her for her allowance, did you?"

The look on Ryan’s face revealed that was exactly what she thought, and Jim knew that he had set the hook. "Did she ever tell you about her 20
^th
birthday present?" Ryan shook her head, still reeling from the details of Jamie’s spending that she had known nothing about. "We thought we’d have a small party at our home, you know, just Jack and her grandfather, but Jamie insisted that she wanted a memorable day. Of course, since we give her anything that she wants, we acquiesced to her wishes."

He stood in the room, looking very smug, waiting for her to ask him to finish the story. She did not, crossing her arms over her chest, waiting for him to complete his little game. Realizing that she was not going to rise to the bait, he continued, "She wanted to have dinner at Alain Ducasse in Paris, a Michelin three-star restaurant," he added, since he knew she would not recognize the name. "Her birthday falls in the middle of the term, so she didn’t have much time and we had to take the Concorde from Washington. In essence, Ryan, my little girl wanted a $40,000 dinner for her birthday, and that’s exactly what she got. I defy you to consider the facts and tell me that she doesn’t care for
things
."

For just a moment, Ryan allowed herself to be carried away by his arguments. Images of herself and Jamie in an opulent home, surrounded by servants, started to make her heart beat faster, and she had an irrational panic that he partner would, over time, require a more and more lavish lifestyle to be happy. To avoid having to look Jim in the eye, she walked to the far corner of the room, trying to collect her thoughts. Her eyes slid up the bookcase, falling upon two framed pictures. All at once, it hit her, and she blinked slowly, surprised that she'd had even a moment’s doubt. Lifting both photographs, she extended one in his direction, waiting for him to accept it.

He gave her a slightly puzzled look, but gazed at the photo, smiling involuntarily as he did so. He, Jamie, and Catherine, all dressed very stylishly, smiled into the camera. They were sitting in a very elegant restaurant, all holding crystal flutes filled with what looked to be champagne. An array of dishes lay before them, the beautifully prepared food just waiting to be consumed. Jim had left his chair and was nestled between his wife and daughter in order to fit into the field of vision of the lens. One arm was wrapped around each woman, and both blonde heads were inclined slightly towards him, both women wearing nearly identical, obviously studied smiles.

"Is this the dinner that you’re speaking of?" Ryan asked as he continued to gaze at the photo, memories of that special day flooding his mind.

"Yes, it is," he said absently.

"What do you see?" Ryan asked, causing him to jerk his head up and stare at her.

"Is that a trick question? I see my family having a lovely time—a time that Jamie obviously feels was very special."

"She does," Ryan agreed. "I didn’t know the details, or how much that dinner cost, but she did have a very nice time that night."

Ryan handed him the other photo, and he reached out to grab it. Before she released it she asked, "Where does she look happier?"

He took the picture and gazed at it for a moment, blinking in surprise as he did so. Jamie and Ryan were sitting on a boulder overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the smaller woman nestled between Ryan's legs, leaning back in a very relaxed manner against her chest. The looks on their faces spoke of almost painful happiness, their smiles stretching their faces past the point of comfort. Jamie’s head was tilted to the right, Ryan’s to the left, causing them to nest one atop the other. Ryan’s left arm was tucked around the smaller woman’s waist and both of Jamie’s arms rested upon it, both women seemingly very used to and comfortable with each other’s bodies.

Ryan’s voice broke his concentration when she said, "This trip required eight months of hard work, every bit of determination that she possessed, and a ton of confidence in herself. It didn’t cost me a dime to help her have this, but having her with me was absolutely priceless. Which trip," she asked, shaking both photos in his face, "do you think will linger in her memory? Which trip changed her life? How can you tell me that
things
are more important to her than this?"

"Over time," he intoned coldly, "water finds its own level. A few rustic experiences cannot take away the fact that Jamie is the product of her upbringing, and she will eventually want to return to the lifestyle she was born to, Ryan. Then what do you do?"

Ryan was puzzled. It seemed almost as if Jim finally saw her for who she was, but that didn’t make any sense to her. It appeared that he understood that she was uncomfortable with Jamie’s money, and worried that it would become a wedge between them. Try as she might, she could not understand how or why he had changed his mind about her, but she had a very bad feeling about it.

As if he could read her mind, he extracted a manila envelope from his leather portfolio and handed it to her. With intense self-satisfaction he watched as she opened it and allowed the contents to slide out into her hand. With a furrowed brow she sorted through the typed document, trying to understand what it was and what it meant. While still trying to accomplish this, she came upon a series of crisp, sharp 16x20 inch photos, all of her. Thumbing through them, she saw pictures of herself with Jordan, with Jenny, and with some of her other teammates. In every picture she was kissing or touching a woman in what looked to be an intimate way. She recalled each situation, and knew that each instance represented a completely harmless interaction, but the scenes did appear to show that she was quite familiar with each of the other women.

"Wow," she said slowly. "Pictures of me kissing my friends hello. This is shocking—shocking, I tell you!" Her tone was derisive, biting, and Jim recoiled a bit at it.

"The pictures are damning enough, Ryan," he sneered, "but the report is the icing on the cake. Jamie will finally see what I’ve been telling her all along."

Ryan didn’t even attempt to read the report, knowing there was nothing factual in it, and feeling confident that Jamie would not be tricked into believing lies about her. She slapped the papers against her open hand a few times, shaking her head in disgust. "I guess this is where I fall on my knees and beg for a payoff, huh?"

His eyes narrowed, his lips moved into a grim line. "Well, what
do
you want?" he asked in challenge.

She sighed heavily, her eyes drooping into a weary, resigned expression. "The same thing I’ve always wanted. For you to be the father that she deserves." She gave him such a sad, wistful look that he was once again taken slightly aback. "I want you to love her enough to trust her—to know that even though she makes mistakes, they’re her mistakes, and they’re absolutely necessary for her to grow up. I want you to love her enough to let her make her own way in the world, even though it isn’t what you would choose for her." Her face gentled into a fond smile as she admitted her true desire, "I want you to be half the man that my father is. That’s the very least that she deserves."

Fighting his anger, he grabbed the photos and the report from her hands and roughly stuffed it back into the folder. "We’ll just see, Ryan. We’ll just see."

Turning on his heel, he strode across the room, stopping when she plaintively asked, "Did you ever love her, or was she always just something to control?"

He faced her, his entire body tingling with rage. Every impulse called out for him to hit her as hard as his could, to knock that self-possessed expression off her face and at least blacken her other eye and mar the lovely features that his daughter was so obviously attracted to. But he knew that would only give the woman a leg up on him, and he would never, ever do that. "No father ever loved his daughter more than I do," he thundered, making the hackles rise on Duffy’s neck. "I told you I’d do anything for her and I meant it!" He waved the report in Ryan’s face, somewhat deflated when she laughed softly, her dark head shaking the whole while.

"Anything except what she wants—what she needs. Yeah, you’ll do anything for her, all right. Just as long as it fits
your
image of who she is. Yeah,
that’s
love!"

Kicking the face of one of the low cabinets so viciously that his foot crashed through it, Jim spewed forth a string of curses and wrenched his foot out of the hole he had created. Limping, he stormed up the stairs, slamming the door so roughly that it rattled on its hinges for seconds after he left.

It was early, just five o’clock, and Ryan knew that Jamie would likely not arrive home until seven. Her anxiety was so intense that she felt like crawling out of her skin, and she tried to think of an activity that would keep her occupied until her partner arrived. Dialing the phone, she was dismayed to find no one home at Caitlin’s or her aunt’s home.
Well, there goes my best chance at a distraction
, she mumbled to herself. The late afternoon sun was still strong in the west-facing windows and she felt compelled to be outdoors, even though she had no real destination.

Wandering aimlessly, she walked up and down the hilly streets of her neighborhood, finally finding herself in the middle of Castro, on Church, not really knowing how she got there. Shrugging her broad shoulders, Ryan made her way into the Pilsner Inn, a place that she had not visited in well over a year.

Entering the space, she smiled at memory of just a few years prior, when the bar had been populated with no more than a handful of men who looked like they had been there so long that they had actually become one with the banged-up bar stools. The place had been claimed by several groups in the last few years, now populated by a medium-young crowd of good-looking men. Ryan liked the place well enough now, had actually liked it a little more when it was full of pierced and tattooed guys, and it seemed like a friendly, relaxed place to spend an hour or so in.