After the Fall (18 page)

“Artist,” Tim corrected, looking up from the cutting board where he had prepared various herbs. “Never follow a recipe. I'm a food impressionist. Just call me Monet of the kitchen.”

“Can I do anything? I feel incompetent just sitting here watching.” Not that she could do much with a useless hand. But even with two surgically adept hands, she'd been a disaster in the kitchen.

“You're making me a little nervous. Why don't you run along and study those charts and graphs bulging out of your briefcase.”

“Between the drug development critical path spreadsheets and the drug safety pie charts and the endless organization charts, I don't know where to start. But Tim, I can't get into any of that, not tonight.”

This was the night they'd decided to tell Patrick about his father. His biological father. They both agreed he needed to know. They'd tell him together. He'd be at the door any minute, and Laura had all she could do to keep it together. Why had she waited until her son was twenty-two? How many times had she
rehearsed what she'd say? How could she make him understand? Patrick was the most grounded of all her children, well balanced. But could he forgive her for what she'd done? Would he forgive her for hiding the truth for so many years?

The bell rang to Tim's apartment, their apartment.

“Laura,” Tim said, putting down the shallow dish of lamb chops marinating in his special concoction, “Patrick will be okay. He just needs to know the truth.”

She felt fine tremors across all the muscles in her body as she rose from the high stool at the kitchen counter and headed to Tim, kissed him on the cheek, then went to open the door for Patrick.

“Mom,” he said, rushing in, holding out both arms for a hug. “Oops, how's the arm?” he asked, pulling back.

Wiping his hands on a dish towel, Tim joined Laura at the front door, and Patrick turned to give him a man hug. Taking off his trench coat, Patrick looked around. “Anybody else here yet?”

Laura held out her good arm for his coat, but he said, “Still finding my way around here. Where's the coat closet?”

Laura felt her pulse race. Patrick looked so much like David Monroe. The same lanky frame, hazel eyes with brown specks, light brown hair. Some gray had shown up by then at the temples. When Patrick was born, David had been forty-one; had he survived, he'd be sixty-three now.

“Who all's coming? Can the girls get out of that residency prison they're in?”

“Nobody, honey,” Laura said. “Tonight, it's just you.”

“Only child—there were times when I was growing up that I wished for that. The youngest, always getting kicked around. But when they all left for college and I had two years of just you and me, Mom, I missed the sibs. No offense, but, well, you know how busy you were.”

Laura turned to Patrick with such a stricken look that he corrected himself, “Not that you weren't there for me. Quite the opposite. Busy as you were, you made more of my games than
any other parent on my baseball team. It's just that you weren't so good when it came to pickup football or basketball. After Mike and Kevin left, I was on my own.”

“I missed each one of you when you went off to college, but none more than you, Patrick, my baby.”

“Sure, that's what you tell us all. ‘You're my favorite kid.'”

Laura led Patrick into the kitchen and they each took a stool at the counter. “What's for dinner?” Patrick asked. “Tim, are you cooking?”

“You kids have a lot to learn about your future stepfather,” Tim said with a grin. “I'm multitalented, as you will soon find out.”

Laura loved the relationship Patrick and Tim had developed over the years. Patrick had been nine when Tim arranged and participated in his heart surgery, old enough to remember Tim's professional and personal support.

“Lamb chops and my special au gratin potatoes, broccoli, and a chopped salad are on the menu,” Tim said. “Does it meet with our guest's approval?”

When should she tell him? Before dinner? During? After? Tim said he'd follow her lead, support in any way he could.
Can I do this?

Tim's informal dining room was a cozy alcove off the kitchen that overlooked Center City. The table had been set for three, and Patrick wandered over to peer out the window. All of a sudden, he'd gone quiet. Always perceptive as a child, did he suspect something was up?

When he returned to the kitchen, Laura was about to ask Patrick if he'd like a glass of wine—Tim would freak if she offered beer, Patrick's beverage of choice, with the epicurean menu.

“Okay, Mom, what's wrong?” Patrick interrupted the surface tranquility. “I've been your son too long not to know that when you single one of us out for an ‘invitation,' there's a chance we might not exactly be in your good graces. Right?”

Laura looked to Tim, who bent over his baking dish of potatoes, checking whether the cheese was bubbling adequately.

“Or, is it you, Mom? Something to do with your health. Your hand? But if so, why not tell us all? Together?”

“Tim?” Laura asked. “Can you take a break? I'd like for us to talk to Patrick.”

When Tim turned to face her, she saw a look of disbelief cross his face. It took her a moment to realize that to Tim, interrupting his culinary preparations was earthshaking, at least. After a brief pause to regain his composure, he said, “Of course. Just give me a minute.” Tim adjusted a few dials on the stove, pulled out a stool at the kitchen counter, and nodded to Laura.

“Patrick, you're right. We—I—do have to talk to you. To tell you something I should have told you long ago. But something I was afraid—ashamed—to tell you.”

Laura laid her good left hand on Patrick's right arm and turned her gaze toward him.
I can't do this! How can I tell him I cheated on Steve?

She felt hot tears flood her eyes. She blinked them back. This was not going as she planned. But then, she had to admit, she'd had no plan. Blurt it out: that had been her plan.

“Mom?” Patrick asked, “What's wrong? Are you okay?” He looked to Tim. “What's the matter with my mother? What is she talking about?”

“Laura?” Tim said. And to her wonderment, just hearing Tim's voice fortified her to go on.

“Patrick, I still don't know how to tell you,” Laura said, voice quavering, “but it's about your father.”

“Dad?” He'd turned to face her, but she still had her hand on his arm as if holding him there, preventing his escape, his leaving her life forever.

“Steve,” she said. “Steve was not your biological father.” Laura felt the trickle of tears on her cheeks. “That's why, when you were a little boy, going off to have surgery in Detroit, that's why he didn't come. He had just found out. He was upset…” Laura gripped her son's arm tighter, holding on to him. Please, God, make Patrick understand.

Patrick stared across the counter at Tim. “You.” An accusation, not a question.

“No!” Laura said. “No, no. Not Tim.”

Patrick's tone had a sharp edge. “But you know all this?” His eyes met Tim's.

Tim said, “I knew something had happened between your mother and your dad back then. But until your mother told me just recently, I never knew the details. You were nine years old and needed emergency surgery. We had all we could do to get you to Philadelphia. I never asked your mother, though I had no idea what had sent your father into such a rage.”

“Mike and Kevin know,” stated Patrick. “They told me when I was a kid. That my dad was—”

“I am so sorry, Patrick.” Laura turned toward her son, attempting an embrace that her mangled right arm would not allow. She felt Patrick pull his arm out from under her hand. He inched his stool away from hers. A sob escaped. “I want to tell you,” she managed to say, “everything.”

And so, she told him. About how she and Steve had problems in their marriage. How she'd fallen in love with a surgeon who had wanted to marry her. But he'd never known he was Patrick's father, until… She faltered.

“Until he died,” Tim said, “when you were still a baby, Patrick.”

“I refused to leave Steve,” Laura said. “He was a good father to you boys. And after he died, you still were too young to understand, and I never told you. I'm sorry, so sorry.”

“Sorry,” Patrick echoed.

But Laura was not sorry about David. She was not sorry to have David's child, Patrick. Only sorry she had to tell her son that she had strayed, that she had been unfaithful to her husband, that she had broken her marriage vows.

“Who was the guy? My biological father. What is his name?”

“David Monroe,” Laura said. Whenever she said his name, she felt a twinge in her chest. She detected a note in her own
voice that she hoped Tim would not pick up on. “And, Patrick, you have met…a relative.”

“What?” Patrick shot back, shoving his stool violently backward. “What the fuck!”

This was a first. One of her children deliberately using the f-word in front of her. They all used it when they didn't think she could hear—even the girls—but to her face, never.

“Who, Laura?” Tim asked.

Shit, how could she possibly have forgotten to mention this to him. Now was Tim doubting her too?

“Yeah, Mom, who do I know who may be my what? Cousin? Uncle? Aunt? Grandparent?” Patrick got up, went to the refrigerator, selected a beer, sat back down beside her. “I mean, this is too much…”

Laura looked sideways at her son. She had three sons and two daughters, and honestly could say she had no favorites. She adored them all. Would do anything for each one of them. But in the here and now, Patrick required all the love she could muster. She needed him to forgive her.

“Are you going to tell us or not?” Patrick stared across the counter now, at Tim. “Doesn't seem your soon-to-be-husband knows either.” Something she'd never heard in Patrick's tone, sarcasm bordering on surly.

“Paul Monroe,” Laura said, turning to face him, to gauge his reaction. “Mike's friend from Notre Dame.”

“Shit,” Patrick said, his head in his hands now. “Mike's buddy from Notre Dame. The one who came to the house on winter breaks. His brother is Scott Monroe, the Yankees catcher. Used to get us spring training tickets. That Paul Monroe?”

Laura kept silent.

Patrick lifted his head. “What's his relation?”

Laura looked across at Tim, who eyed her curiously. “He would be your blood cousin.” Trying to stifle a new surge of tears, she continued, “David had a brother, Nick. He and his wife had four sons and they adopted a daughter.”

“Have you met them, Laura? Spent time with them?” Tim's questions.

Laura bit her lip. She would not lie. She'd never been formally introduced to Nick Monroe, although she'd seen him at David's funeral, which she'd attended with Patrick in her arms. He'd communicated once through an attorney, but that didn't count. “No,” she said. “I enjoyed Paul when he stayed with us, but that's it. Mike did mention that Paul's mother died a couple of years ago.”

“And Scott Monroe's injuries took him out of baseball last year, that much I know,” said Tim.

“Shit, when Paul and I played pickup baseball,” Patrick said, “I was playing with my fucking cousin!”

Laura could never express the collage of feelings that surged in her whenever David's nephew and Patrick's cousin, Paul Monroe, had stayed at her place. Everyone but she innocent as to Patrick and Paul's family relationship. No one else but she picking up on the hazel eyes, the identical hairline, the chestnut brown hair, Patrick's cut longer than Paul's.

“What do Mike and Kevin and the girls know?” Patrick finally broke the silence.

Laura looked across at Tim for encouragement, but he simply nodded. She knew she'd shocked Tim with her disclosure about David. When she'd been a student and Tim a surgical resident, the rumor of a medical student and the chief of surgery having an affair would have been rejected as unbelievable. Not an affair, she reminded herself, one night. One glorious night.

Laura answered her son, “Nothing. I never discussed it with them.”

“Well, Mom, Mike and Kevin told me when I was a kid: that I was not a real Nelson; Dad didn't want me because Mom was a—well, I can't even say the word. What was I supposed to think? If you'd explained all this, I wouldn't have had to deal with that crap for all these years.”

“I am sorry.” Laura could not contain her tears, and she
picked up the nearest napkin to swipe her cheeks. “Patrick, what can I do to make up for all the pain I have caused you?” Laura had had no idea her older sons had tortured Patrick about his paternity. Or what Steve had told them about her. He had been vicious back then, and vindictive.

“I don't know, Mom. This is too much for me. I can't stay here tonight.”

Patrick stood, and Laura and Tim with him.

“Please, Patrick. You know how much I love you. I just didn't know how to tell you. I was scared. I didn't want to hurt you.”

“Tim, I'm sorry about dinner. This is too much of a shock.”

“Know what you mean, buddy. I was pretty blown away too. But now that the truth is out, we have to deal with it, try to put the past aside, move forward.”

Patrick collected his overnight bag and his coat and headed toward the door. As he reached to open it, Laura put her arm around his waist. “Please, Patrick, forgive me,” she pleaded.

Patrick turned abruptly. “One more question. How did he die? My biological father, this David Monroe?”

He was killed by a bullet intended for me
. But she did not say that. “A disturbed young man shot into the crowd at my medical school graduation. The bullet killed David instantly.”
The instant after he'd realized that the baby in her arms was his own
.

And this was, in fact, the Detroit PD's version of David's murder. They, in turn, shot the killer dead. Laura had never been questioned about any relationship between her and the shooter. But there had been one—Snake Rogers had come after her that day. And now Lonnie Greenwood was threatening to reopen that whole nightmare scenario in her life. What did Lonnie Greenwood know and what did he want? How long could she put off returning his call?