More Than Friends (47 page)

"I idolized my brother," John Stewart declared. "I thought the world revolved around him. I thought it even when he got older and started stealing things from the local five-and-dime. He was spirited. He was clever. He was brave. Did I ever tell you how he died?"

"You said he fell out of a tree."

"That's right. Another boy dared him to climb up high in one tree and jump to another to show just how brave he really was. Henry didn't have a chance. Even if he had reached the other tree, the odds of his catching hold were poor. But he had an

audience, and he was a performer, so he took the risk." J.D. was startled. In the next breath he felt a premonition.

"The first time I met Sam Pope," J.S. said, looking him in the eye without wavering, "I thought of Henry. Sam had the same irreverence, the same dare-the-devil look to him. When I first saw him in court, he was a prosecutor, performing before a jury, taking risks just like Henry would have. He scared the wits out of me."

"Yet you let me bring him into the firm."

"I admired him for that daring, just as I admired Henry. Channeled properly, daring can be a powerful asset. I had been too young to help Henry, but I thought I might be able to help Sam. I thought I might be able to tone him down. I thought that I might keep him in line. Clearly I failed."

J.D. was appalled. "Then you're punishing Sam for being like Henry?"

"No," John Stewart corrected. "I rewarded Sam for being like Henry. Now that I've realized my mistake, I'm remedying it."

"But what has Sam done that's so terrible? He hasn't destroyed anyone's life."

"He destroyed your marriage."

"Teke and I did that all by ourselves." She had been right about that.

"You're using Sam as a scapegoat."

"Your opinion isn't about to sway me, John David. I gave Sam a forum in which to build a private practice. He used it, then abused it, as far as I'm concerned. I will not have him becoming a judge based on a reputation that I was largely responsible in building." J.D. remembered lashing out at Sam using similar arguments a while back. They had sounded fine to

him then. Coming from John Stewart's mouth, they sounded wrong. "Sam built his reputation himself. It was his hard work, his brains, his daring, that won case after case for him."

"No matter. He won't be a judge. You have my word on that."

"Fine," J.D. said, squaring his shoulders and drawing himself up so that the slight difference in height between him and his father suddenly shrank. "You have my word on something, too. If you use your clout to nix Sam's appointment, I'll tell Mother about Mary."

"What about Mary?" John Stewart asked blandly. J.D. had to give him points for gall. "I think you know," he said, and turned to leave. The silence that accompanied him out of the office gave proof to his words. After forty-one years J.D. had finally found his father's vulnerability.

Teke sat on a stool in the shadows of a narrow building half-hidden in Cornelia Hart's woods. Once the building had been used as a work shed, housing gardening equipment and the like. Now it smelled of wood shavings. Cornelia had loaned it to Grady, who was building a canoe there. Michael, who insisted on wearing Grady's battered baseball hat with the visor shading his nape, was his apprentice.

No other form of physical therapy had interested the boy as this did. From her shadowed corner, Teke could see his concentration. She could also see the improvement in his flexibility as he took each steamed cedar rib from Grady, clamped it to a gunwale, then stretched it over the form to where Grady was waiting. Michael had taken his turn with the sander, the hammer, the band saw that tapered the ribs. He used his hands, arms, and torso. He also

used his legs, with crutches at first, then without when they got in his way. With only Grady and Teke to see, he wasn't self-conscious about the awkwardness of his gait. Teke wondered if he realized how much less awkward that gait was becoming from one day to the next. Grady was wonderful with him. He was infinitely patient, infinitely encouraging, infinitely forgiving of mistakes. Watching them together, Teke couldn't help but think that they should have been father and son. Grady had so much to give, Michael was so eager to receive, and vice versa. More than anyone, Grady had helped Michael through his self-pity. With promises to take him into his special "deep nowhere" in the canoe they were building, he had Michael working harder to walk. Grady was the perfect teacher. He didn't believe in giving up. He had been at rock bottom himself but had clawed his way back. Watching from the shadows, Teke had fallen in love with the man ten times over. Denying it would be foolish. Indeed, as she watched, she had to struggle to recall her anger. The far past was gone; the immediate present was as pleasurable as Teke could want it. That was why her first reaction was annoyance when J.D. came in from the cold. She resented the intrusion. She didn't want him disturbing the little paradise she and her men had here in the woods. Her annoyance gave way to wariness. She wondered how he had found them and what he wanted. He looked civil enough. He hadn't come through the door yelling. She took encouragement from that.

Michael, who had been painstakingly hammering a strip of planking to the ribs beneath, looked up in surprise. "Dad! What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you," J.D. said. "Cornelia gave me directions." He looked formal and out of place in his suit and topcoat. Calmly he walked toward Michael.

Teke envisioned his topcoat--a navy cashmere-covered with sawdust. She nearly warned him away, then held her tongue.

"What are you doing?" he asked Michael.

"We're making a canoe. This is white ash"--the boy touched a gunwale, then a rib--"this is white cedar, and this is red cedar," he finished, pointing to the plank he had been hammering. "When the whole thing's done, we cover it with canvas. Isn't it awesome?"

"Not bad." J.D. found Teke in the shadows. "Is this a new kind of trade school?"

"It's physical therapy," she said. "It supplements what he does at the health club."

"Have we given up on the eighth grade entirely?"

"I go to the tutor after this," Michael said in a way that suggested he heard what Teke did, a criticism beneath the calm.

"I thought you were going to start attending afternoon classes?"

"I still can't do the stairs."

He could do them, Teke knew, but he didn't do them well, and he refused to do them in front of his friends. For that reason his return to school was being delayed.

"So you're building canoes," J.D. said, nodding. Teke heard his derision. Michael must have, too, given the speed of his response.

"Just one. When it's done, Grady and I are putting it in the water." He stopped suddenly, as though he regretted mentioning it, and sent Grady an uneasy glance.

Grady, who had been hammering on the far side of the canoe when J.D. had walked in, was standing straight and tall with the hammer idle in his hand.

J.D. stared at him, but it was to Michael he spoke. "You and Grady have become friends. That's surprising, given that he was the one who ran you down."

"I ran into him," Michael said. "Besides, he's been helping me do things. He's as good as my therapist, without the big bill."

"He does what he does out of guilt," J.D. suggested. Grady stirred. "Not true. I do what I do because I like the boy."

"You know that he murdered a man," J.D. continued, talking to Michael, looking at Grady.

"I know."

"Do you know who that man was?"

Teke came off her stool. "J.D."

"His name was Homer Peasely," J.D. told Michael, whose eyes widened in surprise. "He was your mother's father. He would have been your grandfather had he lived, but your friend Grady hit him in the head, then kicked him until he was dead."

"Not true," Grady vowed, but J.D. went on.

"He murdered your grandfather, Michael, the grandfather you never had a chance to meet. Then he came to town to see your mother--another man's wife--and he was so wild-eyed and excited about it that he didn't see you running toward the street. He's a murderer and a would-be murderer. That's the kind of man Grady Piper is."

"Homer Peasely?" Michael echoed, facing Teke. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It wasn't relevant."

"Not relevant?" J.D. barked her way. "He was your father!"

"He wasn't a good man."

"He was a human being. He had a right to live."

"It was an accident," Grady said. "The jury decided that."

"But they sent you away, because they felt you were a danger to society. Well, I say you still are. Look what you've done! First you put my child in the hospital, unable to walk, then you steal my wife out from under my nose. Was that what you had in mind all along? Was that why you came down here from your hole up in Maine?" Teke didn't know which upset her more, the disparaging of Grady in Michael's eyes or the insult to Grady himself. "You are very, very wrong," Teke told him, leaving the shadows. "Grady came here for no other reason than to make sure I was all right."

"Is that why he stayed? Don't peg me for being blind, Teke. He's in love with you. My guess is he'll snap you up the minute we're divorced."

Michael swayed. Bracing himself on the canoe, he looked uncertainly from one face to the next. Teke started toward him.

"Your father is mistaken," she said. "Grady came here to visit. He stayed when you were hurt. Now he's staying to finish a job."

"And to be with you? Is it true? Are you and Dad getting divorced?" She put an arm around his shoulder, desperate to keep him close. She had worked so hard, so hard, to win back his trust. "We may, but nothing formal has been done."

"She's already seen a lawyer," J.D. said. "She didn't have the guts to tell me. I had to hear it through the grapevine."

Michael pulled away.

"What grapevine?" Teke asked, incensed. She had met with her lawyer in confidence.

Before J.D. could answer, Michael shouted at her, "You didn't tell me about that, or about who Grady killed. What else didn't you tell me?"

"A good deal," J.D. said.

"No," Teke began, but, throwing the old Angels hat to the floor, Michael was on his way to the door at a half walk, half run made more ungainly by his upset.

"Where are you going?" Grady called, rounding the canoe and starting for the door.

"Michael!..."Teke yelled.

"He's getting away from the two of you," J.D. said, barring the door and their pursuit of Michael. "I should have known not to leave the boy's rehabilitation in my wife's hands. I should have realized how untrustworthy she was after what she did with my best friend. When she needs a man, she picks the closest, easiest one. So now she has my son spending hours"--he spit out the words as if they were dirt--"with an uneducated, unprincipled ex-convict."

Teke, who was terrified that Michael might slip on a patch of ice, begged, "Please, J.D."

Grady was less polite. "Get out of my way," he commanded in a voice that vibrated with anger.

Teke's terror shifted focus. She hadn't heard that tone from Grady since the day he'd said to Homer, "Get your goddamned hands off her."

"It's okay, Grady. Let me handle it." She put a restraining hand on his arm and found the muscles beneath taut with a fury barely contained. "He takes delight in hurting people with words, but they're empty words."

"I mean every one," J.D. said, staring at Grady with a nasty gleam in his eye. "I think you're scum. I have from the start."

"You need someone to blame," Teke began.

"Scum of the worst order."

"Get out of my way," Grady repeated. His face had grown darker.

"Ignore him, Grady," Teke said, and tried to slip in front of him, between the two men, but Grady wouldn't allow it. Tugging at his arm, fighting panic, she tried with J.D. again. "This is absurd. Why don't we accept that you just don't like the man--"

"I hate the man," J.D. said, glaring at Grady. "I want him out of town. He is a bad influence on my son--"

"He's my son, too."

"--and a bad influence on my wife--"

"You left me."

"--and an all-around, no-good thug. Got that, Piper?" Grady's eyes broadcast danger. "Get out of my way," he repeated a third time.

J.D. drew himself to his full height. "Make me."

"He's trying to goad you, Grady," Teke cried.

"Move," Grady said.

"He's trying to get you to hit him," she wailed. "Once, that's all, and he'll charge you with assault." She was horribly aware of the hammer in Grady's hand, the opening and closing of his fingers around its head. "Don't you see? He hasn't been able to get anything else on you. This is his last shot. He's desperate."

The air in the narrow shed seemed suspended for the eternity it took for the truth of Teke's words to gel. Grady took an audibly shaky breath. His hand closed firmly around the hammer's head. Lowering it to his side, he looked at her at last. His eyes said that he knew, that he had learned his lesson, that he wouldn't do anything stupid. They also said that he loved her and would have happily hit J.D. if his goading had taken the form of injury to her.

Slowly, in control, he faced J.D. In a low voice he said, "Michael is out in the cold. He may be in the carriage house or in the car. Or he may be in the woods. He could fall, or freeze. If you don't have the good

sense to go after him, just move so I can."

Teke had never loved Grady as much as she did at that moment. J.D. simply stared at him. After several seconds his stare grew dazed. He frowned, turned around, and stared at the closed door. Finally he opened it.

Michael wasn't in the carriage house. He wasn't in Teke's car, J.D."s car, or Grady's pickup. As the three stared off into the woods, breathing in rapid white spurts, J.D. groaned. "He could be anywhere in there."

"I know where he is," Grady said, and carrying Michael's jacket, he led them along a narrow path that twisted and turned through the woods until the growth of thick-clad pines and naked birches opened onto a stream that barely trickled through the snow. Michael sat on a tree stump at its edge.

Teke stopped. J.D. stopped behind her. Grady covered the few remaining feet, draped Michael's jacket over his shoulders, and squatted by his side. In the winter stillness of the woods, his words came back crystal clear to Teke.