Scott Free (20 page)

The moment grew uncomfortable as Sherry's eyes darted to the wings, bringing Larry just barely into view. The audience didn't know what to make of the silence, but the murmurs grew quickly as they waited for someone to say something.

And God, did he have something to say. Sherry valued her image and reputation above all other things in the world, and this was his one golden opportunity to hurt her more deeply than she ever dared imagine. But the words wouldn't come. What was the point? This was her stadium, not his. Finally, he looked down to the lady sitting next to him, a Gen-Xer with lips pursed so tightly that he could barely see them. “Excuse me,” he said, and he made his way toward the exit.

 

B
RANDON HAD COME TO THINK
of the seat at the end of the bar as his own. Back home, his regular watering hole was the Conservatory Bar in the lobby of the Reston Hyatt, where Luis Martinez, champion of all bartenders, never let him down. Here at the Whiteout Saloon, Joe had become his best friend, knowing when to make small talk, and knowing when to just keep the liquor coming.

The place was crowded for eleven in the morning, a dozen people or so, mostly men or women who looked like men. Beer seemed to be the drink of choice, but Brandon was sticking with scotch for the time being. It got him where he wanted to be and kept him there longer.

On the television, speed skaters tore across the ice like grey-hounds chasing a fox, their bodies low and sleek and looking positively ridiculous. For Brandon's money, skating only made sense if you had a stick in your hand, chasing a puck. The thought of a pickup hockey game sat very nicely with him, as a matter of fact. It'd feel good to slam a few people.

“Not giving up hope yet, are you, Mr. O'Toole?” Joe asked.

Brandon didn't realize he was so transparent. “I'm not giving up anything, Joe. I just had a bad morning.”

Joe leaned in closer, his forearm resting on the bar. “For what it's worth, I think he's gonna end up being just fine.”

Brandon felt himself moved by the tenderness of the old man's delivery. He toasted him. “From your lips to God's ear, buddy.”

Something in Joe's face changed as he watched the back of the room. Brandon caught it in the mirror behind the bar: Barry Whitestone stood in the doorway, hands on his hips, clearly looking for somebody.

Brandon hissed, “Shit.” As he spun in his seat to face the newcomer, he caught a peripheral glimpse of Joe making himself scarce. Brandon just glared at the chief, waiting to catch his eye. He didn't wave, he didn't call out. It made no sense to beckon trouble when trouble was already hunting you down.

Finally, their eyes met, and the rest of it was just a formality. Whitestone's scowl never so much as twitched as he waded through the tables to join Brandon. “We need to talk,” he said when he arrived.

“You here to convince me my boy is dead, Chief?” He said it a little too loudly, making Whitestone uncomfortable.

“Why don't we talk someplace a little more private?”

Brandon twisted in his stool, surveying the room. He knew he'd had too many just from the way his head spun separately from his body. “For what you've got to say, this is as good a place as any. Probably a lot safer for you, too.”

Whitestone didn't rise to the threat. “I wish there was another way, Brandon, I really do. I wish we had more time, and I wish the weather was better, and I wish we had more manpower. But wishing doesn't make anything so. I'm sorry.”

“That's a lot of words for a simple message. You're turning your back on my son.”

“I'm not turning my back. I'm facing realities.”

Brandon scoffed. “I've seen the barricades going up on the corners, Chief. I know what your realities are. What's one little plane crash when the president of the United States has autographs to sign?”

“That's not fair,” Whitestone said.

Brandon turned his back on him. “You don't want to get me started on fairness, Chief. Go on, you've done your job. Consider your news broken.”

Whitestone didn't know what to say. Brandon sensed him standing there for a good half minute. Finally, the chief asked, “You want me to tell your wife, or are you going to take care of that?”

“Go on about your business, Chief,” Brandon said again. “I'll take care of it all.” He watched in the mirror as Whitestone made his way back to the door.

Joe gave Brandon ten minutes to compose himself before wandering back. “You're not giving up,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

“No.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don't know, but I'm not letting them do this.”

Joe smiled. He reached across the bar and squeezed Brandon's hand. “Give 'em hell, kid.”

B
RANDON HEARD THE CAR
slide to a halt outside the chalet, but opted against meeting them at the door. Sherry was on a tear, no doubt about that. He could hear her bitching all the way up the walk.

“…could he do that to me? Why was he even there, Larry?” The door opened, and she stormed into the foyer. Brandon stood from his chair in front of the massive front window.

“I let myself in,” he said.

Sherry nearly jumped out of her skin. Then, instantly, her wits were about her again. “You bastard!” she growled.

Larry moved past her like an overly protective house cat to confront the visitor. “How dare you break in here. Get out right now.” He started to reach for Brandon's sleeve.

“Be careful, Larry. Think orthopedic surgery.”

Larry froze. “Are you threatening me?”

“Grab my arm and find out.”

Larry made a gallant effort at holding Brandon's gaze, but it just wasn't in him. “You have no right to be here.”

Brandon felt himself blush. “I've got no fight with you, Larry,” he said. It was as close to an apology as he intended to get. “In fact, I never thanked you for all your help the other night when I was trying to get through to Her Highness here.” Turning his attention toward Sherry, he said, “I talked with Chief Whitestone a while ago. They're abandoning their search for Scott.”

Sherry brought her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide. “Oh, my God. He's dead?” She sat heavily on the step leading from the foyer to the living room. Larry sat next to her, his arm around her shoulder.

Brandon held out his hand to her. “We need to talk,” he said.

Sherry kept her hands at her mouth, her expression unchanged.

“Let's walk her into the living room,” Brandon said to Larry, who continued to pull her close to his side.

“She needs a minute,” Larry said.

“We all need a minute,” Brandon said dismissively. “Everybody but Scott, who doesn't have a minute. Come on, Sherry, we need to talk.”

“It's not my fault,” Sherry whined through her fingers, her eyes focused someplace else. Then she looked at Brandon. “It's not my fault.”

“Nothing ever is,” Brandon said, and he gently but firmly grasped her arm. He was surprised to see that Larry was helping him.

“Let's go to the living room, Sherry,” Larry coaxed, and she rose to her feet.

Her show of emotion caught Brandon off guard. It wasn't like her to waste tears on so small an audience. Any minute now, he expected a Scarlett O'Hara swoon. When they had her seated on the sofa, Brandon shifted his eyes to Larry, who instantly got the point.

“I'll make myself busy upstairs,” he said.

Brandon thanked him with a nod, but Sherry reached out after him. “No, Larry, please stay with me.”

“Not on your life. I don't belong within twenty miles of this conversation.” He headed for the stairs.

When they were alone, Sherry asked, “Did they find the bodies?”

“He's not dead.”

The statement confused her. “But you just said—”

“I said that they're giving up the search. They've written him off, but I think he's still alive. I'm sure of it, in fact. But if we let them presume otherwise, it becomes self-fulfilling.”

“You're not making sense. If you know something they don't—”

“It's not like that,” Brandon said. “I've told them, but they don't want to listen.” He paused. He knew he was talking in circles. “It's a feeling, okay? If Scott were dead, I'd know it. It's hard to explain. But I want you to help me change their minds.”

She waited for him to elaborate.

“I saw the crowd you drew today.”

“You were a bastard to show up like that.”

He let it go. “I saw all the press. You're a damn celebrity, Sherry. The press will listen to you. You can make these bozos stay with the search.”

“Because you have a
feeling?
I'll look like an idiot.”

“It's only been five days,” Brandon argued. “He's trained for winter survival. He can make it this long.”

“But they're the experts, Brandon. They know what—”

Brandon blew up. “They're going to let him die! Jesus, Sherry, he's our
son!”

Sherry gave a bitter little laugh. “Oh, so now he's
our
son? I thought the whole world revolved around Team Bachelor.”

Brandon felt like he'd been slapped. His face showed it.

Sherry couldn't believe she'd just said that. “I'm sorry, Brandon. I didn't mean that.”

“The hell you didn't. My God, Sherry, you shut yourself out of his life.”

“Bullshit.” Sherry spat. She was sorry as hell that she'd fired the first shot in this round of battle, but she wasn't about to let him lay any more of this off on her. “You couldn't handle my success.”

Good God Almighty, it always came back around to Sherry, didn't it? “I'm not doing this,” he said. “Not again. Not today.”

“You think I don't know what poison you fill his head with every day? I just spent a week with him, Brandon. He hates me. My own son hates me. How do you think that makes me feel?”

“I bet it makes you feel like shit,” he said. “And if it doesn't, it should. And for the record, I don't fill his head with poison. Actually, you rarely come up in conversation.” He intended those words to hurt, and they found their mark. “What would we talk about? Whether your check came with a note? Hell, you don't even sign your own checks anymore. We're just another auto-pay from the bank.”

“You designed the settlement agreement, Brandon, not I.”

“And you jumped at it! That's how anxious you were to be rid of us.”

“You,
Brandon,” Sherry corrected, thrusting a finger toward him. “I was anxious to be rid of
you,
not Scotty.”

“He hasn't called himself Scotty in three years.”

His words seemed to break her momentum. He'd already told her that, hadn't he? Did he have any idea how much it hurt to be shut out from your only child's life? Didn't he realize that she was the
hero
in this family war? She could have dragged the divorce out forever, but what would that have accomplished? It wouldn't have been right to shuttle Scotty—
Scott
—from one house to the other. This was Brandon's favorite kind of argument, though; the kind at which he truly excelled. She'd never known anyone who so quickly claimed the moral high ground for himself and demonized anyone who opposed him.

“Fine,” she said. It just wasn't the time for this. “You're right. You're the best parent in the world, and I'm the worst. Congratulations. All I can say is, this is one bizarre approach to getting people to do you a favor.”

A puff of air escaped Brandon's lungs when she said this, and in that instant, Sherry didn't understand what she'd said wrong. “You think I'm asking you for a favor? A
favor?
What would that be?”

“You want me to put my reputation on the line because you have a
feeling
. Despite what all the experts say. What would you call it?”

“I call it trying to save a boy's life,” he said. “Two boys' lives, actually. If you're doing anybody a favor, it's them.” How could two people see the world so differently?

Again, loaded with all his righteous emotion, it sounded so simple. But it wasn't at all simple. If Sherry called a press conference, sure, people would come, but what would she say? No matter what Brandon thought, she loved her son as much as he did; she was just more of a realist. Did he think for a moment that she wouldn't want people scouring the countryside looking for Scotty—
Scott
—if she thought it would do any good? Did he think that the police department and the Civil Air Patrol would just randomly abandon a search effort if there was still a glimmer of hope? Sherry was a psychologist, for God's sake. A professional. If she pulled together a special news conference to criticize local officials and then rambled on about feelings and intuitions, she'd look like a fool. She'd
be
a fool to do it.

Brandon helped himself to the chair in front of the panoramic window. “Sherry?”

She broke her concentration to look at him.

“Okay, it's a favor, then,” he said. “And I'll concede any point you want, sign any papers you want. I'll beg, if you want me to.” He fought hard to control the flood of emotion, and Sherry brought her hand to her mouth as she watched him age ten years before her eyes. “We were such a total disaster, you and I,” he went on. “But out of all the misery and the fighting, we produced one miracle.”

His voice caught in his throat and Sherry took a step forward to comfort him. He held her off with a raised hand. “Maybe you're right,” he said. “Maybe I am jealous. You have your fame and your career and your things. But that boy is it for me. He's my entire life.”

Sherry looked down to give him a moment. She'd never seen him like this. Even in the worst of times, he'd always been a rock—stubborn, passionate, angry as hell, but always solid and strong. The sight of him crumbling took her breath away. His pain, she saw, was physical, and somewhere in her soul, buried under years and years of hatred, something stirred in her that was akin to affection. She sat on the coffee table opposite him.

“He's out there, Sherry,” he whispered. “He's alive. And without us on his side, he's got nobody.”

She nodded, her throat suddenly thick. “Okay.”