Chapter 23

"What did your father say?" Susan asked me.

"Actually it was my uncle Cash that came to get us," I said. "We were about twenty miles downriver, and we told him what happened on the ride home."

"And what did Uncle Cash say?"

"Not much. He never had all that much to say anyway."

"Did he say anything?"

"He said, ‘Sounds like you done pretty good. We'll talk with your father about it.' "

"Your father was the man?" Susan said.

"It was mostly like a house with four equals in it," I said.

"Including you."

"Yeah," I said, "but in retrospect, I guess my father was a little more equal."

"And you?" Susan said.

"Maybe a little less, until I was older."

"They must have been out of their minds with worry," Susan said.

"Probably, though I gotta say they didn't mention it."

"So what was your father's reaction when you got home?"

"Mostly like Cash's, Patrick too. They both said it sounded like I'd done what I had to do and done it well."

"That must have made you feel good."

I nodded.

"Did," I said.

"How about Jeannie?"

"My uncle Cash told her that she could think of us as family and anytime she needed help come to one of us. Patrick and my father said that was so."

"And?" Susan said.

"And she started to cry."

Susan nodded.

"Finally," she said, "someone to depend on. Must have felt good for her."

A couple of pigeons came to where we sat on the bench and stood giving us the beady eye. We had no food to give them. So after a long accusa tory moment, they waddled to the next bench.

"Did you know," Susan said, "in certain tribal cultures of the early Middle Ages, the child of a princess was raised by her brothers?"

"I didn't know that," I said. "Why did they do that?"

"Something about keeping the question of bloodline in-house, so to speak," Susan said.

"A little-known fact," I said.

"I have a PhD from Harvard," Susan said. "I know many of them."

"All of them as useful as that?" I said.

"Oh, heavens no," Susan said. "But I do have a question."

"Of course you do," I said. "You're a shrink."

"How did you feel?" she said.

"Me?"

"You. You were fourteen years old and you'd just killed a man."

"At the time, I didn't know quite how I felt," I said. "I'm not sure I do now."

Загрузка...