The Lost Years

25

Professor Richard Callahan frequently had dinner on Sunday evenings with his parents in the Park Avenue apartment where he had been raised. They were cardiologists who shared a practice and whose names regularly appeared on those “Best Doctors” lists.

Both were sixty years old, but physically they could not have been more different.

His mother, Jessica, was small and slender, with chin-length dark blond hair, which she pushed back with the glasses that usually rested on the top of her head.

His father, Sean, had a mass of curly salt-and-pepper hair, a trim beard, and a tall, muscular frame that was a tribute both to his days of being a star defensive end on the Notre Dame football team and the discipline of his daily workouts.

Richard did not realize how quiet he had been until he and his father finished watching the Mets-Phillies game. When his mother went into the kitchen to check on dinner, his father got up, poured two glasses of sherry, lowered the volume on the television, and bluntly said, “Richard, it’s obvious you’re worried about something. That game went down to the last minute. Yet you sat there like a bump on a log. Now, what is bothering you?”

Richard attempted a smile. “No, Dad, it’s not that I’m actually worried. I’ve been thinking a lot about the trust fund that my grandfather set up for me when I was born. Since four years ago, when I turned thirty, I’ve been free to use the money whatever way I want.”

“That’s right, Richard. It’s too bad you never got to know your grandfather. You were just a baby when he died. He was one of those guys who started out with nothing but had an instinct for the market. He bought stocks of new companies he believed in for twenty-five thousand dollars when you were born, and what are they worth now, two million something?”

“Two million, three hundred and fifty thousand, twenty-two dollars and eighty-five cents according to the latest statement.”

“There you are. Not bad for an Irish immigrant who arrived here with five pounds in his pocket.”

“He must have been quite a guy. I’ve always regretted I never got to know him.”

“Richard, it seems to me that you’re thinking about doing something with that money.”

“I may be. We’ll see. I’d rather not go into it now, but I assure you it’s nothing for you and Mom to worry about.” Richard glanced at the television, then sprang up from his chair as he saw the promo for the ten o’clock news. “Kathleen Lyons has been arrested for the murder of her husband,” the reporter was saying. A snapshot of Kathleen with Mariah and Lloyd Scott flashed on the screen.

Richard was so focused on the television that he did not notice that his father, deeply troubled by the conversation, was studying him intently and trying to figure out what was going on.