The Old Man(52)

There was also the fact that the hand that signed the checks to Stanford, and after that MIT, was his father’s. After the initial shock of the divorce wore off, Brian sometimes thought that it was too bad his mother couldn’t have done what millions of other women had done and given her husband time to get over Steffie without doing anything overtly unpleasant and destroying the rest of the family’s sense of well-being.

The message he’d received from Sarah a couple of hours ago had compelled him to rethink the whole tawdry story. He was beginning to think his mother had lost her mind like a cast-off woman in a Greek tragedy that he couldn’t quite place. She had run off with a man who was practically a stranger, and before she went away to God knew where she wanted to bring this man to see him. It was clear that Sarah was taking this thing seriously, because she hadn’t called, e-mailed, or sent a text. She had hired a process server from the law firm where she had interned to deliver it.

Brian’s relationship with Sarah had been one of the things that the fall of the house of McDonald had brought down. They had been close as children. She was his little sister, and she had looked up to him. But when the breakup had come, they’d argued. She had sided with their mother and expressed contempt for Brian because he had not gone out of his way to be rude to Stephanie. He had told her that she was a na?ve, knee-jerk feminist who, paradoxically, hated women, and was incapable of appreciating the complexity of human behavior. After that they had both been busy with graduate school and law school. And there was no longer a home where they would be forced to see each other on holidays.

The letter she had sent him by messenger was their first communication in at least two years. As soon as Brian received it he had closed his office door and read it with dread, and then with alarm, and finally despair. Since Sarah had entered law school she had adopted a measured, seemingly reasonable style of discourse. Reading a letter from her was like watching a philosopher walk calmly up a mountain and step off a cliff. Mom has found love. For the first time since we were children, she’s happy. But powerful criminals have a grudge against him, so they have to go away for a while.

Brian rolled his eyes and let out a groan that he’d been unable to stifle. He sat still for a moment hoping nobody had heard, and then began formulating rhetorical questions. I’m a technocrat, Sarah. I work for companies that sell goods and services to the government. They’re regulated and watched. How could you send me a letter like this at my office? And what about you, Sarah, you overconfident, presumptuous moron? You’ve spent the past two years trying to become a lawyer. Conspiring to hide fugitives is a felony. Even if this guy really were in the witness protection program, he would have to be a criminal to know anything about criminals. How’s that career going to work out for you now?

He had fumed and fretted for at least an hour and then packed up some work and left the office with everyone else, but he didn’t go home. He drove his Audi all over Irvine and Costa Mesa and the Palos Verdes peninsula for about three hours before he realized he was hungry and stopped for a hamburger. Now he was home, having solved nothing and knowing nothing new except that his mother had lost her mind.

As he walked up to his dark apartment building he saw two people, a couple, walking along the sidewalk from the visitors’ parking area as though they wanted to intercept him. Here they are, he thought, two FBI agents coming to interview me about my crazy mother. Maybe he could get a job running the IT section of a clothing company or a grocery chain. He stared at the two.

They walked under a streetlamp, and he recognized the walk, the shape of the shorter one.

Then he heard the voice. “Brian!”

His mother. No matter where he might have been—in a blizzard in Antarctica or the bottom of the ocean—that voice would have entered his brain and traveled the thousands of neural pathways it had built early in his life. He walked more quickly to avoid having an illegal conversation in public under a streetlamp, swiveling his head to be sure there were no witnesses nearby.

He beat them to the door and said, “Wait a second while I get this open.” He pushed the door inward and stepped aside to get them off the steps, and then shut the door behind them. He hurried to his apartment door and let them in.

He locked the door and said, “Sarah let me know you might be coming.”

His mother hugged him. He tolerated it, but he couldn’t bring himself to wrap his arms around her as though he approved of her being here.

She released him. “This is Peter. He’s my—what? Boyfriend seems to still be the only word we have.”

Hank Dixon stepped forward and held out his hand to shake Brian’s and Brian gave the hand a perfunctory pump and released it. Hank didn’t react to the sudden reversion to the name that had been blown, but it told him there must be something to worry about. He watched Brian scurry to the front windows to tug on the strings to be sure the blinds were closed as tightly as possible. Then he folded his arms in front of him.

Hank said, “Well, I’m sure you two would like to talk, so I’ll leave you alone. I’ll be in the car.” He went out the door and closed it.

Brian said, “Sarah seemed to think you were afraid you might be followed.”

“That’s true,” said his mother. “It’s all a problem that goes back a lot of years. The police will take care of it. But for now at least, please don’t say anything to anyone about us.”