Best Kept Secrets(35)
talked about it for years."
He bent at the waist so they were standing eye to eye. "He
choked to death on his own vomit, too drunk to save himself.
That's right, look shocked. It was pretty goddamned horrifying,
especially when the principal of the high school called
me out of class to tell me."
' 'Reede." In an attempt to stop the flow of sarcastic words,
Alex raised her hand. He swatted it aside.
"No, if you're so anxious to open all the closet doors and
expose the skeletons, here it is. But brace yourself, baby,
this one's a dilly.
"My daddy was the town drunk, a laughingstock, a worth
less, pathetic, sorry excuse for a human being. I didn't even
cry when I heard he'd died. I was glad. He was a miserable,
scummy son of a bitch who never did a single goddamn thing
for me except make me ashamed that he was my father. And
he wasn't any happier about that than I was. Dickweed--
that's what he called me, usually right before he clouted me
alongside the head. I was a liability to him.
"But, like a fool, I kept pretending, wishing, that we were
a family. I was always after him to come watch me play ball.
One night he showed up at a game. He created such a scene
stumbling up the bleachers, tearing down one of the banners
when he fell, that I wanted to die of embarrassment. I told
him never to come again. I hated him. Hated," he repeated,
rasping the word.
"I couldn't invite friends to my house because it was such
a pigsty. We ate out of tin cans. I didn't know there were
things like dishes on the table and clean towels in the bathroom
until I was invited to other kids' houses. I made myself
as presentable as possible when I went to school."
Alex regretted having lanced this festering wound, but she
was glad he was talking freely. His childhood explained a
lot about the man. But he was describing an outcast, and that
didn't mesh with what she knew about him.
"I've been told that you were a ringleader, that the other
kids gravitated to you. You made the rules and set the mood.''
' 'I bullied myself into that position," he told her.' 'In grade
school, the other kids made fun of me, everybody except
Celina. Then I got taller and stronger and learned to fight. I
fought dirty. They stopped laughing. It became much safer
for a kid to be my friend than my enemy."
His lip curled with scorn. "This'll knock your socks off,
Miss Prosecutor. I was a thief. I stole anything that we could
eat or that might come in useful. You see, my old man
couldn't keep a job for more than a few days without going
on a binge. He'd take what he'd earned, buy himself a bottle
or two, and drink himself unconscious. Eventually, he gave
up trying to work. I supported us on what I could earn after
school doing odd jobs, and on what I could get away with
stealing."
There was nothing she could say. He had known there
wouldn't be. That's why he'd told her. He wanted her to feel
rotten and small-minded. Little did he know that their childhoods
hadn't been that dissimilar, although she'd never gone
without food. Merle Graham had provided for her physical
needs, but she'd neglected her emotional ones. Alex had
grown up feeling inferior and unloved. Empathetically she
said, "I'm sorry, Reede."
"I don't want your goddamn pity," he sneered. "I don't
want anybody's. That life made me hard and mean, and I
like it that way. I learned early on to stand up for myself
because it was for damn sure nobody else was going to
go to bat for me. I don't depend on anybody but myself. I
don't take anything for granted, especially people. And I'm
damned and determined never to sink to the level of my old
man."
"You're making too much out of this, Reede. You're too
sensitive.'
"Uh-huh. I want people to forget that Everett Lambert ever
lived. I don't want anyone to associate me with him. Ever."
He clenched his teeth and hauled her up to just beneath
his angry face by the lapels of her coat. "I've lived down
the unfortunate fact that I was his son for forty-three years.
Now, just when folks are about to forget it, you come along
and start asking nosy questions, raising dead issues, reminding
everybody that I crawled up out of the gutter to get where
lam."
He sent her backwards with a hard push. She caught herself
against the gate of a stall. "I'm sure that no one holds your
father's failures against you."
"You don't think so? That's the nature of a small town,
baby. You'll find out how it is soon enough, because they'll
start comparing you to Celina."
"That won't bother me. I'll welcome the comparisons."