The Chance (Thunder Point #4)(38)

“I’m sorry, baby. He’s a fool. Even if he doesn’t approve, it’s still your choice. You’re all grown up.” He reached out and ran his fingers through her hair over her ear. “He should know better than to put you down like that. Doesn’t he know it will only build a barrier between you?”

“He should know by now. We had a big blowout at Christmas. What is it about Christmas? Can’t blame it on booze. We’re pretty conservative with liquor, even on holidays. But he started in on how I was wasting my life on scumbags when if I really wanted to make a difference in the world there were better ways. We argued. I mean, we fought. I lashed out at him for his regular if not constant criticism of me and what I do. I was so angry. He was just as angry. It was awful. We weren’t content to just argue over the crime of the moment—we both reached way back in time, remembering every disappointment. My sister-in-law took my nieces into another room!”

“Honey...”

“I told him I was through listening to his negative, critical remarks, that I was done and he shouldn’t bother to get in touch with me unless he could apologize and change. And then I left Boston in a huff, furious. We haven’t spoken since. When I saw his name on the caller ID I wondered if our two months of not speaking at all had finally...”

“I guess it caught up with you,” he said.

“I just got home a couple of hours ago. I went to the phone store—I changed my number. I have a long contact list to go through, a lot of colleagues and supervisors to email. Tomorrow is soon enough. But it was the last straw, Eric. When he suggested my work had made me delusional...”

He just kept running that hair over her left ear. She looked into her lap, looked at the phone. “Getting a new number is pretty dramatic,” he said.

“I probably should have done this five years ago. We had a big argument about my work as an agent not long after my mother died. He thought that since she died and she was my biggest supporter, it was time for me to quit the FBI and find something he referred to as ‘more respectable’ to do for a living. What is it with him? He doesn’t have to be proud of me but how can he be so hard on me? I can’t really be that inadequate. I get the job done. I don’t get any complaints from the FBI.”

“Did he ever suggest he could take you? Ask you to break free of his hold? Because that could have been interesting....”

A little puff of laughter escaped her. “He’s seventy. A very tough, strong seventy, but I wouldn’t throw him. Things are bad enough between us.”

Eric got up and went behind her. “Scoot,” he said, pushing her forward a little bit. “Let me back here.” He stepped over the back of the chaise so that he was behind her, his long legs on either side of the chaise. He pulled her back against him. Once she was settled there, he put his hands in her hair, his fingertips gently massaging her scalp.

“Ohhhh... Whatever that is you’re doing, it’s okay to keep doing it....”

“When I get worried about my parents or frustrated with them, it gives me a headache. And I’m not a headache kind of guy.”

“Do they get you upset regularly?”

“Hmm. Very regularly. My mom is a very negative person anyway and she really has an excuse in me.”

“So what do you do?” she asked.

“I apologize for getting in so much trouble as a kid, for embarrassing the whole family, promise I’m doing better now, all the same stuff. Over and over. And I try to be patient.”

“And who rubs your head?” she asked.

He laughed softly. “I take aspirin.”

“What do you think I should do?” she asked.

“Well, my first reaction would be to remember your dad might be too old to change his habits. Maybe he’s just one of those negative people.”

“I just couldn’t ever impress him. Period. He’s always been that kind of guy who knows it all, though. He knows what’s best for everyone, what’s right for the whole world. He’s arrogant. Omnipotent.”

“How about your brother?”

“It doesn’t seem like he picks at Pax as much, but then Pax studied medicine, which was what Senior had in mind for both of us. And also, Pax just ignores him. He never argues with him, just lets him rant on. It’s true, if he doesn’t get an argument, he runs out of steam pretty quickly.”

“Have you thought about doing that? Just let him have his say, however unfair or unkind it is, and put up with it? Because he’s your father and you’re stuck with him?”

She leaned back against him. “My mother used to say I was as stubborn as he is. And that I have a real problem with needing to be right. I don’t want to be like him, needing to be right all the time. It’s awful. You’re not like that.”

He leaned forward and kissed her neck. “Laine, you have to remember, I’m the cause of my parents’ unhappiness. I didn’t just shoplift a candy bar and take it back to the store. I was convicted of armed robbery.”

She turned to look over her shoulder at him. “But you didn’t have a weapon and you didn’t rob anyone!”

“I was there. That was enough.”

“You know you got screwed, right?”

“Whatever you say....”

“I looked at the record and the transcripts. You had an inadequate defense and a hanging judge....”