T. Parker - Summer Of Fear

Chet joined me on the patio.

"Texas," I mumbled to myself.

Chester Fairfax Singer, an unhappy spirit whose last effort for the side of innocence had revealed nothing more, probably, than just another exercise in the brutal, the stupid, the desperate, the eternal, studied me from behind his thick glasses.

"They say San Antonio is very nice," he offered. "May I ask you, where is your daughter at this moment?"

"My house. With Dad. Give me a day with her, Chet."

"Yes. One day."

Amber and I drove back to Laguna without saying a word to each other. But I was aware of her, acutely so: I could locate the precise plane-just beyond my right shoulder-where the perimeters of our heartaches met. We shared a common border. It buzzed like a power line.

Amber said the first words of our trip just as I was about to turn off Laguna Canyon Road onto my street.

"No, Russ. Keep going. Drive fast."

"Why?"

"Because I asked you to."

I eased back into the fast lane of the deserted road and pressed down the accelerator. The power of the V-8 seemed to start behind, then pick us up and take us with it. We were guest of velocity. We rode it through the curves, eucalyptuses rushing past the windshield like fence pickets. We gorged ourselves on distance. Amber rested her head on my shoulder and wrapped both her hands around my arm. And what a surge of remembrance shot through me: We had been here before, hundred times, a thousand years ago. I had forgotten how much Amber loved this motion, how she melted into it, how it calmed her. We used to drive too fast together, just for fun. The speed relaxed her, released her. I could smell the sweet dank odor of her hair and the light perfume of her breath when she sighed. You may not forgive, but you will understand that my craving for Amber came rising with all the power of an incoming tide.

The city appeared, was gone. We hit Coast Highway eighty, raced through four green lights and a final red before settling into the open four-mile stretch to the next town. The Pacific glittered to our left. The moon presided. A trailer park vanished behind us, quickly as a road sign. The center divider on the highway blurred. To our right, the hills moved by with steady precision.

"I have a confession to make," whispered Amber.

"Make it."

"First, can I tell you how I feel right now? I feel dead. I believe that Grace was in my house to kill me. I feel like she accomplished what she wanted. I feel tainted and stupid and black. I feel like I've wasted everything that's been set on my table. Every single thing that could have turned out good."

"I'm sorry. I do, too."

"What do you think it was, specifically, that we did wrong?"."Everything. But I think we did the best we could, with the tools we had."

"Is there any consolation in there?"

"Not much that I can see."

"Is there consolation in anything else?"

"In tomorrow, maybe. At least we can tell ourselves that."

"Gad, Russ, tomorrow's here."

"There is that problem."

"Won't this thing go any faster?"

"Oh yes."

The digital speedometer pegged at ninety-nine, but the car sped crazily on. Horn blasts followed our passage, fading quickly. For a moment it seemed possible, and somehow imperative, that we overtake the pools of our high beams shooting steadily before us. Hope impossible is the purest hope.

"I confess that I dream of you often," she said. "It's not always your body or shape, but I know it's you. The first time I saw your car parked outside my house, you know what I did? I parked outside yours the next night, down the hill, where you wouldn't see me. I felt like a teenager. Did you?"

"Yes."

"Do I surprise you?"

"You don't sound like the Amber I used to know."

Her head was still on my shoulder and her hair blew against my face.

"Twenty years is a long time, Russ. I am changing. The reason I asked Alice to come out was to try to know my family, to offer some love in that direction. I tried to explain that to you.

I'm not going to stop until whoever killed her is in jail and paying for what they did-even if it's my own daughter."

"That's a tough way to turn a life around. Maybe you should start with something on a little smaller scale." I hear the sarcasm in my voice and wished it wasn't there.

"I've been studying my Bible, giving lots of money to charity. I'm trying to feel the pain of others, not to judge them. I'm thirty-nine years old, Russ. That's old enough to know when something's missing."

"I understand what you mean."

"I made a list of every regret I could think of, and what I could do about them. Until tonight, I thought there would be a way to find my daughter again. I guess that's one regret that won't ever be fixed, by me at least. I'll try, though, I'll try to reach her."

"There may be time," I said, and the thought came me that Grace might be spending a lot of that-time-in lockup.

"I did not have her tortured, Russ. I don't know what could have put that in her mind. But I want you to believe me I'll confess to anything and everything under the sun. I was terrible mother. But I never hurt her on purpose. Never that.

I shot into the right lane, braked as we approached the first signal in Corona del Mar, fishtailed into a right turn through the green, brought the back end into line, then cranked a hard U-turn to my left. We idled at the signal.

"Was sitting outside my house a way of righting some regret?" I asked.

"No. I never regretted us. I regretted losing us. It was the highest cost of my ambition." "I regretted losing us, too." "I know that. But I do believe you did your part to ruin us. I left, Russ, but you told me to. I'd appreciate it if you'd cop to that. You've had the luxury of me taking the rap for a long time now. Remember the talk we had, sitting on the floor by the fake fireplace that night, after I'd gotten my first contract offer? All the travel I was going to be doing? Do you remember what you said when I asked you what you wanted me to do? You said, ^“ I want you to go, Amber.' The go was loud and clear. I did the dirty work for both of us-I went."

I know. I helped us crash."

And had regretted it, even as the words were coming out that night. I could remember every second of that conversation, even now, as if it was a scene from a movie I'd watched a hundred times. To all the charges that have been brought against the male-pride, stubborness, unwillingness to communicate, selfishness, cowardice, insularity, macho inanity-I will gladly confess. Did I love her then? Certainly. But love is a poor excuse for anything. My sole defense is that I never desired any woman but Amber-at least not enough to act on it-when we were together, and for a truly frightening amount of time afterward. I was hers. Even when I began to take other lovers, I was hers. Until, that is, I stumbled on Isabella Sandoval sitting under a palapa amidst the sweet Valencias of the SunBlesst Ranch and my heart, so long detained, fled straight away to her.

"How could you let me go without a fight, Russ?" Amber whispered quietly.

Only time had given me the answer. If she had asked me this during one of our parting frays, I'd have told her she wasn't worth it. And she would have believed, because at that time I retained the ability to hurt her-she had not grown beyond me, yet. But that would not have been the truth.

^ 44 I thought then," I said, "that it was dangerous to take what wasn't offered. That I couldn't coax a love out of you that wasn't there to begin with."

"Afraid it would vanish?"

"Yes, in the end. Afraid of the collateral damage, too."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning the love I felt for you."

The light finally changed and I gunned the car back toward Laguna. I maintained a more prudent double-digit speed. To the west, the ocean was an endless plain of black.