Jeff Abbott: Distant Blood

The second bit of correspondence was more direct in its threat. He or she had opted for another mass-market greeting card, the kind that women buy for other women on birthdays, dripping with sexual innuendo. A handsome blond fellow leaned against a column, bare belly rippling with muscle, jeans faded and strategically torn. Vanilla frosting was lightly smeared across his well-defined chest and gut and his puckered lips held a small, lit candle. The inside, preprinted message said

HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT, TOO. HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

The outward message, though, was of greater interest. The man's visage had been carefully sliced in an X with a razor, and inside my well-wisher had pasted in stolen script:

THIS IS YOUR FACE IF YOU DARE TO SHOW IT STAY AWAY FROM OUR FAMILY

Cold chilled my bones. I could never be handsome enough to be a model, but the fellow on the card was lanky, a thick-haired blond, and green-eyed-like me. I couldn't imagine that the hate-mailer had gotten lucky in choosing a countenance and coloring like my own. And the vandalism on the card had been minutely done, careful to preserve some semblance of the model's face.

This person knew what I looked like.

Thickness coated my throat. My glance had gone to my windows, my door. Were they watching me now? Did they know my face, or was it a lucky guess based on Bob Don's own looks? I checked again for the postmark-this time it was Beaumont, much further up the long, curving Texas coast from Corpus Christi. So my admirer traveled, or had an accomplice. I sealed the second harassing missive in another Baggie and stored it with the first. And spent a long, sleepless night, listening to Candace's soft breathing in the darkness.

I hadn't told a soul.

Now, watching Bob Don cheerfully grill dinner, the soft voice of the Rangers baseball announcer chronicling a home game, the chirp of crickets in the trees, the hate felt far away. I sipped at my Shiner Bock and listened to the soporific drone of the bugs, singing away their short lives.

“Earth to Jordan,” Bob Don boomed out after I'd been idling moments away in my own world. I looked up at him with surprise.

“Something's got you out of gear, son. The Rangers ain't losing that badly.”

I smiled. Son. Despite my ambivalence about Bob Don as a parent, I have to admit the endearment had a nice ring. When my father died from his bout with cancer and my mother forgot who I was, I'd thought son would be a word dropped from usage in connection with me. But here was Bob Don, ready to pick up the reins. Ready to love me like a father, like the one I'd lost. I stood suddenly and walked through the smoke wafting from the grill.

“You and Candace crossways?” he asked my back.

“No.” How, how to do this? “I need to ask you a question. Is anyone in your family considered-dangerous?”

“Good Lord.” He blinked at me with honest surprise. “What on earth would make you ask such a thing?”

I felt torn about revealing the poison-pen letters. Part of me wanted him to know, to tell me I didn't have to go to the reunion, that he'd find out who was terrorizing me. Another half of me wanted to entirely ignore the epistles, not give in to the foul bullying they represented. But I was swimming into unknown waters here, and I needed to know where the sharks lay.

I ran my tongue along my lips. “I just would like for you to answer the question, Bob Don.”

“I will, when I know why you're asking.” He swallowed another long swig from his Shiner longneck.

“I'm just wondering if everyone in your family is going to be delighted by my presence. There could be some resentment against me. After all, I'm somewhat of an unwelcome addition.”

“Why unwelcome? They're just going to love you-”

“If you say so,” I interrupted, cutting off his extrovert's flow of words and tasting my beer. I'd been giving some thought as to why I-as the newest member of the Goertz family-might merit vituperative messages. And I'd concocted a theory. “Uncle Mutt's rich, right?”

I asked this while Bob Don was in mid-gulp and he nodded his assent. “Yeah, rolling in it.”

“Are we talking millions here?”

“Mutt's probably worth about ten million or so.”

Ten million. No wonder someone didn't want another claimant to the family fortune around.

“And he's in good health? Not expected to kick off anytime soon?”

Bob Don gave me a long, measuring stare. “I don't like where this conversation's heading. I hope you want to go to meet my family because it matters to us both, not to hit Uncle Mutt up for cash or get on the beneficiary list.”

“Oh, no, not at all,” I hemmed. “Not at all, Bob Don. It just occurs to me that some of your relatives might not be overly thrilled at another potential heir.”

He didn't answer me immediately, the smoke from the grill framing his face in the dusky light. He turned and ministered over the steaks, piling the two thick cuts onto a plate. “Nearly let these burn,” he muttered to himself. “And why don't we eat out here? It's a nice evening and the mosquitoes ain't so bad.” In counterpoint to this comment, the blue haze of his bug zapper brightened and an electric hiss announced the demise of another of our bloodsucking friends. “Why don't you get the taters?” he asked.

I went back inside, wondering why he was dodging my question. I fetched the warming potatoes from the oven, sliced them open in a cloud of fragrant steam, and slathered them with butter, sour cream, and chives. I retrieved the salad I'd made earlier from the fridge, grabbed a bottle of ranch dressing, and piled all on a tray, along with plates and silverware.

When I returned to the patio, Bob Don was staring toward the purplish horizon, watching the dying light play along the branches of the loblolly pines and the live oaks that dotted his expansive backyard. The air felt warm and wet from an afternoon shower, but we're tough about humidity in Texas. He didn't even glance back at me when I began to unload the fixings.

“I hope you're hungry, Bob Don,” I began, '”cause we sure got us a mess of food here. I'm hiking my cholesterol just looking at it.”

He turned to me then and I could see an alien sadness coloring his face. I say alien because I'm not sure I could ever understand the emotions that painted that particular expression. He looked like a man who's gotten every gold piece in creation, only to see it all turn to brass in one dreadful second. I turned back to setting the table.

“Son, I love you.” I was still unloading the tray and I didn't look up again. A twitchy discomfort arrowed through my body and I felt my face tighten.

“I haven't said them words to you in a long time. Not since after we-after you found out about me.” He'd murmured them in an intensive-care hospital room after taking a bullet while saving my life from a vicious killer. I'd held his hand, and like a little boy, I'd cried. But since then the topic of his paternal feelings for me had been avoided, a maelstrom to be carefully circumnavigated.

My mouth felt dry. I stared down at the jumble of torn lettuce, quartered tomatoes, and sliced onions in the salad bowl. The smell of the steaks had set my mouth watering, but I couldn't swallow past the dense block in my throat.

“It's okay,” he murmured. “You don't have to say nothing. I know you still have trouble seeing me as your father.”

I coughed past the blockage and glanced up at him. “Bob Don-”

“It's just that you coming to this reunion, God, it means the world to me. And I don't want you scared off by some idle worry that my people are gonna think that you're just gunning for Uncle Mutt's money. But after the past year we've had-getting to know each other, you letting me into your life more-I just want us to be able to acknowledge each other. To say publicly that we're father and son.”