Chet Williamson - Reign

One thing had led to another, and before he was even aware of it, they were screwing in the cabana, without benefit of condom. Nine months later Evan had been born.

Sid had never been sure if he or Dennis had been the father. As the omniscient majordomo of the Hamilton household, he knew that they were the only two possibilities, and prayed to God that it was Dennis and not himself. Natalie Pierce had never requested a repeat performance, much to his relief. She was, he grew to realize, a games player, and had fucked him just to have fucked her husband's friend. With that mindset, it was surprising that she had never mentioned their indiscretion to Dennis, but such, Sid had figured, must have been the case, for Dennis's attitude toward Sid had not changed a jot. In another year, Dennis and Natalie were divorced. The year after that, she was dead, her games ended forever.

But the guilt had remained with Sid. Several times he had been on the verge of quitting over some outrageous words or actions on Dennis's part, but always he stayed, feeling himself condemned to penance because of his previous disloyalty with his employer and friend's wife. A greater penance, however, was the presence of Evan when he came to live with Dennis after Natalie's suicide.

It was Sid who became the surrogate father when Dennis was on location shooting a film, or working fifteen hours a day on his short-lived TV series. Later, with the success of the Private Empire revival, he saw Evan less and less, but the bond that had been forged in Evan's young childhood was still strong.

And apparently the bond that was forged, ever so briefly, between Sid and Natalie Pierce Hamilton was still strong too, in Dennis's mind at least. Sid had no idea that Dennis had ever suspected. How could he have? There had been no insinuations about Sid in Natalie's biography that had appeared in 1977, which presented a roster of her sexual partners, for one of Natalie's weaknesses was a loose tongue. Perhaps she hadn't considered Sid worth mentioning to her cronies.

Then why had Dennis told Evan that he was a bastard? Merely out of spite, in order to hurt him with his mother's adulteries? It didn't seem like Dennis. He could be hard, but not petty.

Of course, Dennis had not seemed like himself for months. Still, Sid had noticed no change in the way he was treated. Hadn't Dennis come to see him the night before to talk about that hallucination he had had? Surely there was evidence that he considered Sid a confidant, and bore him no ill will for a twenty-year-old indiscretion, even if he did suspect. He had even hugged him.

But dear God, Sid thought, forgetting for a moment the surprising revelation Evan had mentioned, what was happening to Dennis? Coming on to Donna a few months ago, the hallucination of seeing the Emperor as a separate entity several weeks before, and then today, with Evan, claiming to be the Emperor…

The grief and loss must have been great, but he had been acting strangely even before Robin's death. What was going on in Dennis's head? What in God's name was he thinking?

"Let's not go to the Kirkland Inn tonight," Ann said, as she and Dennis walked from her front door to his car, a white Porsche that sat in her driveway like a glowing, friendly beast.

"All right. Any special reason?" he asked, opening the door for her.

"I'm too susceptible to old emotions at that place," she answered smiling, not telling him the real reason.

Terri had been quick to tell her that she was going out to dinner with Evan Hamilton that evening, and Ann strongly suspected that it was not because she was attracted to the boy, but because she thought it some kind of revenge for her mother seeing Dennis. It was stupid of Terri, but then Terri could be awfully stupid at times. If she had been clever, Ann thought, she would not have said a word, and when Dennis and Ann walked into the Kirkland Inn, as they would have if Ann had not had the advance warning, Terri could have been sitting there with Evan, waving pleasantly, even asking them to join her, making it a most uncomfortable and humiliating evening.

But instead she had tipped her hand and given the game away. Ann knew that Terri would talk Evan into going to the Kirkland Inn, so Ann would make sure that she and Dennis went elsewhere.

They ended up at a steak house two miles east of Kirkland. Although the restaurant was crowded, Ann saw Terri's smooth, short cap of red hair nowhere among the heads that bobbed over the plates. She breathed a sigh of relief and turned her attention where she had wanted it to be all along, to Dennis.

Though the ambience was more bustling than she would have preferred, the dinner was excellent, the steaks cooked precisely the way they had ordered them, the salads crisp and fresh, the dressing delicate, and the selection of wine was remarkably varied. Between bites, they spoke of inconsequential things, not mentioning the tragedies that had occurred in the theatre. By the time they ate dessert, a piece of blueberry pie for Dennis, a cup of custard for Ann, she was feeling relaxed, partly as a result of the wine, partly from the ease of being in Dennis's company again, and from knowing that there was no longer a wife offstage.

It was absurd, she thought, that she should be feeling guilty over not having to feel guilty. If she could have wished Robin alive again, she would have. But wishing would change nothing, and, circumstances being what they were, she thought she would have been a fool not to be glad to be there with Dennis, to have him across the table from her, their eyes meeting constantly, and her reading in his eyes things unspoken, things she longed to hear.

The meal finished, Dennis paid the bill, and they walked outside. The winter air was brisk, and their breath puffed out like amber clouds in the gleam of the lamps that lit the parking lot. She slipped her arm though his as they moved toward the car, and, after he unlocked her door, he turned to her, put his arms around her, and kissed her, a light and gentle kiss, made with no demands. They stood there for a long time, until she shivered from the cold in spite of her warm coat, in spite of Dennis's embrace. Finally he spoke.

"This feels so right. All those years ago, and it seems like only yesterday since I held you." He sighed, and she felt his warm breath against her hair. "I wish that time never would have passed. I wish we would be back there, that we had done things differently."

"I do too," she whispered. "It was a mistake. It didn't take me long to find that out."

"Mistakes," he said, "can be corrected."

They kissed again, and he opened the car door for her. When they were both inside, he started the engine, and heat rushed at them from the vents. "I don't want to take you home," he said.

"Whose home?"

She could see his smile in the semi-darkness. "Come to the theatre with me.”

“What show will we see?"

"A love story." There was only the trace of a smile now.

"Do you know how it will end?" she asked him.

"Happily. I pray to God, happily." Then he added, " This time."

She made a little gesture toward the night, the cold darkness. "Let's go," she said.

The other love story, the one that had taken place twenty-five years before, had not had a happy ending. That ending had come on a July night at a table at the Kirkland Inn, with a young man and a young woman seated across from each other in candlelight. They held hands, but as the words passed between them, the grips loosened, and soon there were two hands in the center of the table, barely touching. She withdrew hers first, into her lap, blinking away the tears in her eyes so that he wouldn't see. But he did, through the teary haze that warmed his own eyes. She loved him, yes, she admitted that, but it would not work. Her parents were against it, and she had never gone against them, simply could not. They wanted her to finish college, and she wanted to also.