Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot

I said to the woman on the desk, “Never mind.”

“I’ve got something,” she said. “Two queen beds and—”

I shook my head. “No thanks.”

I got back into the car, put the key in the ignition and started the motor. I reached for the seat belt, buckled myself in.

“Full up?” Jeremy asked.

“Yup,” I said.

The Hampton Inn and the Courtyard were full, but the Best Western had a spot for us. At all three places, before heading in, I made a point of not parking under any bright lights where someone might be able to spot Jeremy. Once I had us a room, I hustled him through the lobby as quickly as possible.

“They’re going to think you’re some sort of pervert who likes little boys,” Jeremy said.

“You’re not a little boy. You’re eighteen.”

“Oh, so it’d be legal?”

“That’s not the point I was trying to make.”

The room was adequate. First thing Jeremy did after tossing his bag onto one of the two beds was grab the remote and troll through all the available channels. “Wanna order a movie?” he asked.

“No.”

“There’s dirty ones, too.”

“No.”

“You think it’s weird that my dad’s gay?”

“No.”

“That he’s living with Malcolm?”

“No.”

“I’ve never liked him.”

“Malcolm?” I said.

“Yeah. Not because he’s gay. Well, sort of. Because my dad fell in love with him, because they’re both gay, so that meant my mom and dad split up. But mostly I don’t like him because he’s a dick.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I mean, if your dad’s gonna leave, you’d like to think he had a really good reason, right? That the person he was leaving you for was going to make his life better.”

“You don’t think he and Malcolm are happy?’

Jeremy shrugged. “I don’t even care.” He propped up some pillows at his back so he could sit up on the bed. “What are we going to do?”

“Did you bring a book to read or anything?”

He shook his head.

“I brought three,” I told him. I unzipped my bag, intending to toss them out for his perusal, when my cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Weaver?”

“Hello, Gloria.”

“Is Jeremy there?”

“Of course.” I looked at him and mouthed, “It’s your mom.”

His head went down like a bag of sand. Blindly, he held out his hand and let me drop the phone into it.

“Hi, Mom... Yeah, we had some sandwiches... I don’t know.” He looked at me. “Are you going to get me a hot meal?”

“That’ll be breakfast,” I said.

“He says I’ll get a hot meal at breakfast.” He gave me a look that suggested his mother did not think that was a good enough answer. “It’s okay, I’m fine. No, we drove straight here. No stops along the way. We’re in Kingston now. I think we’re going to New York City.”

I shook my head.

“I guess I wasn’t supposed to tell you that... Yes, I know you’re my mom and you deserve to know where I am... Are you going to call Ms. Harding in the morning and tell her what’s going on?”

I gave him a puzzled look. He whispered to me, “My probation officer.”

Then, back to his mother, “Okay... Yes, I’ll check in. Okay... Yes, I love you too. Goodbye.”

He handed back the phone. I put it to my ear, wondering if Gloria was still on there, wanting to give me a piece of her mind, but she’d hung up.

“She really does treat me like I’m five sometimes,” he said.

“And she probably always will. Kids are kids to their parents no matter how old they are.”

“She had kind of a rough time when she was little,” he said.

I nodded. “I read about that.”

I went back into my case and brought out three books. “I’m reading this one,” I told him, holding up an old copy of John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany that I had bought at Naman’s. “But you can have one of these if you want.”

Onto his bed I tossed two paperbacks. Early Autumn , by Robert B. Parker, and The Stand , by Stephen King. The latter was about five times the thickness of the former. Jeremy gave them a cursory look, then picked up the remote.

“I wish I had my phone,” he said.

He watched a couple of episodes of The Big Bang Theory while I tried to read, but I found it hard to concentrate with the background noise. Finally, I said it was time to turn in. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, then made way for Jeremy. He closed the door. I heard the shower running, but he was in there a long time after the water stopped.

I called out to him, “You okay in there?”

“Yeah,” he said quickly. “Tummy’s kind of off. I think it was one of those sandwiches. We should have gotten a pizza or Mickey D’s.”

The sandwiches hadn’t upset my stomach.

At long last, he came out and slid under the covers of his bed. Light from the parking lot filtered through the drapes, so we weren’t in total darkness once I’d turned off the bedside lamp.

“Do you snore?” Jeremy asked.

“I’ve been told I do.”

“Great. I heard Madeline say you aren’t married or anything.”

“Not any more.”

“You got divorced?”

“No.”

Jeremy went quiet. There was no sound from his side of the room for a long time, and I thought maybe he’d fallen asleep.

I was wrong.

“What will happen to me?” His voice came through the darkness like someone in the distance calling for help.

“What do you mean?”

“What kind of life am I going to have?” he asked. “I mean, the whole world knows who I am and hates me. What happens when I have to go back to school? What about when I want to go to college or something? If I even decide to do that. Or after that, when I want to get a job? Who’s going to hire me? They’ll google my name and find out who I am and what I did and they won’t want to have anything to do with me. I’m like the world’s biggest asshole.”

“No you aren’t,” I said. “I think that might be Galen Broadhurst.”

I heard an actual chuckle from him.

“Sorry,” I said. “That was unprofessional.” I shifted onto my side so that, even if Jeremy couldn’t see me, my voice would project more clearly to him. “Look, I don’t have all the answers. I sure can’t claim to have been the greatest father that ever lived.”

“You’ve got kids?”

“I had a son.”

“Oh.” A pause. Then, “But not any more?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“The thing is,” I said, “you did what you did, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. You own it. You can’t hide from it. If you don’t tell people up front, and they find out later, they’ll think you’re trying to put something over on them, even if all you’re doing is what anyone else would do. Wanting people to respect their privacy.”

“Yeah, sure. So I put on the top of my résumé, I’m the kid who ran over that girl?”

“No. You did something stupid. All kids, by the time they’ve reached your age, have done something stupid. The others are just luckier than you. Maybe they drove drunk, too, but nothing bad happened. So that’s tough. But you have to accept responsibility for what you did. You can’t go blaming others. You have to say, ‘I did it, I own it,’ and every day moving forward you have to learn from that.”

Silence from the other bed.

“Does that help any?” I asked.

“Not really.”

I heard him turn over and pull up the covers.

We were done.

Even with his eyes still closed, Barry Duckworth became aware that someone was in the bedroom.

He opened them, blinked a couple of times to get used to the light coming through the window, and saw his son, Trevor, standing just inside the door.