Cruel World Read online

  “No, I guess not.”

  “I didn’t think it would be.”

  “I had hope.”

  He studied his father for a while. “I’m not afraid,” he repeated.

  “I know you’re not, but I am. I know what’s out there. The world is-”

  “A cruel place,” Quinn finished, moving closer to the desk. “You always tell me that. But it’s also beautiful; you say that too.”

  James was quiet for a long time and then turned to face him. He looked older, or maybe it was simply the grayish tinge set to his features by the storm.

  “Three years before you were born I was in Mali filming Standoff. It was hotter than hell while we were there and dry, so dry. The wind would blow across the plains where we were shooting and it would literally leech the moisture from you, pull it right from your skin. We would film during the daylight hours and then head back to our hotel in the evening, which was over an hour away. There were several local warlords battling in the area, over what I don’t know: food, gold, drugs, everything, I suppose. Skirmishes were common, and once we even heard gunfire at night not far from our hotel. Needless to say, our security was heavy.

  “One afternoon a storm rolled in, kind of uncommon for that time of year but not unheard of. If you remember the movie, everything was filmed in the desert specifically to capture the arid setting, so a rainstorm wasn’t extremely useful for us. Trent, the director, called off shooting for the rest of the day, so we all packed up and started back to the hotel. I was riding in the first truck when we saw them.”

  James’s eyelids fluttered and he looked at the floor. There was a swallow of whisky left in his glass, and he picked it up, bringing it halfway to his mouth before stopping.

  “It was a little girl and a man. They were on the side of the road. He’d been shot. There was blood on his white shirt that had gone a rust color. You could see it drying in the heat and sticking to him. The girl couldn’t have been more than seven, and she was starving. Her skin was plastered to her bones like shrink-wrap, and her hair was falling out. She had these huge, dark eyes that watched us as we got closer, but she never moved. She was sitting behind him, kind of holding his head up, and he wasn’t conscious. His mouth was open, and for all I know he might’ve been dead, but I don’t think he was. My driver started to slow down, and I watched her look at us. I know she couldn’t see us since our windows were tinted, but she stared right at me as we came even with her. Those eyes boring into mine through the glass.”

  James blinked and brought the drink to his lips, pouring the whisky down his throat with a toss of his head. Quinn sat in the chair on the opposite side of the desk and perched there, watching his father.

  “I told the driver to just keep going. We had a huge cooler full of ice and bottled water in the back of the truck and there was probably enough money in my wallet to feed her and her village for a week, but I told him to drive.”

  Thunder rumbled over the house and heavier rain pattered against the office window.

  “Why?” Quinn asked. His father was a different man in the low light, not a dashing movie star but a haggard, weary soldier with dead eyes.

  “Because of who I was then. That girl and the man on the side of the road might as well have been in another universe, that’s how distant I felt from them. They were dirty and starving and wounded, and I was none of those. I was riding in an air-conditioned truck with personal security and a soft bed to sleep in that night. I was rich and unconcerned with the world outside of my own. Those two people were part of that outside world that was so different I couldn’t relate to them. I got a sick feeling seeing them there, but it was the wrong kind of sick feeling. I felt sick at the thought of getting involved, of helping them, or leaving my comfortable world that I lived in. Being indifferent was easier. Forgetting was easier.” James set the empty glass down on the desk and reached for the whisky decanter. His hand rested on the crystal stopper, but he didn’t pour himself another drink. “At least I thought it was.”

  He glanced up and watched Quinn for a long second before looking away.

  “That is the world that’s waiting outside of these walls, son. That’s what it has to offer. There’s millions of people out there that are just like the person I used to be, who don’t think past their first impressions and don’t have the empathy to see who you really are. You’ll be shunned based on how you look by people that can’t relate, that don’t know how or care.”

  “You can’t say that. Not everyone is like that; they can’t be,” Quinn said. His mouth was parched, and his heart knocked against his breastbone.

  “I saw it, Quinn. I was one of them. They’re the people that do what I did every day. They’re the ones that appear normal but hide hate and resentment below the surface. They’re the ones that produce and read things like this.”

  James opened a drawer in the desk and scooped out several magazines. They were outdated but in good shape as if they’d been laid in the drawer years ago, untouched until that moment. He tossed them onto the desk and they spread out, fanning away from one another so that Quinn could see the covers.

  They were entertainment magazines, the kind he’d seen on television over the years. They chronicled the lives of celebrities: their work, their children, even their clothing choices in such detail that it was as if they were reporting on rare, endangered species of a rainforest rather than actors and actresses living on a California coast. The magazines were all similar in the fact that their central pictures, sandwiched between miracle weight loss diet claims and the latest fashion faux pas, were of his father and himself as a young child. His father was carrying him in a bundle, hugging him close to his chest. James was youthful and even more handsome than he was now. The distinguished gray at his temples was a lush black, and even with the harried look in his eyes, they still shone with confidence and purpose on the glossy cover. Quinn could see only a portion of his own face in the picture, but it was a miniature version of how he appeared now. The child’s features in the photo were uneven and slanted to one side, the bones already growing askew of proper balance. His brow was enlarged and one eye was shut, caught in mid-blink.

  The headline over the picture read, World’s sexiest man has ugliest child.

  Quinn studied them each for a moment, letting his eyes run over the words, the various photos. He reached out to touch one of them and let his hand hover before drawing it back.

  “It’s just words,” he said.

  “It’s not. It’s opinions, people’s thoughts, true feelings. These reporters loved taking pictures of me, telling the public what I was doing, who I was dating, what I was wearing. But the moment they saw you, they moved in like buzzards. I tried to continue normally, determined not to let what they were saying about you bother me. But it did. I loved you so much that when they began to close in on you with cameras and horrible words and disgust in their eyes, I couldn’t take it. I brought you here and hid you away and swore never to return or let them say another unkind thing about you.”

  “That was your choice, not mine.”

  “Damn it, Quinn!” James slapped the desk with his hand and a porcelain paperweight in the shape of a dragon jumped and toppled over. “You don’t understand. You haven’t been out there. What if they ostracize you, laugh at you, hurt you?”

  “What if they don’t?”

  James’s brow crinkled, and he leaned away from the desk, rubbing at his mouth with one hand. The rain tapped against the window as the day fell closer to night.

  “I won’t take that risk.”

  Quinn stood and righted the porcelain dragon. Its mouth snarled at him in a permanent roar, white teeth painted red at their tips.

  “I love you, dad, but someday it won’t be your choice.”

  Quinn turned away and let himself out of the office and only allowed the tears to cloud his vision when he was halfway to his room.

  Chapter 3

  Four Years Past

  “I’m leaving tom
orrow.”

  The words were almost carried away by the wind and the sound of the pounding surf sixty feet below them. Quinn waited for Teresa to turn to him, but she kept her eyes focused on the shining sea. They sat with their legs dangling over the cliff’s edge, his feet extending almost a full twelve inches past his teacher’s.

  “I know.”

  “How?”

  “You’ve been quiet the last two weeks, and I could hear it in your voice yesterday when you said goodbye to your dad.”

  Quinn turned to the old woman, and she was old, there was no denying the fact anymore. Her hair had lost its life, and instead of wearing it in curls, she pinned it back with two tin combs etched with swirling, concentric designs in the metal. The lines in her face, merely suggestions of increasing age before, were fully embedded now, folded dark and heavy near the borders of her eyes and mouth.

  “Do you think he knows?” Quinn asked.

  “No, but he’s your father. No matter what he says, he’s known somewhere inside that you’d leave one day. Parents always know.”

  He turned his focus back to the ocean. A fishing trawler bobbed among the waves over a mile offshore, a dark speck that glinted, catching the sun as it rose and fell heading out to deeper water.

  “Did your son leave?”

  Teresa leaned forward, letting her gaze fall to the breaking waves far below them.

  “You’ll need to tell him when he gets home tonight; he’ll want to start setting something up for you,” she said, as if not hearing his question.

  “Like what?”

  “Like a house and a car, money, college if you want.”

  “I’ve already completed a college education, you told me yourself last month.”

  “There’s always more to learn, Quinn Michael.”

  He kicked his feet and looked down at the big rocks, unchanged since he could remember. They were lucky, steadfast in their place, not unsure of anything. Not even the sea could move them if they became set somewhere.

  “I wanted to leave when I turned eighteen, but there was always a reason not to. Now it’s two years later and I can feel myself wavering. One minute I’ll be so excited to walk through those gates, my stomach will flip on itself, and the next it’ll be a stone thinking about leaving dad and you. I know why I’ve stayed as long as I have, and it’s not because dad forbade it. I could’ve climbed the cliffs around the fences a long time ago. It’s fear. Fear of the unknown. And compared with how safe I am here, fear’s always won out and kept me from leaving.”

  Quinn pointed out to where the trawler was barely visible.

  “My future is like that ship. It’s dwindling with each minute I stay here, and soon it will be out of sight.”

  Teresa smiled and patted his thigh once.

  “Your future isn’t that ship. It’s the ocean.” She put one frail arm across his shoulders. “Come on, traveler, let’s get back to the house and get you packed.”

  When they stepped inside, his father’s voice carried to them out of the living room where he sang in perfect harmony with Frank Sinatra, belting out I’ve got you under my skin. They came even with the doorway and Quinn stopped, glancing at Teresa who’s mouth turned up in a grin that mirrored his own.

  His father had a can of beer in one hand and was doing a graceful, sliding dance across the hardwood floor in time to the beat. His eyes shut as he hit a high note, his voice not carrying the velvety timber of Sinatra’s but hanging alongside it in rough accompaniment. The song ended and on cue, Quinn and Teresa began to clap.

  James spun around, his eyes lighting up before taking a bow.

  “Thanks, I’ll be here all week!” he yelled, hurrying across the room to them. He set his beer down and swept Quinn into a strong hug, picking him off his feet before setting him down again.

  “Jeez dad, are you drunk?”

  “Not in the least, my boy. Come here, Teresa.”

  The older woman swatted at him, the shining smile still on her face as James pulled her into the room and began to spin her while another big-band tune began to play. Teresa let out a short shriek that became laughter as they glided around the room. Quinn shook his head, watching them, his father catching his eye and winking before he dipped Teresa who responded by slapping his shoulder and laughing again.

  “I thought you weren’t coming home until late tonight?” Quinn said as James stood Teresa upright.

  “We got done early,” James said, taking a swig from his beer.

  “I’m assuming the meetings went well?” Teresa said, fixing a length of hair that had come loose from one of her combs.

  James grinned again, happiness ingrained into every inch of his face.

  “Better than I ever dreamed.”

  Mallory stepped into view from the hall, a bemused expression gracing her Hispanic features.

  “What is this, a fiesta?” she asked, looking around the group.

  “Yes,” James said. “In fact, tell Graham to cook lobster tonight and that creamy crab dip he does at Christmas. We’re celebrating. Oh, and open some smoked herring too.”

  “All right,” Mallory said, giving the three of them a puzzled smile before heading in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Ish, dad, I don’t know how you can eat that stuff.”

  “Herring’s the perfect food, tons of protein and delicious besides.” James gave him a playful swipe on the shoulder with his fist.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll stick to the lobster and crab dip.”

  “Me too,” Teresa said.

  “You two don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “We do; that’s why we’re not missing it,” Quinn said, grinning.

  James shook his head. “How about you and I take the skiff out for a run before dinner?” he asked. “She hasn’t hit the water in a while.”

  “The skiff? Okay…” Quinn flitted his eyes to Teresa who gave a slight shrug as she finished smoothing her hair.

  “Great, I’ll go change if you want to grab the lifejackets from the boathouse.”

  “Sure.”

  “Meet you down there.”

  His father disappeared through the hall, another snippet of song floating back to them and fading as James made his way upstairs. Quinn closed his eyes and then looked down at his hands, rubbing them together as if he were cold.

  “I’ll see you at supper,” he said, moving toward the entry. Her voice stopped him before the door.

  “Don’t put your plans on hold because he’s happy, Quinn. He’ll understand.”

  He nodded, not looking back and left the house.

  They sailed for an hour along the shore, the canvas snapping over the sound of the wind that gusted and shoved the small boat across the waves. The spring air carried more warmth than chill in the afternoon sunshine though the salty brine that sprayed them from time to time still spoke of winter.

  They didn’t talk much, both of them focused on their required jobs: his father steering the skiff while Quinn ran the sail and helped turn them through the surf. I’m leaving. The words were in his mouth, choking him. I’m leaving. He’d said them so easily to Teresa, knowing that she would understand. But his father.

  Quinn glanced at the older man for the thousandth time. The wind swept James’s hair away from his unlined brow and his clear eyes sparkled, reflecting the sea. He could say it. He would tell him. Tomorrow he was leaving.

  “Let’s head in, I’m starving,” James said, breaking him from his trance.

  Quinn nodded, letting the words fade away with the wind as they guided the little boat toward shore.

  The house smelled of boiling seafood when they returned, and Quinn’s stomach growled. The soupy nausea that had accompanied him throughout their sailing, intensifying to the point of being unbearable when he started to say the words, relinquished its hold and gave way to hunger.

  “Smells good, doesn’t it?” James said, stifling a cough as he slung an arm around his shoulders.

  “Yeah, sure does.�
� A bout of vertigo overcame him, the same as when he glanced down sometimes while climbing. He was at the edge. “Dad, I’ve got to talk to you.”

  James stopped in the dining room entry to look at him.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I…I’m…” His voice shook and he cleared his throat.

  “It’s ready you two,” Mallory said from across the room. Teresa came down the hall toward them, pausing when she saw how they were standing, the expectant look on James’s face.

  “I’ll tell you after dinner,” Quinn finished.

  His father studied him for a moment and then nodded.

  “Okay.”

  Everyone dined together. Normally Mallory, Graham, and Foster, all took their dinners at their respective guesthouses, but James had insisted that they all stay. He opened two bottles of wine and poured everyone a glass, even Quinn, shushing Teresa as she objected.

  “He’ll be twenty-one in less than a year, plus we’re celebrating,” James said, pouring Quinn’s glass full.

  Quinn avoided Teresa’s gaze as he sipped the drink, letting the alcohol drown out some of the anxiety that churned within him.

  “To the future, may it bring good things to us all,” James said, raising his glass. They all followed suit, and Quinn swallowed the sharp barb in his throat as his father’s kind eyes locked onto his own. The older man’s gaze swam with a sheen of tears before he blinked them away and drank several swallows of wine.

  Midway through dinner the telephone rang and Mallory swept out of the room to answer it. She came back holding the cordless in one hand.

  “It’s an Alex Gregory for you, sir.”

  James frowned and hesitated before rising from his seat. He coughed again into the back of his hand and motioned toward the hallway.

  “I’ll take it in my office,” he said, and left the room. Mallory set the phone down on the counter before returning to her chair.

  “May be about the meeting today,” Graham said, smoothing back his blond curls. “If it went as well as he let on, perhaps we’ll all get raises.” His Nordic face lit up in a smile and he winked at Quinn, the little golden earing he wore in his left lobe glinting in the light.