“What if you do all that, you match their pace, but it still doesn’t work out?”
“Then it doesn’t work out.”
“Okay,” Riley said, frustrated, “well, what if that hurts like hell?”
“Then it hurts like hell.”
Fuck. Riley wrapped her arms around her thighs. “Things were simpler—worse, but simpler—when I thought we were cursed to die alone.”
“Well, you know what Gran always said.” Her mom took another sip of coffee. “You’re cursed as long as you believe you’re cursed.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
All it took was a quick call to his father’s assistant to find that Alfie hadn’t gone far. He’d booked a room in Inverness. Had stayed waiting in the wings, ready to give Clark a good lecture as his career, once again, took a hit.
At the hotel, when he told the desk clerk he was visiting Alfie Edgeware, the man offered to send him up along with a complimentary tea service.
Normally, Clark got anxious before seeing his dad. His belly filling with the kind of jittery pre-exam nerves where you tried to remember what you knew, to keep your mind sharp, ready to respond in a way that showed you to your best advantage.
He didn’t feel like that now. Instead, an odd calm settled over him. Like his center of gravity had shifted, stabilized.
Riley was right. He knew what he needed to do.
Alfie’s suite was twice as large as Clark’s camper and included an abundance of tacky gold accents. As Clark held the door, the hotel server shuffled forward to settle a laden tray on the table in front of his father, who sat reading next to the window. Only after Clark had tipped the man and seen him out did Alfie fold his newspaper over one of the velvet arms of the reading chair he occupied and look up.
“I was expecting you sooner.”
“Funny. I just received your summons.” Without waiting for an invitation, Clark settled himself in the opposite chair. “Don’t you think we’re all getting a little old to be involving public institutions in our family squabbling?”
“I would have ordered you off the site directly if I’d thought you’d listen.” His father helped himself to a butter biscuit. “You should thank me for handling the matter discreetly before the HES found out you were taking your trousers down on their dime.”
“Given the circumstances to which you’re referring, I think you’ll agree discretion is no longer my primary motivation.”
His father tugged at the sleeves of his neatly pressed dress shirt, undoing the cuffs and folding them back as if to imply an ease that didn’t exist in the rest of his suddenly tense posture. He might have expected Clark to show up here today, but not like this.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” Clark leaned forward to pour the tea from the handsome china set. “First, you’re going to apologize for treating me like a child or someone who works for you—since I am neither.”
Setting down the pot, he added milk into his father’s cup until the color resembled Cadbury milk chocolate—the exact shade of Alfie’s preference.
“Then you’re going to make things right with the HES. I don’t care how you do it, but I suggest starting by admitting you made a mistake.”
Alfie didn’t usually take sugar, but he liked it, so Clark dropped in a cube before lifting the saucer to stir.
“Then, finally,” he said, swirling the silver spoon, “since at that point you’ll have earned my magnanimous forgiveness, we’re both going to make amends with Patrick, since you’re too bloody proud to do it yourself.” He extended the steaming cup to his father. “Tea?”
His father took two sips, staring out the window at the drizzly afternoon, before replying. “I don’t see any reason I should apologize to Patrick.”
Clark sighed. “As your son, I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but in fact it’s wrong to shove your child out of your life because you’re ashamed of them.”
Really, Clark owed his mother a tremendous amount of gratitude. Without her patient, generous, forgiving rearing, who knew how awful he might have ended up?
He’d asked her once, after his father had forgotten her birthday for the second year in a row, why she stayed with him. Your father is a great man, she’d said with a sad smile. And I’ve never been able to stop myself from believing that with our help, he could also be good.
Clark poured himself tea, dark and sweet. “What Patrick did—falsifying those scans, lying to the industry—it was wrong. And I know it tarnished your sterling reputation, but it’s past time that we both forgave him, especially since he obviously did it in a misguided attempt to make you proud.”
Alfie set down the cup with rattling force. “I’m not mad about what he did to my name. What I can’t forgive him for is what he did to yours.”
“Excuse me?” Clark paused with his cup at his lips. “Please tell me I misheard you.” He lowered his tea, slowly. “Because it sounded like you’ve been going to bed at night blaming Patrick for deceiving me and then waking up the next morning to tell me how weak I am for believing him.”
Sometimes the truth was so obvious, so annoyingly right in your face the whole time, but you couldn’t see it yet because you hadn’t done the work, hadn’t cleared the way.
His father was the oldest son of a butcher. The first Edgeware to attend university. And he’d picked archaeology. It must have seemed so flimsy to his family, so silly and self-indulgent. He’d gotten famous off his first expedition—one where he’d been hired to carry another man’s bags. He’d never even gone back to Manchester to clear out his rooms, had simply sent for his car.
“Neither of us will ever be good enough for you. At least, not while we’re trying to be.”
Clark thought he had learned the mistake of making his dad his hero after Alfie had let him assist on a summer dig in northern France. They’d faced miserable weather for days—rain and hail and winds so sharp they stole the breath from their lungs—and his dad wouldn’t sleep. The project fell behind, and Alfie didn’t trust anyone else to manage the troubleshooting. He kept the crew out in unsafe conditions, but even when they mutinied, seeking shelter, his dad stayed in the dirt, furious and focused.
Clark had stayed too, even though he couldn’t appease his father, could barely hold a trowel with the way his hands shook from cold, exhaustion, and fear. He remembered the harrowing moment of looking into his dad’s wild eyes and realizing Alfie Edgeware was flawed—as human as anyone else.
A decade later, Clark could finally see the wounds behind those flaws. See the boy who wanted so desperately to earn the rank and renown he’d stumbled into. Who didn’t trust that he was worthy or even truly wanted. A crushing sort of helplessness came with the knowledge that Clark couldn’t fix his dad.
But he could fix the way he responded to him.
Could make sure that whatever next choice he made—in occupation or partner or haircut—he did for himself.
“I suppose this new bullishness is the work of that girl.” His father folded his arms. “The one you thought was magic.”