Page 126 of One of Us Is Guilty

‘It’s okay. We can just put some of your magic make-up on it, and it will go away,’ Patrick had said.

He never forgot her face in that moment.

When he thought of her, that was the face and the expression he saw. Thinking of it now, in the bathtub in his father’s massive townhouse in Manhattan, he wondered if the face he saw in his mind’s eye was really his mother. After she died, his father had all of her pictures taken down from the houses. Perhaps the face he saw was one he had invented.

Maybe he had forgotten his mother a long time ago, and all he had now was the image he had created.

That water in the tub had long gone cold.

Patrick examined his fingers only to find the pads had shriveled and swirled because he had submerged them for far too long. His hands were slender and fine. He’d never worked a day in his life. The calluses he had built up rowing in college were long since gone, smoothed by a daily moisturizer that cost six hundred dollars a tub.

He stared at his hands, at the wrinkles around his knuckles and the fine lines of approaching middle age. They were not nearly as mottled and aged as his father’s, but they did look similar. These hands had hurt and loved. And sometimes, when he was very angry, they were not his own. They become someone else’s hands.

His father’s perhaps.

He got out of the tub, dried himself with a soft white towel and dressed.

Standing at the top of the stairs, he listened for sounds of his father. It was always possible to tell where he was in any house by the sound of his voice. It was deep and rough and carried everywhere. He thought he heard him downstairs, but couldn’t be sure. The one place he wouldn’t find his old man would be the kitchen. He didn’t think his father had ever set foot in there.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs and turned toward the kitchen, he heard that voice.

‘What have you been up to?’

The voice came from the lounge. Patrick checked his watch. It was almost nine. He had spent the entire day upstairs, on his laptop, checking for news of the trial, scrolling social media and feeling like a prisoner. His father had insisted he hunker down until the trial was over. It didn’t matter what press he got now, every question, every single piece online or on the news or in print would mention Molly Green and his wife’s trial. Patrick had to avoid all of it, at least until the verdict. And even then he could speak to the press again only if the jury came back with the right verdict.

His father was spread out on the white leather couch, a remote control in one hand, his ubiquitous cigar in the other, and several cell phones spread out on the coffee table beside him, like he was a goddamn drug dealer. The large-screen TV above the fireplace was playing his news channel. He looked at him, cocked an eyebrow, waiting for an answer to his question about what Patrick had been doing.

‘I’ve been checking for news on Vanessa’s trial. Staying out of the way.’

‘Any word from the DA on when you’ll be called as a witness?’ he asked.

‘I’m on their list of witnesses, but I haven’t heard anything yet.’

Julian nodded, said, ‘Good. And don’t worry about the campaign. You can pick it back up in a month or so, when all this is a distant memory.’

‘A month? I’m not going to be able to run now. I’ve been thinking of pulling out, Dad, maybe running again next cycle. Maybe . . .’

He wanted to say,maybe he could do something else. That maybe politics wasn’t his bag. That maybe he was going to move out of the city, to get as far away from his piece-of-shit father as possible. That his father was a monster, and he wanted Patrick to be just like him, and he wasn’t going to have any part of it. Not any more.

But of course he didn’t say any of that.

‘You always were a pussy,’ said Julian, turning his attention back to the TV. ‘Look at this,’ he said. The news anchor was talking about US miliary action in South America. The banner of rolling news on the bottom of the screen detailed updates on war in the Middle East, the government’s threats to invade a NATO ally’s country on the basis of establishing US security, five teenagers dead in a high-school shooting in Texas, fresh allegations that members of the government were involved in child sex trafficking, a Russian bomb killed thirty-civilians in . . . and on and on and on . . .

‘The news cycle has never moved this fast. The world is spinning out of control. There’s a high-pressure hose made up of death, corruption, war, rape and murder that’s aimed at everyone in the world through their phone screens twenty-four hours a day. With thousands of gallons of shit being thrown at them, they’re going to miss a few smaller turds. Little shits, like you. Despite the media coverage of this trial, most of your voters don’t even know Vanessa has been arrested, never mind someone in your campaigngot murdered. Give it a month after the verdict, and then you’ll be back.’

‘I know what you mean, but it’s just—’

‘This isn’t your decision. I can make you governor, son. But you’re going to do it on my terms. Or you won’t do it at all. Now, go start making plans to relaunch your campaign.’

Patrick stood there, dumb. Like that little boy who lost his mother, and grew up terrified of his father. Patrick was old enough now to realize that being scared of this man was the smart thing to do. He should be scared.

Everyone should.

He heard boots on the tiled hallway, coming closer.

He turned, saw Dekker coming toward him. The man had a black leather coat on, and his face was flushed either from the cold or the rage that came with way too much anabolic steroids and nobody to tear apart. The South African didn’t even acknowledge Patrick. He walked past him like he was part of the furniture.

His father sat up when Dekker came in, said, ‘Get out of here, Patrick.’