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‘Why couldn’t you come to me, Abe?’ his father had asked, when his medication had been given for the night.
‘It will sort itself out,’ Abe had said. ‘Khalid is just posturing.’
‘I’m not talking about Khalid,’ Jobe had snapped, and then, defeated by the drugs, had closed his eyes to sleep.
Yet where was the peace? Abe thought, for despite the good news of the day, despite Jobe’s goal to see his grandchild being met, still his face was lined and there was tension visible even in his drug-induced sleep.
There had been a long moment when his father’s breathing had seemed to cease and he’d called urgently for the nurse.
It was normal, he’d been told, with so much morphine for respirations to decrease and also, he’d been further told, albeit gently, things slowed down near the end of life.
But no matter how gently said, it had hit him like a fist to the gut.
His father was dying.
Oh, he had known for months, of course he had, but he had fully realised it then. Abe had glimpsed the utter finality of what was to come and, rather than do what instinct told him to and shake his father awake and demand that he not die, Abe had held it in and headed out into the snowy night.
He had sent his driver home ages ago, and had stood for a moment looking up at the snow falling so quietly from the sky.
Instead of calling for his driver, or even hailing a cab, he had crossed the wide street and headed over to Central Park.
There he had cleared snow from a bench and sat by the reservoir, too numb, and grateful for that fact, to feel the cold.
Here had been the park of his childhood, though it had never been a playground.
Abe had never played.
Instead, on the occasional times his mother would take them, unaccompanied by a nanny, it would be he who would look out for Ethan, making sure he didn’t get too close to the water.
And that had been on a good day.
The park closed at one a.m. and, rather than being locked in for the night, Abe had stood with no intention of heading home.
There were plenty he could call upon for the usual balm of sex. As disengaged as he was with his lovers, Abe did generally at least manage some conversation, but even that brief overture before the mind-numbing act felt like too much effort tonight.
And so he had walked from the park to his father’s residence, which was far closer to the hospital than his Greenwich Village home. He had decided to sleep there tonight.
Just in case.
And now, for reasons he didn’t care to examine, conversation felt welcome.
Necessary even.
He walked through to the drawing room and she, Naomi, Merida’s friend, followed him in and took a seat on the pale blue sofa as he lit the fire that had been made up and then checked his phone.
Again, just in case.
‘The snow’s getting heavy,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be wise to stay nearer to the hospital tonight.’
‘How is your father?’
‘Today took a lot out of him. Are you a nurse?’ he asked, because he had no real idea of the qualifications required to be a nanny. Perhaps that was why he had pursued conversation, Abe thought—so that he could pick her brains.
But she shook her head.
‘No,’ Naomi said. ‘I’d always wanted to be a paediatric nurse but...’ She gave an uncomfortable shrug. ‘It didn’t work out.’
‘Why not?’
