Bloodlines

51

W HEN THE DOGS STARTED BARKING, FRANK WAS IN THE SHOWER AND I was in the bedroom, getting dressed. I had just pulled my pantyhose up around my knees when the doorbell rang. I glanced at the clock. Seven-thirty on a Wednesday morning. Who the hell was at my door at this hour?

I hastily pulled the pantyhose up the rest of the way, got a big run in them as I quickly put on some shoes, swore, and went to the door. I opened it to see-to my utter surprise-Ke

Ke

Over those twenty years or so we had all changed to some degree, I suppose, but Ke

He still worked in construction, but had been forced to sell his own company to pay medical bills. Now he was employed by O’Malley’s company, as a supervisor. Working for O’Malley had been good for him-better for him, in many ways, than working for himself. These days, Ke

“Hi, Irene. Mind if I come in for a minute?”

“Sure, great to see you. I was just about to make breakfast. Have you eaten?”

“Yes-I’ve eaten. But don’t let me hold you up.”

I motioned him inside. “Come and talk to me while I get busy in the kitchen.”

“Is your husband here?”

“Yes, he’s in the shower. Let me tell him you’re here.”

“That’s okay-I came here to talk to you, anyway. I just thought-well, I’ll ask him later.”

He followed me into the kitchen, sat at the counter, and accepted an offer of coffee. He watched while I put a couple of slices of bread in the toaster.

“So, what’s up?” I asked.

“Barbara tell you we’re moving?”

“Yes. A house not too far from here, right?”

“Right. Thought we’d make a fresh start this time around.”

“You’ll like the area,” I said, not commenting on the fresh-start part. I kept trying to make myself forgive him for some of the horrible things he had said to Barbara when he was going through man-o-pause. For fooling around on her. I supposed I should get over it, since obviously she had.

There is a distance between “should forgive” and “have forgiven” that is sometimes hard to cross.

“Well…” he said, then stalled.

I waited. Eventually he started up again. “I have some old stuff of my dad’s. I thought you might like to have it.”

“Stuff of your dad’s? Ke

“Yeah, everything.” He fell silent again. The toast popped, and I set it on a plate. Maybe Frank would want it. My appetite was gone.

Deke, one of our big mutts, sidled up to him. “Well,” Ke

“U-Keep-It Self-Storage,” I read. I flipped it over. Scrawled on the back, in a hand I would have recognized anywhere, O’Co

“It might just be junk,” Ke

“Haven’t you looked through it?”

He paused, went back to petting Deke, then said in a low voice, “I can’t.”

After a moment, I said, “I understand.”

He nodded, not looking up at me. Dunk, our other dog, saw what he was missing and crowded him on the other side of the chair.

“If they’re getting obnoxious, I’ll put them out,” I said.

“No. No-I like dogs. Might have room for them at this new place.”

“You’ve been paying the rent on this storage place all this time?”

He nodded again. He reached for his keys and pulled one off. “Almost forgot. You’ll need this to open the padlock. The code to get into the gate is four-six-four-five.”

I frowned. “Everyone who rents there knows that code?”

“No, Dad made that one up for himself. Each person has his or her own. And there are cameras all over the place. But you can change the code if you want to-just see the guy at the counter, and he’ll put your new one in the computer. I guess he was a friend of Dad’s.”

“He made them wherever he went.”

Ke

“You sure you want me to have whatever is in there? Maybe there will be things you’ll want.”

“If it’s just papers and stuff like that, I don’t really want them. Otherwise-you can let me know if there’s something you think I’ll want. I trust you.”

That statement left me speechless.

Frank came out then, and Ke

Frank glanced over at me, his gray-green eyes full of amusement, and reached for the cold toast.

“Let me heat it up for you,” I said, a bit of domesticity that made him raise his brows even as he thanked me. I put the toast back in the toaster.

Ke

“Sure. What’s on your mind?”

“My dad’s only living brother is coming over from Ireland in a couple of months.”

“Dermot?” I asked.

“Yes. What I was wondering is-I’ve heard you can tell about paternity from DNA, even if you don’t have a sample from a living parent.”

“Yes, that’s true. You just need a relative descended from the same person.”

“So I could find out if my dad was really my dad from a sample of Dermot’s blood?”

“Yes. You’d each have to provide a blood sample, and you’d have to have it done by a private lab. It can be expensive-about fifteen hundred or more. Takes about four to five weeks.”

“Oh. Well, that makes sense, I guess.”

“Is that something you want to do?”

“I don’t know. I’m just thinking about it, that’s all.” He sniffed the air and said, “I think your toast is burning.”

Later that morning, I sat at O’Co

Winston Wrigley III, the jerk who inherited his late father’s job, knows that isn’t an empty threat. I quit the paper in the late 1980s after he failed to fire someone for sexually assaulting another staff member. I was gone from the Express for a couple of years. I came back because it was the only way I was going to find out who had killed one of my closest friends-my mentor, Co

The same people who had been responsible for Ke