M. Donice Byrd - The Warner Saga (37 page)

Randolph looked pained. “They couldn’t find any next of kin, Blake. She’s buried in a pauper’s grave in Graceland Cemetery. I tried to get her moved but I’m not family.”

Blake nodded in understanding. “I always assumed as much.”

“You know I would have taken care of her if I had known before they interred her.”

“Of course,” Blake said, quietly. His mouth felt suddenly dry as he steeled himself to ask the questions that had plagued him for two decades. “What do you know about her death?” He didn’t know if his father had
been privy to the true facts. They never once discussed it. He watched as his father frowned and held his lips sealed for a moment.

“I read the coroner’s report.”

Blake should have realized with his father’s political clout and connections that his mistress’s coroner’s report could be easily accessed. That acknowledgment hurt Blake more than he expected.

“You never said anything. I didn’t know you knew.”

Senator Knight swallowed reflexively as he sat down on the edge of his desk. “I’ve had a lot of guilt over it.”

“So have I,” Blake said softly, his voice cracking.

“You? What could you have done that would have caused that? You were her pride and joy.”

Blake looked up into his father’s eyes, so much like his own.
Randolph’s beetled brows raised in the middle in a concerned countenance.

“I was her shame and embarrassment.” Tears sprang to his eyes and he took a deep breath through his mouth as he fought the emotions welling in him.

“Oh, Blake, that’s not true. She loved you with all of her heart.”

Blake would have liked to have said if she loved him, she wouldn’t have killed herself. “I got in a fight that day. If I’d come straight home, I might have gotten there in time to save her life.”

He couldn’t tell his father he had witnessed the last drops of blood falling into a pool of blood in the tub.

“Father, d-did something happen between you?” Blake asked hesitantly. The small boy inside him screamed for him to be quiet, to not give Randolph Knight
an excuse to push him further away.

Blake could sense the change in his father immediately. He wasn’t trying to cast blame; he just wanted to understand why she killed herself. Randolph Knight crossed his arms over his chest and curled his lips inward as if he didn’t want to speak of it. He shut his eyes for a few seconds before he spoke.

“She didn’t want me to run for the Senate because she knew as long as I was in politics; I’d never even consider leaving Clara. Your mother knew we’d never get married – I never led her to believe anything different – but she still harbored hope.”

A mirthless chuckle escaped Blake’s lips as he realized he had always held a similar desire to be accepted as family. “I know how she feels. I’ve always hoped you’d publicly acknowledged me as your son. But even now, in the twilight of your career, I’m the skeleton you want to keep in the closet.”

Randolph Knight became instantly defensive. “It’s not just my career I’m thinking of. Clara and our girls would be publicly humiliated by my indiscretion and you would be labeled a bastard by everyone who knows you. And frankly, Blake, your lifestyle would be an embarrassment to us all.”

Blake prickled at that. “Oh, do you mean sleeping with women I was not married to and had no intention of marrying? I wonder where that example was set for
me?” Blake said, raising his voice. “Like father, like son.”

Randolph Knight’s face became mottled with color. “Blake, is your new wife filling your head with this nonsense? Is that where this is coming from?”

“I’ve never discussed it with her,” Blake said tightly. “I’m done. Until you find the guts to tell people who I am, I’m done with you. Donna is the only one who ever treated me like family. You act as if my being your bastard is my fault or my mother’s. When are you going to take responsibility for your part?”

“I have taken responsibility. I have always provided for you.”

“Financially, yes, but not where it really counts. After Beth died, I needed you, I needed a father. I needed a shoulder to cry on. I had no one! Do you have any idea what that does to a child … what that did to me? The only way I could see you was by getting tossed out of school. You couldn’t even find time to see me on most holidays. Do you know what it’s like to be the only boy in the dormitory and to have the cook invite you to eat with her family so she wouldn’t have to come to work on Christmas day? Do you know I used to tell the headmaster that you were meeting me at the train depot and I would spend my holidays in hotels so people at school wouldn’t ask why I never went home?”

“I had a family!”

Blake wanted to hit something.

“And we know I’m not one of them. I’m just the reminder of your indiscretion.”

“I loved your mother. She wasn’t just a momentary lapse in judgment.”

He nodded his head acknowledging that he knew his father loved Beth and wanted to ask why he couldn’t be treated the same as his other children but Blake knew the answer already. Randolph Knight’s career took precedence over everything else.

Blake turned to leave but stopped short. He reached in his pocket and removed his father’s razor. “This belongs to you,” he said thrusting the offending object at his father. He didn’t know how liberating it would feel to give the object of her death to the person who in all likelihood was responsible for the melancholy she couldn’t live with. It was as if he was removing the guilt of her death from his shoulders and putting it on his father’s.

“My razor?
I haven’t seen this in twenty years. You’ve kept it all this time?”

“She killed herself with it.”

Randolph Knight gasped and dropped the razor as if it were red-hot. It clattered dully on the polished wooden floor.

“Jesus, Blake. Why would you keep that?”

Blake stared at his father trying to calm down before he said something he might always regret. “I’ve always been so proud to be your son even if I alone knew who I was but I can’t live like this anymore. I will always love you and appreciate everything you’ve done for me but I am no longer going to beg for your love and attention. Table scraps are for dogs not for sons.”

Blake heard his father calling his name before the
door closed but Blake didn’t stop.

The secretary rushed into the inner office nearly before Blake disappeared into the corridor. “I heard raised voices. Should I ban him if he shows up again?”

“He won’t come here again. But if he does show him in immediately.”

36

Agnes Donovan did not bother to feign surprise when Blake Warner’s trunks arrived. She merely had them moved into storage until he turned up. However, the stunned expression when the man himself appeared was not feigned in the slightest. In the years she had known him, she had never seen him looking as he had that day. Sure, she had seen him rumpled from travel and living out of his carpetbag or in need of a haircut or even with a few days’ whisker growth on his chin but when he walked in, she nearly didn’t recognize him. Not only was he unwashed but it also appeared he hadn’t shaved in weeks. But what alarmed her most was the way he didn’t conjure up the slightest hint of a smile. In all the time she knew him, which had to be at least a decade; he never stood across the desk from her without one until then.

If the truth be known, she harbored a little crush on him herself despite the fact she was married and twenty years his senior but he was just so charming and attractive no woman could resist. She had certainly been more surprised by his marriage than she had by his estrangement since he had never courted any woman longer than a few months. Well, except for Rebecca Grant and Agnes wasn’t exactly sure about her. Miss Grant had never spent the night and she had never seen the woman wrap her arm around his or even kiss him on the cheek.

Mr. Warner had locked himself in his room with instructions to send up a sandwich twice a day. Agnes had taken it upon herself to send up a bath thrice weekly although he hadn’t asked for it.

They had come again. The boy and his sister Blake had introduced as his children sat in the lobby chairs. She told them what room he resided in, but they wouldn’t go up. They just sat in the lobby, sharing one chair. Each time they came, they stayed for about an hour and then left as quietly as they entered. Determined they would not leave disappointed again, Agnes climbed the stairs to the second floor.

She stood at the door knocking and knocking until he came and opened it. He looked terrible. If she hadn’t known better
, she might have suspected he was drunk.

“Jesus, Blake.”

In ten years, she had not once addressed him by his given name nor was she in the habit of cursing in front of guests. “That boy and girl you came in with are downstairs in the lobby. I was going to make you go down and see them but I don’t think they need to see you like this. Jesus,” she cursed again.

“Pete and Lolly are here?”

“It’s not the first time either.”

A myriad of emotions crossed his countenance. “I don’t want to see them. Just leave me alone.”

“No, that little girl is not going to leave here in tears again. I’m going to send up a bath for you and you
are
going to clean up and come down to say hello.” Agnes Donovan turned to leave but stop short. “Whatever is going on between you and your missus is not their fault. If I hear you being anything but a doting father, you’re going to have to find another place to live.”

Blake may have used the threat of not wanting to find a new place to live as an excuse to see Pete and Lolly but the truth was he wanted to see them almost as much as he was conflicted over whether he wanted to see Meredith.

Lolly didn’t recognize Blake’s bearded face when he came down the staircase twenty minutes later. Pete elbowed her and pointed but she still didn’t know who he was until he was close enough for her to see his eyes better.

“Uncle Blake?” Lolly sounded unsure.

“It’s me, Lolly. I just grew out my beard,” he said smoothing the unkempt thing downward. “Come here and give me a hug.”

She looked like she’d rather be tossed in a mud puddle but slowly she and Pete rose from the chair. Blake scooped her up under the arms until she was high enough to wrap her arms around his neck. He held out one arm to Pete as an open invitation to join the embrace but Pete pushed Blake’s arm away.

“Have you eaten? Come on let’s go to the dining room and have a bite.”

Blake didn’t let them object and he didn’t put
Lolly down until he deposited her in a booth. As always, Blake sat next to Pete blocking him from staring eyes.

“Do you want a meal or just some pie and milk?”

Lolly’s eyes grew wide. “Do they have
punkin
pie?”

“Oh, that sounds good, doesn’t it?” Blake said. “Let’s ask. What about you, Pete?”

Pete made a series of signs Blake didn’t understand but Lolly spoke them as he signed. “I would like p-u-m-k-i-n pie, too, if they have it.”

Pete opened his notebook and wrote the words ‘
pumkin’
and ‘pie’.

“Is that a list of words you need to learn?”

Pete nodded.

The waitress walked up before Blake could ask to look at his list of words or correct the spelling of
pumpkin
. It was Lena, the woman who had waited on them the first time they ate there as a family.

“Oh, hey, Mr. Warner, I didn’t recognize you with the new beard. It suits you. Mrs. Warner isn’t with you today?”

“No. We all want pumpkin pie and milk.”

“I just love beards,” she said. “Is it to that soft stage yet?”

She reached out to touch his beard. Blake pulled away and grabbed her wrist.

Pete began signing and Lolly, her eyes trained almost trancelike on him, interpreted simultaneously.

“She’s not here to save your j-o-b this time you ugly t-r-o-l-o-p.”

Blake chuckled at
Lena’s sharp intake of breath.

“Are you going to let her talk to me that way?”

“She didn’t say that, he did,” Blake said pointing at Pete.

Pete cast an insincere, lopsided smile at her. Blake turned to Pete and held out one finger as if he was going to give him a good scolding. “Trollop is spelled with two L’s.” He winked at Pete before turning back to
Lena. “I think we prefer to have one of the men wait on us,” Blake said releasing her hand.

“Yes, sir.”