Something to Talk About (23 page)

That got Alicia’s attention immediately. “What do you mean? What happened last night?”

“Pop heard me say I went to
Idlewild
and he got all weird. I said something like, ‘You know what I found up there,’ and he passed out cold. I thought I’d given him such a shock he’d collapsed with a cardiac arrest,” he admitted.

Alicia took his hand under the table and held it tightly. Andrew assured his brother that he’d done no such thing.

“Believe me, Adam, the way Mr. Bottomless Pit was
chowing
down yesterday, he’d have made it to the hospital with or without a shock to his system. All the caterers know him from doing the party every year and they were all fixing him this and that and he was stuffing his face like it was the last time he’d see food.”

“And it
was
the last time he’ll see some of that kind of food,” Martha said with spirit and resolve.
“Scared us all to death because he was too greedy to control himself.
Just wait until I get him home,” she vowed. “I’ll have him on the strictest diet he ever heard of.”

Everyone laughed, which released some of the tension in the room. Benita looked at Adam curiously and asked what it was that he found in
Idlewild
that might be upsetting to Big Benny.

Adam drew in a deep breath, saying he hadn’t intended to tell them about it until he talked to their father. “Now that doesn’t seem like such a hot idea. I’m glad you’re all sitting down because you’re not going to believe what I’ve got to tell you.”

It didn’t take long to tell the tale. Beginning with encountering Reba outside Jones’s Ice Cream Parlor to meeting
Emmaline
and the sisters, Adam told them all of the past that he’d uncovered. As he spoke, their faces went from surprised to
shocked
to utterly stunned.

  
Adam managed a wry grin and said, “Yep, that’s about the way I
reacted,
only I had to keep it on the down low because they were right there in front of me. You have to meet them; they’re amazing. These are the sweetest, nicest old ladies you ever want to meet and why he turned his back on them I’ll never know. They were so happy to see me and Alicia, it was truly humbling.”

“Did they say why Daddy left town and never came back?” Benita asked.

Adam shook his head. “All they said was something happened to cause a rift between him and the family and he left They never did get around to saying what it was, did they, Alicia?”

Alicia hoped the sudden heat in her face wasn’t evident as she mutely shook her head. It was childish, but as long as she didn’t actually say the words, it wasn’t like she was really lying to Adam. She was just withholding, which was bad enough. Thankfully, the conversation rolled on without her input although it rolled in a most unexpected direction.

“Andrew, maybe it has something to do with what Daddy told us on Saturday,” Benita said.

“You could be right, Benita. They could be connected in some way,” he mused.

“You want to clue me in or are you having too much fun being cryptic,” Adam said mildly.

The twins looked at each other briefly, and then turned to Adam.

“We didn’t want to tell you this way, Adam. I wish you’d been there to hear it from Daddy,” Benita began.

“And we tried to call you on your cell “phone several times to prepare you,” added Andrew, “but we got no response.”

“Yeah, once you get past a certain point there’s only one tower and it only works with the local service. I had the cell turned off. I saw all those messages, though. So what did
Pop
tell you that might be related to what happened in
Idlewild
back in the day?”

As gen
tl
y as she could, Benita repeated the words their father had used to announce that he had another son. “I can only imagine how you’re feeling right now, Adam; we were all stunned too. And what’s more, Daddy insists on telling him that he’s his birth father and bringing him into the family, although why anyone would want to jump on this circus train is more than I can fathom,” she said wryly.

Adam seemed frozen in place.
He hadn’t moved or spoken since Benita began her story, and with good reason.
He couldn’t trust himself to speak. A wave of white-hot anger rushed over him and his sister’s voice was starting to sound like
blah, blah, blah
in his ears; he wasn’t able to discern individual words anymore due to the rushing sound that was crashing through his head.
Another son?
He cheated on my mother and had another child?
He really couldn’t focus on anything that was being said because his thoughts were so jumbled. But it suddenly registered with him that Benita was saying something about finding the man and bringing him to Detroit
That
made him react at last and he had something to say. He looked at his oldest brother and sister and said a single word.

“No.”

When they gave him a look of surprise, he shook his head firmly and reiterated his statement
.
“I said no, and that’s what I mean. That’s the worst idea I ever heard of. What could you be thinking about
5
” Before anyone could reply he got up from the conference table and left the room, leaving everyone staring after him, including Alicia.

Alicia felt totally awkward after Adam left the room. She was getting up to leave, too, when Benita stopped her. “Alicia, I know this is some hard news for Adam to take, but we’ve all got to deal with it somehow. On top of everything else, my father tells me that the man he says is his son is someone I know. His name is John Flores and we’ve been good friends over the years. You remember when I had the terrible accident in California and lost the baby; well, John is the person who kept me sane.

“He’s a very skilled and compassionate psychotherapist, and if it wasn’t for John I have no idea what would have become of me or my marriage,” she added, looking at her husband with loving eyes. “We stay in touch by e-mail and telephone and whenever he’s in Atlanta he comes to
dinner. In fact, he lived in Atl
anta for a while and taught at Emory University. That was before he moved back to California a few years ago.” She stopped speaking and looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Everyone always said he favored Adam, but I thought it was because they both had long hair and thick moustaches. Now, well...” She looked around the table and everyone looked as deep in thought as she. She turned to her husband and spoke quietly but everyone could hear her.

“Clay, I know you don’t want me to be embroiled in this, but I don’t see how I can stay away. John is a good friend to us and if all this is true he’s going to need a buffer between him and Daddy. You above all people know how Daddy can be. Besides, I happen to know where John is and if Daddy wants to see him, I can bring him here.”

“What do you mean, Benita?
” Clay looked at his wife intentl
y.

“I mean I got an e-mail from John a few weeks ago. He’s taken a faculty position at the University of Michigan. He’s right down the road in Ann Arbor.”

Clay looked at Andrew and Andrew said aloud what both men were thinking. “Yeah, well, he’s gonna wish he was in Timbuktu before this is all over.”

Chapter Fifteen

Adam made it all the way out to the parking lot before he realized he’d left Alicia behind. With a heartfelt groan, he opened the door of the Range Rover and got in, driving around to the front of the hospi
tal. Hoping ferventl
y
that
Alicia was calm enough to have followed him, he looked at the big glass entrance and was relieved to see her exiting the main doors. He stopped the vehicle and got out to open the passenger door for her. Without a word, she got into the Rover and was calmly fastening her seat belt when he returned to the driver’s seat
.

“I’m sorry, Allie,” was all he said.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, neither looking at the other. Alicia was the first one to speak, looking over at Adam and telling him they had to talk about it “You can’t just stash this away, Adam. This time we have to be able to talk about it really talk about how you’re feeling,” she said
as she stroked his knee
.

Adam’s jaw tightened and his hands gripped the steering wheel so tigh
tl
y that his knuckles paled.

“That’s just it Allie. I don’t know
how
I feel about it. This is ... this is just too much to take in. In the space of a weekend I found a bunch of family I had no idea existed and now my father announced that he has another child, a child none of us ever heard of. And since he admits that he did it when my mother was still alive, we’re talking about an adult son, Allie. Someone we know nothing about and who knows nothing about us. I told you before I felt like I didn’t know my father. Well, now I know I don’t know him, I don’t know him at all.” Adam’s voice was low and intense with anger.

Alicia said a prayer for guidance before speaking. “Adam, I know this is a lot to take in, but maybe there’s more to the story than you realize. Maybe there were extenuating circumstances that made your father—”

Her words were cut off by an angry gesture from Adam. “Allie, that’s crap. My father, by his own admission, cheated on my mother. There aren’t any extenuating circumstances; he couldn’t control himself, that’s all. He didn’t have enough regard for my mother to honor his commitment to her and now he has the twisted idea that somehow we’re supposed to form some kind of bond with this guy. The whole thing is just crazy, Allie. And my family is crazy to even think about going along with it,” he ended in disgust.

“But, Adam,” she began, only to be cut off by him again.

“Alicia, I can’t talk about it now. Maybe later, bu
t not right now,” he said tersely.
He brought the Rover to a stop and looked at her expec
tantl
y.

She looked out the window in surprise and realized that they were in the parking garage under the Cochran Building, right next to her car. She blinked at Adam, who was getting out
to open
her door. He held out his hand to her and she took it, gracefully exiting to stand next to him. She reached in her purse for her keys and Adam took them, opening the car door and handing them back. Alicia was about to get into the car when Adam suddenly hugged her, pulling her into his arms and murmuring her name.

“I’ll call you later, I promise. I just can’t think right now,” he said, his voice thick with tension.

Alicia couldn’t reply
,
her throat was clogged with unshed tears and guilt. As she started the Mini Cooper the tears threatened to overflow but she refused to let them. She just drove away, giving Adam his wish to be alone.

***

Benita and Andrew were sitti
ng in the living room of Andrew’s house, the house Benita had lived in for years before she m
arried and m
oved to A
tl
anta. When her best friend, Renee, married Andrew, Benita gave them the house as a wedding present. It was a big, imposing house full of love, laughter, and children, although there wasn’t much laughter to be found right now. Bennie was leaning against her twin brother on the sofa looking spent, and Renee was sitting on the matching loveseat looking concerned. Clay was sitting in a big armchair, not saying anything, but his eyes were trained on his wife. As always, his first concern was Benita’s well-being.

Renee was still expressing amazement over the whole issue. Her dark skin was flushed with emotion and her golden eyes flashed as they usually did when she was excited. “Bennie, I’m just stunned that your father was able to keep all of this under wraps for so long. And how did you not find out about it when you were making
Idle
wi
ld
?
It seems like the whole story would’ve come out then, at least the part about the family.”

Bennie laughed wearily. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? I wrote a movie script about Daddy’s hometown, I even went up there and looked around, I did all kinds of research, and I uncovered not one word about my father’s family. I guess I’m pretty lousy at research, huh?”

Clay responded automatically. “Peaches, you had no reason to uncover anything,” he pointed out. “First of all, when you wrote the screenplay you were pregnant with Trey and you and your father weren’t even speaking then. You weren’t in communication with him at all,
remember
?”

It was true;
Bennie and her father had been feuding over his treatment of Clay. Big Benny considered him a threat to his relationship with his daughter and had moved heaven and earth to break them up. Clay continued in his deep voice. “You were writing a fictional story that took place in 1922, three years before your father was born. The research you did was on that era of
Idlewild
, not the time when your grandfather’s club was at its peak.”

Bennie nodded in agreement. “I did see the Hacienda in pictures, though. I went through as many historical documents as I could and I do remember seeing pictures of the Hacienda and even a couple of pictures of Calvin Cochran, but there was nothing about his personal life. I knew he was Daddy’s father, but who knew about all his sisters? Even when we decided to make the movie and we went up there, we didn’t really talk to anyone. It was the dead of winter and we just cruised around, remember, Clay?”