Escape the Night by Richard North Patterson Page B

“I’ll catch you this time, Peter.” Peter learned to run less quickly, allowing his grandfather to catch up. After a time, Peter would say, “Let’s talk about our building,” and then John Carey would stop, and they would sit, Peter facing him, as he explained about books and authors and money, about the low cost of paperbacks and how touchy John O’Hara was—the things he no longer told his son.
    Phillip Carey watched his father fall in love with Peter.
    It puzzled and disturbed him, eroding his sense of place: the grandfather Phillip saw was the father he had only fantasized. Knowing too well the void which Allie left, Phillip sought to help ease Peter’s hurt by re-creating moments of the childhood John Carey had denied him. Yet he was awkward with Peter—remote or overeager—the timing of his approaches subtly wrong. Hating his own childhood, he had no sense of children.
    â€œHey, Prince Charming, want to play catch?”
    He had found Peter stretched on the floor of his bedroom, raptly arranging green plastic soldiers in close-order drill.
    â€œPeter?”
    His nephew glanced up. Phillip plucked a red handball from his pocket and began tossing it in front of him. “I just bought this for you—let’s go out back and break it in.”
    Peter looked uncertain. “I promised Grandpa I’d play these with him.”
    â€œJust for a minute—your grandfather’s not here yet.” Phillip smiled awkwardly. “Maybe you’ll grow up to be like Lou Gehrig, okay?”
    â€œWho’s that?”
    â€œMy favorite baseball player—he played first base for the Yankees.”
    â€œDid you see him?”
    Phillip nodded. “That was before they had television. But your grandfather took me to see him once.”
    â€œGrandpa did?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIs he dead now—the man?”
    â€œLou Gehrig? Yes, he’s dead now.”
    Peter edged closer to his toys. “I’d better wait for Grandpa.”
    â€œMaybe he won’t come …”
    â€œ John Peter Carey! ” John Carey burst through the door and past Phillip, trailing Bushmills and tobacco. “You’ve started without me.”
    Peter’s eyes crinkled in a great smile. He reached to hug his grandfather, face buried in his neck.
    Staring down at the rubber ball in his hand, Phillip felt once more the solitude of childhood. He left unnoticed.
    Alone in his office, Phillip Carey began pondering the meaning of his nephew.
    He had been fiercely glad at Charles’s leaving. As if on cue, HUAC’s unnerving presence had diminished with Charles’s own. Now their authors were less often called to hearings, Van Dreelen & Carey seldom mentioned. Only Charles was followed by strangers: to Phillip’s relief, the unsettling Englehardt had not called on him again. For a while his fears diminished, too: now heir-apparent to John Carey, he plunged into the vacuum with new decisiveness, claiming power and responsibility. Less often bypassed, he felt himself grow: writers, producers, agents and paperback publishers—the men who had called Charles—now looked to him for answers.
    John Carey did not seem to notice.
    Unable to divine his father’s feelings, Phillip wavered in his own, haunted by Charles’s unspoken presence. At times, emerging from his office, he would find himself staring down the familiar corridors—cubbyholes filled with white-shirted editors, money-green rugs, walls lined with literary awards set between photographs of now-dead employees once favored by John Carey—as if he were a stranger. Finally, he asked his father whether he, who had served the firm when Charles left, would receive it when his father died. John Carey’s face went cold. “I’d like to feel that you’re here because you wish to be,” he answered stiffly. “A thing belongs to those who love it