The King of Lies by John Hart

that are right; you favor your mother that way.” He paused for an instant and nodded. “Don’t choke on Ezra’s burdens, Work. I’m eighty-three years old, old enough to know a thing or two, and the most important is this: Life is goddamn short. Figure out what you want. Be your own man and you’ll be better for it.”
    He stood slowly and I heard his joints pop. Ice rattled on glass as he drained his drink.
    “Bury your old man, Work, and when you’re ready, we’d love to have you over for dinner. I knew your mother well, God rest her soul, and I’d love to tell you about her happy times. And one last thing—don’t lose any sleep over Barbara. She’s a bitch by nature, not by choice. So don’t be hard on yourself.”
    He winked at me and smiled around his cigar. I thanked him for coming, because I didn’t know what else to say; then I closed the door behind him and sat where he had, on wood still warm from his narrow haunches. I sipped ice-watered bourbon, thought about my life, and wished the old man were right about all the things he’d said.
    Eventually, my glass ran dry, but this I could fix. My watch showed it was almost five, and as I stood, I thought briefly of Detective Mills. I’d not called her and at the moment didn’t care; all I wanted was that drink. I was in and out of the kitchen without a word, and if that offended people, then too bad. I’d had enough. So I returned to my dank cell to watch the shadows crawl and to drink my bourbon warm.
    I stayed in that awful place long enough for the light to dim and the walls to tilt. I was not an angry drunk; I didn’t get weepy and I didn’t figure out a damn thing. My jacket went into a box filled with lawn clippings I’d never emptied and my tie ended up twisted around a nail in the wall, but I kept the rest of my clothes on, which was hard. I wanted to shake things up, break the complacency bowl, and for one crazy moment I pictured myself running naked through the house. I’d chat with my wife’s friends and dare them to pretend, at the next inane social gathering, that it had never happened. And they would—that’s what kept my clothes on. Every last one of them could look me in the eye over drinks or dinner the next week, ask in all earnestness how the practice was doing, and then tell me what a fine funeral it had been.
    I wanted to laugh and I wanted to kill somebody.
    But I did neither. I went back inside; I mingled and I talked. I kept my clothes on, and if I made an ass of myself, no one said a word to me about it. Eventually, I left, and as I sat in my car, windows down and purple light on me like a second skin, I thanked God for one thing: that, drunk as hell and drowning in faces and words without meaning, I had not uttered the one irretrievable thought that had haunted me. And searching my ruined eyes in the mirror, I acknowledged, to myself at least, that I thought I knew who had killed my father.
    Motive. Means. Opportunity.
    It was all there if you knew where to look.
    But I did not want to look. I never had. So I twisted the mirror up and away. Then I closed my eyes and thought of my sister, and of times that were no less hard for their simplicity.
    A re you okay?” I asked Jean.
    She nodded, tears dripping off her tiny pointed chin to soak into her white jeans like rain into sand. Her shoulders hunched lower with each sob, until she looked bent and broken, her hair hanging just low enough to cover the top of her face. I pulled my eyes off the little gray teardrop circles, trying not to look at the blood that spread from between her legs. Red and wet, it soaked the new pants she was so proud of, the ones our mother had given her on that morning of her twelfth birthday.
    “I called Dad and he said he’d come get us. Soon. I promise. He said so.”
    She didn’t say anything and I watched the red stain darken. Without a word, I took off my jacket and spread it across her lap. She looked at me then in a way that made me