After the Night by Linda Howard Read Free Book Online

"No, I don’t." Another cautious little pause. "Is something wrong?"
    "He didn’t come home last night, and he has an appointment with Bill Grady at ten."
    "Damn," Alex said softly, but Gray could hear the alarm in the word. "Oh, God. I didn’t think he’d – goddamn it!"
    "Alex." Gray’s voice was as hard and sharp as polished steel, slicing through the wire. "What’s going on?"
    "I swear, Gray, I didn’t think he’d do it," Alex said miserably. "Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just overslept."
    "Do what?" ‘
    "He mentioned it a couple of times, but only when he’d been drinking. I swear, I never thought he was serious. God, how could he be?"
    The plastic of the receiver cracked under Gray’s grip. "Serious about what?"
    "About leaving your mother." Alex audibly swallowed, the gulping sound plain. "And running away with Renee Devlin."
    Very gently, Gray replaced the receiver in its cradle. He stood motionless for several seconds, staring down at the instrument. It couldn’t – Guy wouldn’t have done that. Why should he? Why run away with Renee when he could and did screw her whenever he wanted? Alex had to be wrong. Guy would never have left his children or the business – but he had been relieved when Gray had chosen to turn down pro football, and had given Gray a crash course in running everything.
    For a blessed little while Gray was numb with disbelief, but he was too much of a realist for it to last long. The numbness began to fade, and pure rage rushed in to fill the void. He moved like a snake striking, snatching the phone from the desk and hurling it through the window, shattering glass and bringing several sets of footsteps rushing down the hall to the study.
    Everyone slept late except Faith and Scottie, and she left the shack as soon as she had fed Scottie his breakfast, taking him down to the creek so he could splash in the shallow water and try to catch the darting crawfish. He never did, but he loved to try. It was a gorgeous morning, with the sunlight slanting bright and golden through the trees, dappling the water. The smells were fresh and sharp, full of good, clean colors that wiped out the sour miasma of alcohol lingering in her nostrils, exuded from the four people she had left sleeping off the effects of the night.
    Expecting Scottie to keep his clothes dry was like expecting the sun to rise in the west. When they reached the creek, she pulled off his shorts and shirt, and let him plunge into the water wearing only his diaper. She had brought a dry one to put on him when they left. She carefully hung the discarded garments on limbs, then stepped into the creek to wade and keep an eye on him. If a snake slithered toward him, he wouldn’t know to be alarmed. She wasn’t afraid of them either, but she was definitely cautious.
    She let him play for a couple of hours, then had to pick him up and carry him out of the water, with him kicking and protesting every inch of the way. "You can’t stay in the water," she explained. "Look, your toes are wrinkled like a prune." She sat down on the ground and changed his diaper, then "dressed him. It was a difficult job, with him still squirming and trying to escape back into the water.
    "Let’s look for squirrels," she said. "Can you see any squirrels?"
    Distracted, he immediately looked upward, his eyes rounded with excitement as he searched the trees for a squirrel. Faith took his stubby hand in hers and slowly led him through the woods, taking a meandering path back to the shack. Maybe by the time they got back, Renee would be home.
    Though her mother had stayed out all night before, it always made Faith uneasy. She kept it in the back of her mind, but she lived with the constant fear that Renee would leave one night and never come home. Faith knew, with bitter realism, that if Renee met some man who had a bit of money and promised her pretty things, she would be gone like a shot. Probably the only thing that kept her in Prescott anyway was Guy