Escape the Night by Richard North Patterson Read Free Book Online

Charles’s absorption, she left. Charles rose to bring her back.
    At that moment, Peter began moving.
    The process seemed to enthrall him. At first he ignored his father, inching forward one knee at a time, the bottom of his corduroy overalls wriggling. Charles stopped, then knelt to watch. Peter moved faster, got to his crib and turned. More confident, he set out toward the fireplace. Suddenly he stopped, turning toward his father with bright pumpkin eyes. He moved two feet further and looked back again, waiting. Charles fell to his knees. Peter went one more foot, and turned. Charles began crawling after him. Peter’s face lit up. He scurried away, pivoting to see Charles’s pursuit, scurried again. For the first time, from over Peter’s shoulder, Charles heard his son’s throaty laugh.
    Charles grinned.
    Abruptly, Peter curled on his side, and yawned.
    A smiling Charles changed his clothes and then deposited him in the crib, bunching blankets over his shoulders as Peter yawned and squirmed in the last resistance to sleep. Bending to kiss his son, Charles Carey felt a surge of real happiness …
    Then Allie called to Charles from their bedroom.
    It was lit by one lone candle on each night stand.
    She lay on the bed, wearing the black silk dress she had worn the first night they made love. Her arms and legs were outflung. She was half smiling. The strange glint was back in her eyes.
    Charles gazed down at her. Slowly she reached to the hem of her dress and pulled it above her waist.
    She wore nothing else.
    Candlelight cast shadows on her face and the hollows of her thighs. Charles felt excitement brush his skin. She opened her legs.
    He undressed without speaking.
    She looked into his eyes, and then at his erection. He reached for her …
    She began laughing.
    He froze, arms extended, shrill laughter in his ears. Unconsciously, he touched himself.
    She stared at the erection in his hand. “Oh God, Charles, oh my God …”
    She turned on her side and started weeping, hands covering her face, racking sobs coming from deep within her. For the first time, Charles saw the half-empty bottle of Chivas Regal on her night stand.
    Then he heard the sound of Peter crying.
    Charles looked down at his naked, sobbing wife, candlelight moving on her body, curled in an awful parody of childhood.
    Turning away, Charles dressed and walked slowly to Peter’s crib, to hold him. “It’s okay, honey,” he kept murmuring, “it’s all right,” until Peter fell asleep.
    Carefully, he put his son back in the crib, and went downstairs.
    With painful intensity, Charles Carey sat in the library and looked backwards, at his life.
    He started with the past year: the birth of his son and the failure of his marriage, this nagging erosion of his privacy his father would not permit him to resist.
    Until close to dawn, he weighed his lifelong conflict with John Carey, and the childhood that caused it. In their clashes, even in the hated image of his brother’s triumph at what he now must do, Charles saw the need of his own son.
    The next day, Charles Carey resigned.
    Looking at Charles—pale but contained, staring coldly back—John Carey could not accept what he had heard.
    â€œIt’s final,” Charles was answering. “Besides, I thought you wanted this to pacify HUAC.”
    â€œAfter what it took for me to get you here? That’s what ‘pacifying HUAC’ was about.” John Carey pointed at the floor. “I used to stoke coal down below in a stinking furnace room you’ve never even seen , while Van Dreelen’s blank-eyed sons sat in this very office you now say you don’t want, all because they were born to it.” He stood, leaning toward Charles with his palms flat on the desk. “Those pathetic cretins reached their height as sperm , Charles, and so did you. If I weren’t your father, you’d be stoking their