Family Honor - Robert B Parker by Parker Read Free Book Online Page B

said.
    My father had been shot fifteen years before, arresting
a man who'd murdered three women, and his left kneecap had been shattered.
An orthopedic surgeon had pieced it back together, and while he limped
slightly and it ached occasionally, it was as durable as the right knee.
I knew that. He knew that, and, I think, my mother knew that. But she always
warned him anyway.
    My mother and I went to the kitchen and I put on coffee.
My mother had brought some raspberry turnovers. My mother almost always
brought something. My father got up and came into the kitchen and picked
up a turnover.
    "Phil, wash your hands, for God's sake. How do you know
where that dog's tongue has been."
    My father winked at me and bit into the turnover. I had
come to realize as I matured that one basis of their relationship was his
ability to ignore her. If she noticed it, she didn't seem to care.
    "Well, don't be coming around trying to kiss me with dog
slobber all over your face," my mother said.
    "I may have to, Em," my father said. "You're so goddamned
irresistible."
    We had some coffee and turnovers at my kitchen table with
Rosie in continuous agitation for a bite. My father broke off a piece of
turnover and gave her some.
    "Phil," my mother said, "you shouldn't feed her from the
table."
    "Certainly not," my father said.
    "How are your courses?" my mother said.
    She liked to think of me as a graduate student. It made
her seem younger and it was more respectable than being a private detective.
    "Fine," I said. "I only take one a semester, all the time
I have."
    "Won't it take a long time to finish?"
    "Yes."
    "But doesn't it postpone when you can become a painter?"
    "I think she is a painter," my father said.
    "You know what I mean. I mean full-time."
    "I may never do it full-time," I said. "I like the detective
stuff, too."
    "Well, that's foolish," my mother said.
    "Because it's not proper work for a woman?"
    "No," my mother said, "because it's not proper work for
my daughter."
    I nodded. My father was munching his turnover and giving
some to Rosie and looking at my incomplete painting of Chinatown at the
other end of the room. I wasn't sure he even heard my mother.
    "I never had your choices," my mother said. I'd heard
it before. I could have recited it with her, had I cared to. "My generation
married and had children and stayed home and raised them."
    But you, I recited in my head, you have a smorgasbord
to pick from.
    ". .. a smorgasbord to choose from," my mother said.
    Damn, she varied it on me.
    "You can be anything you want to be and why you would
throw that chance away and settle for this silly detective business ..."
Now she shakes her head.
    She shook her head.
    It's beyond me.
    "It's beyond me."
    "I like the detective business," I said. "My B.A. was
in social work, remember."
    "And you're so pretty, too," my mother said.
    "You hear from Richie?" my father said.
    "I saw him three nights ago," I said. "We had dinner."
    "How you doing?" my father said.
    "How should she be doing," my mother said. "She's divorced
from him."
    "You getting along?"
    "Better than we did when we were married," I said. My
father smiled as if he understood that.
    "The thing is," I said, "we are really connected, and
divorce or not, the tie between us is pretty strong."
    "Divorce cuts that tie," my mother said. "Don't fall for
it. You don't need a husband, and if you decided you wanted one, why would
you want a hoodlum?"
    "Richie's not a hoodlum," I said.
    My mother looked at me the way you look at a slow child.
My father picked Rosie up in his lap and let her lap him some more.
    "I like Richie," my father said, his face was screwed
tight against Rosie's kisses. "He's straight as far as I know. I don't
like his father so much, or his uncle, but they're stand-up guys."
    "Whatever that means," my mother said.
    "You working on something?" my father said.
    "I'm working on a missing girl, a runaway, she's fifteen."
    "Where's she from?"
    "South Natick."
    "You think she's