Frames Per Second by Bill Eidson Read Free Book Online

eager for it.
    His dad said, “Just learn how to do it right.”
    “Thanks, Dad.” Ben’s voice was husky.
    His father rested his hand on his shoulder. “I should’ve seen it sooner, what you were doing.” His father paused. “I miss her, Ben. What I’ve really wanted to do since your mom was killed was to shoot that trucker. Not the guy that’s in prison now. I hate him, but now it’s too late. What I’ve wanted to do is hunt him down and shoot him before he got behind the rig, before he killed your mother. If I could, that’s what I’d do.”
    His dad sighed. “But that can’t happen. And stacking up racks and mounting heads won’t make it happen. Neither is shoving you along to do something you don’t want. It’s time I sell my guns. Put your old Remington up on the wall for display. Maybe use it to bag a few ducks for dinner now and then.” His father smiled crookedly. “I’d kill for my family, but it’s too late. So I’m gonna stick close to the family I’ve still got.”
    His father’s love had warmed Ben all his life. His dad had embraced Andi and the children completely. It was devastating for all of them when he died of a heart attack.
    And yet, a year ago, Ben had been glad that his father wasn’t around to see him separated, going through a divorce. Ben couldn’t help wonder what his dad would think of him now. What would he think of Ben arriving at the cabin without his family? Of leaving his wife and children to another man?
     
    After flipping the circuit breaker to turn on the power, Ben loaded up the refrigerator. He felt the cans of beer. Still cold. He grabbed two, and then went out to drag the old aluminum rowboat down to the water. He shoved off into the lake. He rowed for a long time, until the light he’d left glowing in the cabin was just a faint pinprick. His hands and back ached.
    He lay along the thwart with his legs bent, his head on a flotation cushion. Slowly, the last color from the sky disappeared, and the stars emerged.
    He sipped at the beer, waiting for some epiphany, some better understanding. But even in doing that, he knew he was using the old steps for himself. Why should the stars reveal anything about Ben Harris? Without him being able to frame them through ground glass, without being able to compose them against a stand of trees, black and silver in the moonlight, he had no control over them.
    And without that, he could find little meaning.
    How could she do it to us?
    That’s what he really wanted to think about. A year ago, when she asked him to move out, he stumbled around for months, thinking, How could you do it? Have you forgotten who we are?
    Fifteen years of marriage, gone.
    His lover and best friend, gone.
    Now this. Married.
    The idea of Kurt dating Andi had been bad enough when Ben first heard through the kids that she was dating a senior editor at Boston Magazine. At the time, Ben knew Kurt only through his reputation, which was as an effective, if somewhat staid, editor. At that distance, the idea of Andi dating was barely palatable. The idea became hellish when Kurt won the hotly contested editor-in-chief position at the Insider, and became Ben’s boss.
     
    Ben had been tortured by the image of them in bed; physically repelled at the thought of Kurt’s broad back moving over her. At times, it had taken all Ben had in him not to stand up in the office and knock Kurt out of his chair.
    But the finality of this was worse. The idea of Kurt sitting at the breakfast table, pouring cereal for the kids, talking to them as if he were their father … and worse, the possibility, the likelihood that they would respond, that they would love this interloper.
    Ben sat up, dipped his hand into the lake water and rubbed his face. Tried to wash some acceptance into himself. Told himself that times had changed; that Kurt was in and he was out. That he had to accept that he was joined at the hip with Kurt, a man he doubted he would’ve liked under any