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knew the good little Prince of Wales wouldn’t refuse to answer him. Brian Tremaine was never wrong. But at least Kemble could skirt the issue. “I took Jane home. Her mother isn’t well.” He tried to make it casual.
    “Oh, well, then. Come back out and have a piece of cake.”
    Kemble flashed on watching Devin and Keelan cooing over each other. Or his sister Drew holding her husband Michael’s biceps in that intimate way that said they were life partners who shared a satisfying physical and soul-deep relationship. Or Tristram riding little Jesse around on his shoulders, pretending to be one of the muscle cars he restored while Maggie watched fondly. They’d each met their Destiny.
    He couldn’t do it.
    “Maybe later,” he said. Okay. His voice was more in control now. “I . . . I should look at those reports on the energy credits from the wind farm.”
    “They can wait. We’re celebrating a wedding today.” Now, even in the semi-darkness, he could see his father’s sharp expression as he examined his son.
    The air was thick in the room with the drapes closed. That must be why Kemble couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t Senior just accept that Kemble didn’t want to be there?
    Of course not. “What’s wrong, son? Whatever it is has been coming on for a while, so don’t bullshit me with some superficial answer.”
    Kemble felt a weight on his chest. “Not important,” he managed. “Just out of sorts.”
    “Astonishing. You didn’t even bother with superficial. Am I that hard to talk to?”
    Kemble wanted to laugh but he couldn’t. “Yeah, pretty much.”
    Senior pushed past him and went to the window. He pulled open the drapes, suffusing the room with the rosy glow of the setting sun , and turned. The piercing blue eyes were much in evidence. Kemble’s own were pale in comparison. “I’m not leaving until you say something meaningful.” He went to sit in Kemble’s desk chair and motioned to the bed magnanimously. “You might as well sit.”
    Kemble had absolutely no desire to have a “chat” with his father. Chats had a way of becoming cross-examinations. He wanted to get angry. He’d had his first shouting argument ever with his father a few months ago. It had felt good. But he’d lost the argument. Or rather he was just wrong to begin with. Worse. Maybe that’s why he just couldn’t find any anger. He got that distant feeling again, like he’d had before his father walked in. Suddenly that felt even better than getting mad. Distance was good.
    He didn’t sit. His father just waited.
    Okay, if that’s what he wanted. Might as well get it over with. “I’m never going to get magic.” He saw his father start to speak. It would be platitudes about needing to wait, that of course he had the Merlin gene . . . blah, blah. So he held up a hand. To his surprise, his father didn’t just bulldoze over him. He looked pensive. “If I were going to find true love, it would have been sometime in the last twenty years among the thousands of dates arranged by Mother or at the clubs I used to frequent or the circuit of benefits and fundraisers and exhibit openings, ad nauseam. But it didn’t happen and I’ve accepted that it’s not going to.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t have a destined partner with the gene because I don’t have the gene. I won’t have a power. I’m just sorry I’m such a disappointment.”
    If he expected his father to say , “You could never be a disappointment,” he would have been disappointed. But he didn’t expect that. So it was okay when Senior looked out the window and said, “It was unfair to put such a burden on you children, telling you you’d all find true love and get magic because you had the Merlin gene. Brina and I talked it over early on, when you and Tristram started grade school, before Drew came along. But to let it strike you unprepared seemed cruel. And we couldn’t let you worry about whether the gene was recessive in you. That would