Poisoned Cherries Read Online Free PDF

wonder about you and her mother, though.   Is that it for the two of you?   Your ships have bumped together in the night and now you’re going your separate ways?”
    “No, that’s not it.   I’ll be a good father to wee Jan.   I’m on the board of the Gantry Group, and I’ll be a support to Susie that way.”
    “But what if another father comes along?   What if Susie meets someone else?   What if you do?   What if you find you miss Prim after all?”
    “I never did miss Prim, Dad, any more than she missed me, really.   We settled for each other; that’s where we got it wrong.   I’m not going to do the same with Susie.   If she meets someone else, I’ll handle that.   I’ll protect my daughter’s interests, but I’ll handle it.”
    “Aye, son, I guess you will, in your own way, like you handle everything else.   You know the thing that gets me about you?”   I looked at him, but he didn’t give me the chance to hazard a guess.   “You’ve never even had bloody toothache, not once in your life.   Toothache is nature’s way of letting the mightiest among us know that we’re fallible after all, yet as far as I recall you’ve never had as much as a twinge.”
    “D’you think Jesus had it, then?”
    “Maybe not, but he had plenty in its place .. .”   He stopped short.
    “And so, I mustn’t forget, have you.”
    My father laid one of his massive hands on my shoulder.   “Don’t be afraid of settling for Susie, son, if you want to put it that way, and if that’s what’s right for you.   You and Prim should never have got back together, and if I’d been up to my job I’d have told you that. But you and Jan should never have drifted apart, and I kept that truth to myself too.
    “You and Susie have this wee lass now, and that’s not a bad basis for a partnership.”
    “That’s not just up to me, Dad.   Susie’s made her feelings clear.”
    “Maybe, but it’s a whole new world now.   It changed about one o’clock this afternoon, when your daughter put in an appearance.”
    The great hand squeezed my shoulder, hard.   “There’s just one thing I want to know.   If Prim hadn’t left you, would you still be standing here right now, telling me about your daughter?”
    I hadn’t asked myself that question, but I knew the answer at once.
    “Yes, if I’d had to make the choice, I reckon I still would.”
    Six.
    Mac the Dentist was right about the tabloids; was he ever.   We weren’t past the soup course before my cellphone played “The Yellow Rose of Texas’.   It was Susie, sounding a lot less tired than I did.
    “The hospital’s had a call from one of the Sunday papers,” she said, and I could hear the fizz in her voice.   “They’ve been tipped off about me having been rushed here, and that it was you who did the rushing.
    “Who’d have done that, Oz?”   she asked, indignantly.
    “Take your pick.   Police, hospital staff, another patient, it could have been anyone.   I’d bet on the porters myself, but we’ll never know for sure.   The newspaper will protect its source.”
    “Who’s protected us?”
    “We’re not entitled to protection ... at least I’m not.   What did the hospital tell them?”
    “They’ve referred the reporter to the Trust press officer.   She’s with me now, and she’s asking how we want to play it.”
    “It’s decision time, then.   What do you want to tell them?”
    “That’s up to you.   If you just want to say that you’re a friend and you happened to be with me when the baby started to come, that’s okay by me.   It would be the sensible thing to do, Oz.”
    It was; I knew that.   Nobody at the hospital knew for sure that I was the father, other than the people who had heard us in the delivery room, and I reckoned they were bound by medical confidentiality.   If I played it that way there would be no comeback from Susie, ever.   No , lawyer would allow the paper to say any different and Miles would