Sea Swept Read Online Free PDF Page B

the last few years. Maybe you couldn’t be. It doesn’t seem to matter now.”
    “I’m not a waterman, Ethan. I do what I’m good at. That’s what they expected.”
    “Yeah.” He couldn’t imagine the need to run from the place that was home, and sanctuary. And love. But there was no point in questioning it, or in holding on to resentments. Or, he admitted, casting blame. “The place needs some work.”
    “I noticed.”
    “I should have made more time to come around and see to things. You always figure there’s going to be plenty of time to go around, then there’s not. The back steps are rotting out, need replacing. I kept meaning to.” He turned as Phillip came into the room. “Grace has to work tonight, so she can’t keep Seth occupied for more than a couple hours. You lay it out, Phil. It’ll take me too long.”
    “All right.” Phillip poured coffee, left the whiskey alone. Rather than sit, he leaned back against the counter. “It seems a woman came to see Dad a few months back. She went to the college, caused a little trouble that nobody paid much attention to at the time.”
    “What kind of trouble?”
    “Caused a scene in his office, a lot of shouting and crying on her part. Then she went to see the dean and tried to file sexual molestation charges against Dad.”
    “That’s a crock.”
    “The dean apparently thought so, too.” Phillip poured a second cup of coffee and this time brought it to the table. “She claimed Dad had harassed and molested her while she was a student. But there was no record of her ever being a student at the college. Then she said she’d justbeen auditing his class because she couldn’t afford full tuition. But nobody could verify that either. Dad’s rep stood up to it, and it seemed to go away.”
    “He was pretty shaken,” Ethan put in. “He wouldn’t talk to me about it. Wouldn’t talk to anybody. Then he went away for about a week. Told me he was going down to Florida to do some fishing. He came back with Seth.”
    “You’re trying to tell me people think the kid’s his? For Christ’s sake, that he had something going on with this bimbo who waits, what, ten, twelve years to complain about it?”
    “Nobody thought too much of it then,” Phillip put in. “He had a history of bringing strays home. But then there was the money.”
    “What money?”
    “He wrote checks, one for ten thousand dollars, another for five, and another for ten over the last three months. All to Gloria DeLauter. Somebody at the bank noticed and mumbled to somebody else, because Gloria DeLauter was the name of the woman who’d tried to hang him up on the sexual misconduct charges.”
    “Why the hell didn’t somebody tell me what was going on around here?”
    “I didn’t find out about the money until a few weeks ago.” Ethan stared down into his whiskey, then decided it would do him more good inside than out. He downed it, hissed once. “When I asked him about it, he just told me the boy was what was important. Not to worry. As soon as everything was settled he’d explain. He asked me for some time, and he looked so . . . defenseless. You don’t know what it was like, seeing him scared and old and fragile. You didn’t see him, you weren’t here to see him. So I waited.” Whiskey and guilt paired with resentment and grief to burn a hole inside him. “And I was wrong.”
    Shaken, Cam pushed back from the table. “You think he was paying blackmail. That he diddled some student a dozen years ago and knocked her up? And now he waspaying so she’d keep quiet. So she’d hand over the kid for him to raise?”
    “I’m telling you what was, and what I know.” Ethan’s voice was even, his eyes steady. “Not what I think.”
    “I don’t know what I think,” Phillip said quietly. “But I know Seth’s got his eyes. You only have to look at him, Cam.”
    “No way he fucked with a student. And no way he cheated on Mom.”
    “I don’t want to believe it.”