The Edge of Doom Read Online Free PDF Page A

twice confirmed, and meet they must. After dismissing several venues, Kate had decided on the Oak Room at the Plaza; challenged she could not defend this choice, but felt it the appropriate ambience for so Victorian an event as meeting, in middle age, one’s father for the first time. This, however, was not to be.
    Laurence had taken on the role of sponsor to this odd encounter; he called it a reunion, but Kate was not yet certain if she and Jay Ebenezer had ever had a first meeting, however long ago. Whether because he clung to lurid doubts of Jay’s intentions which no DNA test could erase, or whether he was simply curious and unwilling to miss out on a dramatic moment was hard to determine. Nonetheless, Laurence claimed the role of host to this meeting, and insisted it must take place at his club where he had first broken the news of Jay’s paternity to Kate. Kate suspected that Laurence had not yet told the rest of the Fanslers, including his wife and brothers, about Jay and wished to have an ample report when he came to do so, including the first meeting of father and daughter.
    Reed, agreeing with her interpretation, urged her to acquiesce. Meeting one’s father for what was probably the first time at so late a date might best be undertaken, he argued, in the presence of a third person. Why deprive Laurence of the pleasure of introducing the two of them to one another? There were, as Kate had to admit, few enough significant human events in Laurence’s life—events, Reed meant, not dehumanized by elaborate ceremonies and celebrations—so that one hesitated to deprive him of this one.
    So Kate went yet again to meet Laurence at his club. She had agreed to arrive some minutes before Jay Ebenezer, and indeed found Laurence in the same corner they had occupied previously, as though, Kate thought, he saw this as a drama and the setting the same as that of act one.
    Jay was prompt. He appeared before them, led by an employee of the club. Laurence and Kate both stood. “I’m Jay Smith,” the man said, before the other two could gather their wits. He was over seventy—Kate had already figured that out—but clearly vigorous, standing quite straight. He bowed slightly toward her before sitting down.
    “I’m Kate,” Kate said. “Obviously,” she continued, though why obviously she didn’t quite know. True, she was the only woman present, but she might have been another relative sitting in for Kate, either because Kate had funked it or had asked someone else look this stranger over. Pull yourself together, Kate told herself.
    But indeed, who she was, and who he was, was obvious because of the resemblance. Like Kate, he was tall and on the slim side, though like her now without the slimness of youth. Later, Reed would find the resemblance startling, though perhaps, he thought, only to someone looking for it, or to a portraitist. Jay’s eyes were the same greenish gray as hers (why, Kate thought, have we never wondered why I am the only one in the family without blue eyes?) and both their two front upper teeth crossed slightly one upon the other. No wonder Laurence had not immediately sent the man packing.
    A memory flashed across Kate’s mind of a college friend who had confessed to an affair and subsequent doubt as to the father of her expected child. Anyway, she had startled Kate by saying, it hardly matters; the husband and the lover have the same coloring and the same eyes. Such a thought had clearly not occurred to Kate’s mother. But then, she had probably had no doubt about who the father was, or the child’s likely failure to resemble her husband in the slightest. Men like Fansler, as she would have known, took their wives’ fidelity for granted; no doubt he attributed Kate’s dissimilarity to her brothers either as the result of recessive genes exhibiting themselves, or, more probably, to the fact of her being a girl.
    These thoughts, though rapid, had taken a little time. Kate realized they were all