The Unquiet-CP-6 Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t want to complicate an already difficult situation. I took care because I still believed that there were those who would hurt them to get at me. I think that was why I let them leave. It’s so hard to remember now. The last year had been…difficult. I missed them a great deal, but I did not know either how to bring them back into my life, or how to live with their absence. They had left a void in my existence, and others had tried to take their place, the ones who waited in the shadows.
    The first wife, and the first daughter.
    I ordered coffee for Rebecca Clay. A beam of morning sunlight shone mercilessly upon her, exposing the lines in her face, the gray seeping into her hair despite the color job, the dark patches beneath her eyes. Some of that was probably due to the man she claimed was bothering her, but it was clear that much of it had deeper origins. The troubles of her life had aged her prematurely. From the way her makeup had been applied, hurriedly and heavily, it was possible to guess that here was a woman who didn’t like looking in the mirror for too long, and who didn’t like what she saw staring back at her when she did.
    “I don’t think I’ve ever been here before,” she said. “Portland has changed so much these last few years, it’s a wonder that this place has survived.”
    She was right, I supposed. The city was changing, but older, quirkier remnants of its past somehow contrived to remain: used bookstores, and barbershops, and bars where the menu never changed because the food had always been good, right from the start. That was why the Porthole had survived. Those who knew about it valued it, and made sure to pass a little business its way whenever they could.
    Her coffee arrived. She added sugar, then stirred it for too long.
    “What can I do for you, Ms. Clay?”
    She stopped stirring, content to begin speaking now that the conversation had been started for her.
    “It’s like I told you on the phone. A man has been bothering me.”
    “Bothering you how?”
    “He hangs around outside my house. I live out by Willard Beach. I’ve seen him in Freeport too, or when I’ve been shopping at the mall.”
    “Was he in a car, or on foot?”
    “On foot.”
    “Has he entered your property?”
    “No.”
    “Has he threatened you, or physically assaulted you in any way?”
    “No.”
    “How long has this been going on?”
    “Just over a week.”
    “Has he spoken to you?”
    “Only once, two days ago.”
    “What did he say?”
    “He told me that he was looking for my father. My daughter and I live in my father’s old house now. He said he had some business with him.”
    “How did you respond to that?”
    “I told him that I hadn’t seen my father in years. I told him that, as far as I was aware, my father was dead. In fact, since earlier this year he’s been legally dead. I went through all of the paperwork. I didn’t want to, but I suppose it was important to me, and to my daughter, that we finally achieved some kind of closure.”
    “Tell me about your father.”
    “He was a child psychiatrist, a good one. He worked with adults too, sometimes, but they had usually suffered some kind of trauma in childhood and felt that he could help them with it. Then things started to change for him. There was a difficult case: a man was accused of abuse by his son in the course of a custody dispute. My father felt that the allegations had substance, and his findings led to custody being granted to the mother, but the son subsequently retracted his accusations and said that his mother had convinced him to say those things. By then it was too late for the father. Word had leaked out about the allegations, probably from the mother. He lost his job and got beaten up pretty badly by some men in a bar. He ended up shooting himself dead in his bedroom. My father took it badly, and there were complaints filed about his conduct of the original interviews with the boy. The Board of Licensure