Time to Live: Part Five Read Online Free PDF Page A

me.”
    “I didn’t want your damn scholarship, Dad!” the boy shouted. “I don’t want to play baseball. I hate baseball!”
    Hines erupted. “Bullshit! That’s Peter Banks talking, not you.”
    Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. That’s Peter Banks.” He turned to Carter. “Ask him who the last great baseball star of Essex was.” He laughed bitterly. “Ask him about how he could have been a pro if he hadn’t blown out his knee. He’ll talk to you about that for hours. Won’t you, Dad?”
    “Maybe we should step in out of the rain to discuss this,” Carter offered.
    “Maybe you should mind your own goddamn business,” Hines said.
    Jeremy kept going. “Better yet, ask him how he owns this town. Get him talking about the way everybody respects him because he knew how to raise the perfect kid, and turned him into the baseball player that he could never be.”
    Now Carter understood Darla Sweet’s fears. He watched the anger boil up into the sheriff’s neck.
    “You pissed on all my friends, you kicked my ass for everything I ever did wrong, and then you beat the shit out of the one friend who wasn’t afraid to hang out with me.”
    Carter figured that had to be Peter Banks.
    “That criminal was going to cost you everything.”
    “No, Dad! You cost me everything.”
    Hines threw his head back and launched a guffaw. “I didn’t make you stupid. I didn’t send you into that store.”
    Carter thought he might understand what was happening here. The robbery was about getting a rise out of his father. Before he had a chance to stitch too much of it together in his head, Jeremy laid it out:
    “I wanted you to hurt, okay? And I wanted to be the one to hurt you.”
    So, he smoked pot with a friend, just days before he knew he had to pass a drug test. It was the one restriction on his scholarship. He smoked the weed to fail the test. In a twisted way, it made perfect sense.
    Now, the wreckage inside the Hines house started to make sense, too.
    “It wasn’t enough to ruin his own life,” Hines said. “He had to ruin mine, too.”
    “Boo hoo, Dad. How does it feel to be a real Hines?”
    Carter took a tentative step forward. This had the feel of a confrontation about to spin out of control.
    “You and your precious goddamn badge,” Jeremy taunted. “Let’s see how tough you are when people vote you out of office. Let’s see how much of that respect is about you .” Jeremy turned to Carter. “Do you see the beauty of it?” he asked. “I knew goddamn well that he would recognize the shirt I wore in that robbery. It was his old jersey. He had it framed, hanging in my bedroom for inspiration. And if he didn’t recognize the shirt, I sure as hell knew that he would recognize my voice on the tape. And when he did, there’d be nothing he could do about it.” Jeremy laughed. “In a town this size, who’s gonna reelect a sheriff whose own kid robs a store? Nobody! Get it?”
    Carter thought he got it, but he wanted to hear it from the kid.
    “He’d never be able to arrest me. Not and keep his badge. I’d have him by the balls forever. Just by keeping my secret, he’d be a criminal himself. And with that kind of a secret over his head, I could finally get him off my back. It was beautiful. Just freaking beautiful.”
    “Jesus,” Carter breathed.
    “You disgust me,” Hines said to his son.
    “But not when I throw a no-hitter, right? Not when my fastball tops a hundred miles an hour and you can go hang around in the coffee shop and tell all your loser friends how I’m a chip off the old block. I only disgust you when I think for myself.”
    “And look what thinking for yourself gets you,” Hines taunted. “Feeling smart now?”
    “It would have worked!” Jeremy shouted. His voice and his face both showed desperation. “If the Quik Mart had been empty—I thought it was empty!—it would have worked. Hell, if it had been anybody else in there, it would have worked.” He pointed the