Page 54 of How to Get Even

He’d never forget her apologising to a busy attending physician at the hospital, as if her fucking death was an inconvenience she needed to excuse. Wet heat pressed against the back of his eyes and his heart thumped painfully. Snatches of memories assaulting him from all sides now.

He never should have come back.

You’re going to go to art college. You’re going to travel the world. You’re going to show them all. You’re going to be famous. You’re going to be an international success.

She’d said it with a wave of her hand, like a gameshow psychic, a jazzy husk to her tone, as if she were dropping prophecies upon him. Even now he could still feel the wires that connected her to the machines pressed between them as he tried to get closer and closer to her, even though she was getting further and further away. His father, poised on the threshold of the door to her room, desperate to give him some time with his mother but physically unable to leave the woman who had his heart for even a second.

When the university offer came through from the UK with a full scholarship, he’d thought it had been a sign from her. And everything he’d done since that day had been to make his mother’s words true. He’d worked harder, been more focused, more determined than anyone in his year. He’d hurled his grief at canvases and slashed his fears into colour, grazing his pain into texture and…

And now that he couldn’t, it was like it was all coming back to him.

He looked up to find himself outside his father’s garage on Main Street.

‘Been staring up at this place for a while, son.’

His father stood in the shadows, wiping one of his tools in a rag. It was the first he’d seen of him in about,fuck. Seven years? His father hated to travel and had never visited him in the UK. And he’d been so damn busy. He’d come here, years ago, with Annalise, and the thought just curdled his stomach.

‘Yeah,’ he replied to his dad. It was pretty much all he was capable of saying. Seeing him again, it was both terrible and fucking wonderful. Terrible because of all the things Chase couldn’t say. All the ways in which he’d lost a hold of his home, his wife, his art… And amazing because no matter what, his dad would always be his dad. In Chase’s mind he experienced a thousand memories of running up to him and being swept up in his arms and in that moment he’d have sold his soul to do just that. To run so hard, and so fast, knowing –knowing– that no matter what, there were two arms that would take him up and make everything better.

‘It’s been a while,’ Chase said instead, hoping a wry smile would make it easier. It didn’t.

His father just nodded. ‘I’m closing up. Are you staying for dinner?’

No, how are you? What are you doing here? How’s life been treating you?

Where’s your wife?

‘Was thinking about it,’ Chase hedged.

His father nodded again. ‘There’s enough for two.’

His mother had had all the words. She’d made everything pretty with them. She’d made his father smile and love and she’d made Chase see the world with a beauty he’d been chasing ever since she’d died. That was why he hated coming back to visit his dad. Because he remembered too much, hurt too much, felt too much.

‘I brought something for you,’ Chase said, pulling the bottle of scotch from the deep pocket of his wool jacket.

‘Don’t want none of that pish now. It’d better be the good stuff.’

‘For you? Always,’ Chase said, a genuine smile this time at his dad’s gruffness.

His father scanned the label, a final nod deciding the evening. That was as much appreciation as Chase would get for a bottle that cost nearly three hundred dollars, but he’d take it. Because sometimes you didn’t need all the words.

As his father pulled down the shutter and locked up, he said, without looking at Chase, ‘Thanks for coming, son.’

Chase nodded, just like his father.

It was his mother’s birthday. He couldn’t have not.

11

The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

THE ART OF WAR, SUN TZU

The five steps to running a con:

Look the part.

Give them the upper hand.

---