Page 45 of Nineteen Seventy-Six

“What about him?”

“I know you’ve gone cold toward him, and I want to know why.”

“You know something, do you?” Charles pushed his empty glasses to the side. “Who the fuck have you been talking to?”

“Mama told me.”

“What the fuck does Mama know about the price of tea in China?”

Augustus shook his head, apparently deciding not to try to unwind the weird things his brother said. “Mama heard it from Lisette’s mother, who presumably heard it from her. But does it matter who told who? Is it true?”

Charles snorted and swished the cognac around in the glass. He looked away.

“Charles.” Augustus laid a hand on his shoulder. “Huck.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Did something happen?”

Mama. Mama. Mama. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

“He’s your son,” Augustus said. “He’s just a baby, Huck. There’s nothing he could’ve done to cause this, and so it must be something else.”

“Why do you care?”

“I care, and I know you care, too. For once in your life, you have a reason to care.”

“You don’t know as much as you think you do, Augustus.”

Augustus wrapped his palm around Charles’ forearm. “Do you remember what you said to me, when Ana was born? When you came into the room and made me promise?”

“People say bullshit all the time.”

“You meant it,” Augustus said. “I’ve never seen you mean something more. Ever. I’ve never seen you care about anything, or anyone, with the intensity you care about your son.”

“Don’t take the shit I say on a whim as gospel, Aggie. I fall in and out of love all the time. Remember when I thought I was in love with Cat?”

“You are in love with Cat,” Augustus corrected. “It just didn’t work out.”

“Pfft. I couldn’t care less about the bitch anymore.”

“I didn’t come to talk about Cat.”

Charles rolled his wrist forward in a dramatic check of the Rolex whose battery had stopped years ago. “Isn’t your daughter at risk of being boiled alive?”

Augustus pressed his lips tight. “Fine. You don’t want to talk about it, I can’t make you. But I’m sending Connor out to pick Nicolas up to stay with us for a few days. Until you can… I don’t know, work out whatever’s gotten into you. Until you’re ready to be a dad again. He shouldn’t suffer while you figure yourself out.”

“Great. Come get him,” Charles said, throwing a bill down on the bar. “But don’t hold your breath about the last part. It’s like that with me, you know. Everything has an end. Sometimes it just comes sooner than you hope.”

Augustus sighed as Charles put his wallet back in his pocket. “The promise meant something to me, anyway.”

CHAPTER 13

Crazy is Relative

Augustus loved having Nicolas in his household.

It was good for Ana, to have another little one around to make fake conversations with, but it was good for him, as well. Augustus wouldn’t have figured himself for a baby person and was pleasantly surprised that his enjoyment of them wasn’t limited to the one he’d fathered.

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