Harrison Winslow shook his head, and after a moment he smiled at her. He thought Tana a remarkably beautiful girl, and he suddenly wondered again exactly what the story was between Harry and this girl. His son was too much of a libertine, in his own way, to let an opportunity like this pass him by, unless he cared about her even more than she knew … maybe that was it … maybe Harry was in love with her … he had to be. It couldn't be what she said it was between them. It seemed impossible to him.
“It's too late, my friend. Much, much too late. And in his eyes, my sins are unforgivable.” He sighed. “I suppose I'd feel the same way in his shoes.” He looked unwaveringly at her now. “He thinks I killed his mother, you know. She committed suicide when he was four.”
She almost choked on her words. “I know.” And the look in his eyes was devastating, raw pain that still lived in his soul. His love for her had never died, nor had his love for their son. “She was dying of cancer and she didn't want anyone to know. In the end, it would have disfigured her, and she couldn't have tolerated that. She'd already had two operations before she died … and…” he almost stopped, but went on, “… it was terrible for her … for all of us … Harry knew she was sick then, but he doesn't remember it now. It doesn't matter anyway. She couldn't live with the operations, the pain, and I couldn't bear to watch her suffer. What she did was a terrible thing, but I always understood. She was so young, so beautiful. She was very much like you, in fact, and almost a child herself.…” He wasn't ashamed of the tears in his eyes, and Tana looked at him, horrified.
“Why doesn't Harry know?”
“She made me promise I'd never tell.” He sat back against the banquette as though he'd been punched. The feeling of despair over her death never really went away. He had tried to run away from it for years, with Harry at first, with women, with girls, with anyone, and finally by himself. He was fifty-two years old and he had discovered that there was only so far he could run, and he couldn't run that far anymore. The memories were there, the sorrow, the loss … and now Harry might go too … he couldn't bear the thought as he looked at this lovely young girl, so full of life, so filled with hope. It was almost impossible to explain it all to her, it was all so long ago. “People felt differently about cancer then … it was almost as though one had to be ashamed of it. I didn't agree with her at the time, but she was adamant that Harry not know. She left me a very long letter at the time. She took an overdose of pills when I went to Boston overnight to see my great aunt. She wanted Harry to think her flighty and beautiful, and romantic, but not riddled with disease, and so she went … she's a heroine to him.” He smiled sadly at Tana. “And she was to me. It was a sad way to die, but the other way would have been so much worse. I never blamed her for what she did.”
“And you let him think it was your fault.” She was horrified, and her green eyes were huge in her face.
“I never realized he would, and by the time I understood, it was already too late. I ran around a great deal when he was a child, as though I could flee from the pain of losing her. But it doesn't really work that way. It follows you, like a mangy dog, always waiting outside your room when you wake up, pawing at the door, whining at your feet, no matter how dressed up and charming and busy you are, how many friends you surround yourself with, it's always there, nipping at your heels, gnawing at your cuffs … and so it was … but by the time Harry was eight or nine, he had come to his own conclusions about me, and he got so hateful for a while that I put him into boarding school, and he decided to stay, and then I had nothing at all, so I ran even harder than before … and,” he shrugged philosophically, “she died almost twenty years ago, and here we are … she died in January.…” His eyes looked vague for a moment and then focused on Tana again, but that didn't help. She looked too much like her anyway, it was like looking into the past, just seeing her. “And now Harry is in this awful mess … life is so rotten and so strange, isn't it?” She nodded, there wasn't much she could say. He had given her a great deal to think about.
“I think you should say something to him.”
“About what?”
“About how his mother died.”
“I couldn't do that. I made a promise to her … to myself … it would be self-serving to tell him now.
“Then why tell me?” She was shocked at herself, at the anger in her voice, at what she felt, at the waste people allowed in their lives, lost moments in which they could have loved each other, like this man and his son.
They had wasted so many years they could have shared. And Harry needed him now. He needed everyone.
Harrison looked apologetically at her. “I suppose I shouldn't have told you all that. But I needed to talk to someone … and you're … so close to him.” He looked at her point blank. “I wanted you to know that I love my son.” There was a lump in her throat the size of a fist and she wasn't sure if she wanted to slap him or kiss him, or perhaps both. She had never felt that way about any man before.
“Why the hell don't you tell him yourself?”
“It wouldn't do any good.”
“It might. Maybe this is the time.”
He looked at her pensively, and then down at his hands, and then finally into her green eyes again. “Perhaps it is. I don't know him, though … I wouldn't know where to begin.…”
“Just like that, Mr. Winslow. Just the way you said it to me.”
He smiled at her, and he suddenly looked very tired. “What makes you so wise, little girl?”
She smiled at him, and she felt an incredible warmth emanating from him. He was a lot like Harry in some ways, and yet he was more, and she realized with a pang of embarrassment that she was attracted to him. It was as though all the senses that had been deadened for years, ever since the rape, had suddenly come alive again.
“What were you thinking just then?”
She flushed pink and shook her head. “Something that had nothing to do with all this … I'm sorry … I'm tired … I haven't slept for a few days.…”
“I'll get you home, so you can get some rest.” He signalled for the check, and when it came he looked at her with a gentle smile, and she felt a longing for the father she had never had, or even known. This was the kind of man she would have wanted Andy Roberts to have been, not Arthur Durning who breezed in and out of her mother's life when it suited him. This man was a great deal less selfish than Harry had wanted her to believe, or insisted on believing himself. He had put a lot of energy into hating this man over the years and Tana knew instinctively now that he had been wrong, very wrong, and she wondered if Harrison was right, if it was too late. “Thank you for talking to me, Tana. Harry is lucky to have you as his friend.”
“I've been lucky to have him.”
He put a twenty dollar bill under the check and looked at her again. “Are you an only child?” He suspected that about her, and she nodded with a smile.
“Yes. And I never knew my father, he died before I was born, in the war.” It was something she had said ten thousand times in her life, but it seemed to have new meaning now. Everything did, and she didn't understand what that meant or why. Something strange was happening to her as she sat with this man, and she wondered if it was just because she was so tired. She let him walk her back to his car, and he surprised her by getting in with her, rather than letting the driver take her home.
“I'll ride with you.”
“You really don't need to do that.”
“I have nothing else to do. I'm here to see Harry, and I think he's better off resting for the next few hours.” She agreed with him and they chatted on the drive across the bridge. He mentioned that he had never been to San Francisco before. He found it an attractive place, but he seemed distracted as they drove along. She assumed he was thinking about his son, but he was actually thinking about her, and he shook her hand when they arrived. “I'll see you at the hospital again. If you need a ride, just call the hotel and I'll send the car for you.” She had mentioned that she'd been taking the bus back and forth and that worried him. She was young, after all, and pretty and anything could have happened to her.