The Men Who Walked Out novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Empty Chair
Rosalind seats Gordon in Gerard's chair in front of forty guests, Gerard smokes all night, and Daphne leaves with him; Brent texts that her cards are frozen.
My mother tapped her glass with a fork, and forty people stopped talking.
It was the thirtieth anniversary dinner of Larkin Coatings, and every chair in our dining room was full.
My father's colleagues from his research institute sat along the windows. The board sat along the other wall.
"Before the toasts," Mom said, "I want you all to meet someone."
A man at the far end of the table stood up.
He was in his fifties, with thick brown hair going grey and a tan that had mostly faded.
"This is Gordon Wray," Mom said. "My oldest friend. We were twenty-two when we met."
She said it to the whole room, not to anyone in it.
"He'll be staying in the east wing for a while, and I'd like you to make him welcome."
People clapped, slowly, and a few of them looked at my father.
Twenty minutes earlier, in the front hall, Mom had straightened my necklace and said, "Your father and I talked about him. He's fine with it. Don't make a scene."
Dad had spent the whole afternoon in his study with the door shut.
Now he sat at Mom's right hand, where he had sat at every company dinner for thirty years.
"Darling," Mom said to my father, "would you mind moving down by Daphne? Gordon should sit with me."
The whole table watched my father.
"Of course," Dad said.
He picked up his napkin and his water glass and walked the length of the room to the empty chair next to mine.
Gordon came around the table with his hand out.
Dad shook it.
With his other hand he pressed his back pocket, where his wallet was.
He keeps a folded hospital bracelet in that wallet instead of a photo, and I had seen it once, when I was nine.
"Rose has told me so much about you," Gordon said warmly. I'm sorry to land on you like this."
"It's fine," Dad said.
Gordon took the chair at Mom's right hand and picked up his fork in his left.
Brent leaned over to me.
He was my fiancé, and he ran sales at Larkin.
"Your mom has her reasons," he murmured. "Eat something."
I looked at my plate and didn't eat.
At the end of the night Dad was gone, and nobody had seen him go.
At three in the morning I woke up smelling smoke.
I followed it to the balcony off the upstairs hall.
My father stood at the rail in his overcoat, with a pack of cigarettes in one hand and a saucer full of butts at his feet.
Dad quit smoking the day I was born.
He tells it every Christmas as a joke, how he took one look at me and threw the pack in the hospital trash.
That was twenty-nine years ago.
"Dad."
"Go back to bed, Daph."
"You told her it was fine?"
"Your mother did most of the talking," he said.
Across the lawn the east wing was lit.
I heard Mom laugh behind one of those windows, low and easy, a laugh I hadn't heard in years.
Dad lit another cigarette and kept his eyes on the glass.
I stayed with him until the sky went grey, and he never said another word.
At seven I came downstairs and found him in the front hall with one suitcase.
The housekeeper stood by the stairs holding a dish towel.
Two of the drivers stood on the front steps pretending to check the cars.
Mom came out of the dining room in her dark suit with her coffee.
"Gerard, you're being theatrical."
"I'm going to my lab, Rosalind."
He opened the front door.
"Dad," I said. "Wait."
"Daphne." Mom set her cup down on the hall table. "If you walk out behind him, you leave the job and you leave the trust."
Gordon was on the landing in shirtsleeves, with a mug in his hand.
"Rose, let her cool off," he said gently. "Daphne, I'm sorry. I never wanted any of this to fall on you."
He meant it, or he sounded like he did.
My father stood in the doorway with his suitcase and didn't turn around.
He wasn't going to ask me to come.
I picked up my bag off the bench.
"Daphne," Mom said.
So I walked out of the house behind him and got in the car.
Dad drove through the gates without a word, and I took out my phone to tell Brent I was gone.
A message from him was already waiting.
"Your mother froze your cards. Come back and apologise or I'm done."
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