Love, Like Father Like Son novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Balcony
Helen moves her first love into the villa and Davis smokes all night; June overhears the plan and decides to play along.
The day my mother brought her first love home, she gave him my father's chair at the head of the table.
I was twenty minutes late from the hospital, still in my work lanyard, and I walked in on the whole scene.
Two staff members stood by the sideboard with their eyes on the floor.
My father stood behind the chair with his hand on the back of it.
"June, there you are," my mother said. "This is Russell Kane. We grew up three streets apart."
"The famous June," Russell said, and stood up to shake my hand.
He was tall and tanned, with silver at his temples and a smile that went all the way up.
"Your mother says you're the one who runs this house when she travels," he said.
"Nobody runs this house," I said. "My dad just lets us think so."
Russell laughed, a real laugh, and looked at my father.
"Davis, I like her already."
My father smiled back at him. "Everybody does."
He sat down at the far end, next to the window, where the guests usually sat.
Nobody said anything about it.
An hour earlier I had seen a grey car parked on our street, a hundred yards down, with a man in it who didn't get out.
He had still been sitting there when I turned into the driveway.
Now a younger man stood in the doorway of the dining room, holding two suitcases.
"My son, Chet," Russell said. "He drove ahead to make sure the house was real. I told him a villa with a gate was a rumor."
Chet didn't smile.
He was about my age, tall, dark hair, hazel eyes that went to my father first and to me second.
"Ms. Engstrom," he said.
"June," I said.
"June," he said, and set the suitcases down by the stairs.
At dinner my mother told the story of how she and Russell had carved their initials into a bridge rail when she was seventeen.
She told it twice.
My father cut his fish into small pieces and ate none of it.
"Russell's building is being sold out from under him," my mother said. "He'll stay in the guest wing until it's settled. A few weeks."
"Weeks," my father said. "Of course."
"Don't look so grim, Davis," she said. "You've been saying for years you'd like more company."
"I did say that," my father said.
Russell turned to me with his glass. "And you, June. Do you work for the family business?"
"I'm a pharmacist. Mom's trucks and I don't get along."
"That's the job I'd have picked for you," he said warmly. "Your mother must sleep well, with one of you in white."
My mother laughed.
"Oh, the business is safe enough," she said. "Davis's shares are in June's name. He signed them over when she turned twenty-two, because he's hopeless with money."
My father studied his water glass.
Russell nodded slowly and reached over to refill my wine.
"That's smart," he said. "A man should know what he's bad at."
I thanked him.
After dessert my mother took Russell out to see the garden lights, and she took his arm to do it.
She had not taken my father's arm in years.
I went to find Dad and didn't find him.
At midnight I looked down from my window and saw the red tip of a cigarette on the balcony off the study.
My father had quit eight years ago.
He had stood in front of my mother's whole family at their anniversary and thrown the last pack in the harbor.
At two in the morning the cigarette was still there.
At four I went down in my socks.
He was in his cardigan, with five stubs in the flowerpot beside him.
"Go to bed, sweetheart," he said, without turning around. "It's nothing."
"Dad."
"Your mother is happy." He tapped ash over the rail. "I haven't seen her face look like that in a long time. I'm not going to stand in front of it."
"She put him in your chair."
"It's a chair."
"Dad, you don't have to be this kind."
"I said once that if she stopped loving me, I'd let her go," he said. "I meant it. It turns out I meant it."
He put out the cigarette and finally looked at me, and I saw that he had been crying.
I kissed his cheek, and it smelled of smoke.
Then I walked back through the dark house to get my phone from the kitchen.
The light was on in the guest wing, and the door was open a hand's width.
Russell was standing at the window with his back to me, talking low.
"No, she's soft. She'll believe anything I say for a month," he said. "It's the daughter who matters. Her name is on the shares, and she's the only lock left."
He listened.
"My son will handle her. He always does."
I held still in the hallway until my knees stopped shaking.
My mother's first love was not here for my mother.
I could tell her that tonight, and she would call me jealous and send me back upstairs.
So I decided something else.
If they wanted a lock, they would get one that smiled back.
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