St. Patrick's Bed (Ashland, 3) Read Online Free Page A

idea."
    "Really?"
    "Really."
    More silence. Then: "And Adam?"
    "Adam likes you. You like Adam."
    He nodded. "Mm. I don't think these things usually work out. Your mother didn't like living with Nanny." He had a small reverie. "I made a mistake not getting our own place as soon as we were married." A pause. "Suppose it doesn't work out. Suppose we get on each other's nerves. What then?"
    "Good question. I don't know what to say. There are no guarantees for anything, this included. Let's just say that it's not a one-way street." I looked at him sitting there, my father, in his eighties. "If it doesn't work out, you can come back here. Things can be reversed. Not without a few scrapes, but certainly without any major damage. We wouldn't let anything get that far."
    He was still thinking. Then aloud: "I'm not going to get any better, you know. I'm only going to get worse."
    I ignored him. "Adam could use a grandfather. You'd have a role. There'd be somebody in the house when we were out. I'd like that."
    He pressed the mute button on the TV, stared at the silent images. "You know," he said, "fellow in the next room died last week. I've got a spare key. I found him. He was sitting in a chair just like this." He gripped the worn arms. "Shook me up. Made me realize that some stranger was going to come in one day and find me sitting here, just like him."
    I waited a minute before trying again.
    "If you don't want to do it, I understand. But we'll buy a smaller house—we'll have to—and it'll be too late. Now's the time. We'd buy a house to suit." A pause. "You'd be living in sin with us. At your age. Think about it." I smiled.
    He stared at the television's silent, flickering images.
    "You could eat Mexican food with us."
    He turned, looked at me, still silent.
     
    Jeanne and I bought a big, old semidetached house in the South Riverdale section of the city. My brother Dennis and I moved Dad's belongings in the day after Jeanne and I and Adam had moved our own stuff in.
    He had this old table lamp, white shade, milky glass base shaped like a cluster of grapes. It was his mother's—
    Nanny's. It had been at Maxwell Avenue—one of the things he had kept. Dennis and I dropped it, chipped the base. There's a rough edge now, a hunk an inch or so missing.
    The lamp's another thing of his that I still have.
     
     

 
    FOUR
     
     
    I
     
    Adam brought it up again a week or so later. I was watching a ball game on TV in the kitchen as I did the dinner dishes. Jeanne was on the phone upstairs talking with her mother.
    He came in, sat down at the kitchen table.
    "You going out later?" I rinsed a plate, set it in the dishwasher, picked up another.
    "Yeah. Going to meet Jane. Go for a coffee."
    I nodded.
    "Down in the Beaches. Queen Street."
    "Nice evening. Cool, but nice." I squirted dishwashing liquid into an aluminum pot, worked the yellow nylon scrubby against the burned sediment stuck to its bottom.
    "I think I'd like to go to Dayton this summer. See my father."
    I stopped scrubbing the pot, looked at him.
    "You're not upset, are you, Leo?"
    I had to think. "No," I said. "A little surprised, though." I straightened. "Told your mother?"
    He shook his head. "Not yet."
    I dropped the scrubby in the sink, rinsed my hands, tore off a piece of paper towel. "I don't know what to say."
    He looked at me.
    "Honestly."
    "I know."
    "Maybe it's a good idea." I dried my hands, dropped the towel in the wastebasket. "I don't know." I waited a few seconds, then: "You might be moving too fast. Maybe it's not a good idea. You don't know anything about him. We don't even know if he's still there." I hesitated. "Does he even want to see you is another very real question, don't you think?"
    He toyed with the salt and pepper shakers in front of him. "Did you ever wish you knew more about your father? About Gramp?"
    "Yes." I leaned back against the counter. I watched Adam frown, run his fingers along the contours of the shakers. "Lots of times. Especially