“I didn’t realize I had.”
“Listen, about my father…” He trailed off.
“You mentioned that he’s…off, I think is what you said.”
He nodded. “He’s reclusive and eccentric,” Mike said, choosing his words carefully. There were none to really prepare Amber for what she was about to encounter, but he might as well try.
No doubt Edward would scare her off, either by his crotchety attitude, the way he lived or the fact that once his father realized there was something between Amber and Mike, Edward would do his damnedest to run her off before the curse kicked in.
Mike shook his head and groaned. “You’ll see what I mean soon enough.” They were almost at the exit leading to Stewart, where his father lived in an old house on the edge of town.
“What about your mother?” Amber asked. “Does she live there, too?”
He shook his head. “They’re divorced. Have been for ten years. She’s remarried. She and my stepfather live about an hour from Boston, too, in the opposite direction from here.”
“I’m glad you’re talking to me again.” She curled her jeans-clad leg beneath her and turned toward him, obviously settling in for more “get to know you” talk.
“I just want you to be prepared when you meet my father.”
“My father-in-law,” she said too cheerfully.
“About that—” Without insulting her or getting into too much detail about the family curse, he needed to figure out how to ask her not to bring up their marriage to his father.
If she’d never stolen the money and bolted, he supposed he’d have brought her back and dealt with his father’s insanity. But she’d betrayed him. He couldn’t trust her, and he really didn’t even know her. And she wouldn’t be around much longer so there was no reason to upset Edward and get him started on the damn curse.
“Listen, I’d rather you not tell my father we’re—”
“Skunk!” Amber shrieked, pointing straight in front of them.
Mike slammed on his brakes, narrowly missing the animal in the middle of the old country road leading to his father’s house.
“Are you okay?” he asked Amber.
She nodded. “Close call.”
He agreed. He was about to drive around the skunk when he caught sight of his father, walking in front of the car.
Mike closed his eyes and muttered a curse. He shifted the car into Park and opened the window. “Dad, what the hell are you doing? It’s a skunk. Get in the car before it sprays us all!”
But to Mike’s surprise, his father bent down and grabbed the animal by the tail.
“What’s he doing?” Amber asked, wide-eyed with shock.
“It looks like he’s bringing it over.”
Before Mike could find the button to shut the window, Edward leaned over and said, “Michael, meet my new pet, Stinky Pete.”
“For the love of…Get that thing out of here.”
“He’s descented. But don’t tell that to anyone in town. It keeps people away.”
“They don’t come around anymore anyway,” Mike said, wondering how his father had allowed himself to descend so far into his own world.
Edward Corwin looked like a modern-day mountain man. His black hair, wiry and sprinkled with gray, hadn’t seen scissors in ages; neither had his beard. He wore khaki shorts, old shirts and beat-up sandals, but they were stylish enough for Mike to know his father still made trips to town from time to time.
The house he lived in had been built back when Edward and his brothers owned their own construction business, in the days before their generation of Corwin men had suffered from the curse, when the brothers had been on speaking terms and life had been as close to normal as Mike suspected his father had ever known it to be.
After the feud over Mike’s aunt Sara Jean, the business had gone bankrupt, the partnership ended and the brothers made their own living doing handiwork. Edward had worked as a plumber, at least until he’d became so strange. Now, no one wanted him in their homes.