After the Climb (River Rain 0.50)

He quirked a grin at her. “I see you’re your mother’s daughter in one way. She said she liked slow mornings. And back in the day, she was the same. Hated getting up early. Lived for the weekends when she could take her time.”

“I suspect Mom hasn’t changed much,” she stated leadingly.

“I’m sensing you’re right,” he muttered.

So she wouldn’t ruin it, she returned to the omelet.

She finished it up, plated it, put it in front of him with the fork, knife and napkin she’d already gotten out, then topped up both their mugs before she climbed up next to him.

Duncan had dropped Killer to the floor in preparation for eating.

Tuck jumped from the counter to the island and she cooed at him.

He gave her outstretched hand a sniff, but was more interested in sitting, swishing his tail, and watching Duncan eat.

For a moment, Duncan regarded the cat in his position that was verboten until Chloe arrived, before he sighed.

“All right, Bowie, tell me about being Bowie,” she urged.

“I’m tellin’ you this story ’cause you should know this story and what it says about me and what it says about the way I feel about your mom.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Did she give you the nickname Bowie?”

He swallowed the bite he’d put in after he’d said that, shook his head and replied, “My dad gave it to me. The first time he took me hunting.”

She was shocked.

She’d researched this man to within an inch of his life.

And although he was not a resolute opponent of that, he’d had a fair few things to say about hunters who did not follow fish, wildlife and game rules, and a fair few more things to say about poachers.

Especially the fat cat rich ones who flew to Africa and hired locals to drive animals from land that was designated protected game reserve to land that was not in order that they could shoot them.

Duncan Holloway had lots to say on that matter.

“Hunting?” she asked.

“I didn’t want to go. Pitched one helluva fit. And he…was…pissed. He had a temper, but I kid you not, I thought he’d beat the snot outta me. He was that pissed. It terrified me.”

“Did he beat you?” she asked quietly.

He looked her in the eye in a way she knew what he said next was important.

“Never once. Never laid a hand on me.”

“Oh,” she mumbled. Although glad, unsure, since the man didn’t beat his son, why it seemed that important.

“But I thought he was gonna do it, so I went hunting with him. And he rode my ass in the car, and he rode my ass in the woods, and he didn’t let up until he had to be quiet so he wouldn’t spook the deer. I was twelve and a goddamn mess. He’d taught me how to shoot. I had the rifle. And I was scared as shit of that thing because I knew the power it wielded and I was shakin’ so bad, I thought, once I got my finger near the trigger, I’d hurt him or me. But fear can also give you focus. Because when we saw that doe, and he told me she was mine, I downed her in a shot.”

Chloe stared at his profile as he said this to his omelet, and even in profile, his pain was so obvious, so palatable, she felt it with him.

He was fifty-four.

Forty-two years he’d carried that pain.

Apparently unabated.

“He made me gut her where she lay. Handed me his bowie knife and made me gut her. I didn’t get sick. Didn’t even feel nauseous. I did what I was told with his hand on my shoulder, squeezin’ so hard, I thought his thumb would break my clavicle. And he did this tellin’ me from then on, my name was Bowie, and he’d never been so proud of me in his life.”

He ate more omelet.

Chloe didn’t say a word.

When he’d swallowed, he told his plate, “A father never so proud of his son in a moment of death he forced his son to create, a son who had no desire to do that. That was the only time I made my father proud. But I didn’t make him proud. He made me make him proud.”

“Duncan,” Chloe said softly.

He turned his eyes to her.

“I never went hunting with him again. He grounded my ass at least two dozen times for what he called disrespect because I flat refused to do it.”

“I’m glad,” she whispered.

He nodded shortly to acknowledge her comment and kept going.

“It was about control. It took me a long time to realize it, well past losing Genny. Men like him don’t make men. They make ignorant, mindless automatons who go on to create more of the same if the cycle isn’t broken. I’m not saying at twelve years old I should have manned up and told my father to go fuck himself. I’m saying he was proud of me because he thought making me kill that deer, he was going to mold me in his image. And that was the meaning of his life. He did not create a child to nurture him and set him free on this world to find happiness and do good. He created a child in order to live longer, because it was all about him, not one thing to do with me.”