Brant's Return

There was another very brief pause before the woman—Isabelle—spoke again. “I was calling to let you know that, well, there’s no easy way to say this, but your father is dying.”

A strange sort of buzzing took up in my veins, and I leaned against the black granite counter. “Dying?” The word felt odd on my lips and for a moment, the meaning evaded me. Dying?

“Yes,” Isabelle said, and her tone had softened. “I’m sorry. The cancer has spread. The doctors have given him six months . . . maybe a little longer, just depending . . .”

Cancer? Doctors? My head felt foggy. This was the very last thing I’d been expecting. I reached up and rubbed my temples. “Did my father ask you to call me?”

Isabelle cleared her throat. “No. I took it upon myself to call you, but . . . I thought you’d want to know.”

I left the kitchen, wandering into the dining room, standing at the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked New York City. “Ms. . . . Farris, did you say?”

“Yes.”

“Ms. Farris, I haven’t spoken to my father in thirteen years.”

“I heard. Still . . . it’s never too late to mend fences.”

Mend fences? Who was this woman? “Listen, I don’t know who you are to my father—”

“I’m his secretary. I live here at Graystone Hill.”

Ah. His secretary. Living under his roof. Right. We’d gone down that road before. “I see.” Even I could hear the condescension in my tone.

“I don’t see how you could,” she said, meeting my condescension with some of her own. Despite the confusion, the irritation, the swirling emotions in my chest I didn’t even know how to name, I almost laughed. At least this time my father had found one with a little bit of backbone. “In any case, Mr. Talbot, now you know. What you choose to do with the information is up to you I guess. Have a good night.”

/> I held the phone away from my ear, gazing at the screen. Had she just hung up on me? No one hung up on me—

“Mm, smells delicious,” Sondra said, from behind me.

I turned, and for a moment I had no idea what she was talking about. Dinner. Oh shit, the rosemary lamb chops were still cooking. I swore softly, moving past Sondra into the kitchen where I grabbed an oven mitt off the counter and pulled the overcooked meat from the oven.

Sondra, having followed me into the kitchen, laughed softly. “Don’t worry about it. We can order out, or”—her arms came around my waist from behind, one finger trailing over my belt—“we can skip dinner altogether.”

I gently took her arms and removed them from my waist, turning toward her. She let her arms drop to her sides, her expression a mixture of confusion and annoyance. “Listen, Sondra, I’m going to have to take a rain check. That call . . . I need to sort through some things. I’d like to be alone.”

**********

I took a swig from the bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand before placing the almost empty bottle on the table next to where I sat on my balcony. The night was warm, and the jazz music coming through the speakers set into the wall was soothing. I’d drunk almost an entire bottle of wine by myself, so why did I still feel so damn antsy?

Your father is dying.

The words echoed in my head. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around them. Harrison Talbot couldn’t die. Harrison Talbot was too much of a stubborn bastard to die. He was supposed to . . . what? Live at Graystone Hill forever? I guess I’d never really considered it. I hadn’t thought of my father in a long time.

I picked up the bottle, finished it off, then placed it back down again harder than I’d intended, the sharp clack of glass on glass making me wince. I should go to bed. I was fucking tired. Tired and drunk.

Even so, my brain insisted on wandering to the place I now knew my father lay dying. Not imminently perhaps, but dying nonetheless. The doctors have given him six months.

Graystone Hill rose in my mind’s eye. My childhood home, the place I’d once loved . . . and then hated, and finally left, vowing never to return, not even in my mind. So many mingled emotions warred inside me when I pictured that grand farmhouse, the rolling Kentucky pastures spreading in every direction, the meandering white fences, the stables, the streams, the groves of trees, every nook and cranny I’d once known as well as the back of my hand.

Harrison Talbot was dying. What you choose to do with the information is up to you, she’d said, disdain clear in her tone. Judgment. As if she, my father’s young-sounding girlfriend, had any idea. I made a sound of disgust in my throat. What I was going to do was exactly nothing. I was not going to make a visit to Harrison Talbot so we could “mend fences.” There was too much water under the bridge for that, too much time passed, too much anger and resentment built up and solidified after all these years.

I’d already said goodbye to Harrison Talbot. The man was no longer my father. There was no need to do it twice.

A cold sort of starkness settled inside when I pictured that day, the one that had changed everything. The words we’d yelled echoed inside my skull, the visions neither time, nor distance, nor an entire bottle of expensive French wine could diminish. Apparently.

Would I even attend his funeral? No. Why would I? He wouldn’t want that anyway, despite his meddling “secretary.” As his only child, I supposed I’d be expected to settle his estate, but I had a lawyer for that. A lawyer to arrange sales, split up property, whatever needed to be done as far as Graystone Hill went. I certainly didn’t want it. My mind snagged on the old bourbon distillery buildings on the edge of the acreage. If the old man or anyone else had ever attempted to do anything with them, had ever produced any bourbon under my mother’s family’s brand, I hadn’t heard about it. And as the owner of several bars, I would have.

At the thought of my mother, a dull ache throbbed in my chest, and I unconsciously reached a hand up in an attempt to massage it away. I didn’t want to think about her. I was too raw, too taken aback by the news I’d received to go there, so I pushed it away as best as I could, focusing on those distillery buildings, my thoughts tumbling.