Beauty & the Beasts Read Free

phoned me.
    “Nah,” Garth said without hesitation. “She doesn’t look at her bills that closely. I’ve made long-distance calls before.”
    Who the hell had Garth been calling long-distance without his mother’s knowledge? But Eric didn’t ask; he was in the awkward position of a divorced father who hadn’t seen his son in almost nine months; he wasn’t really part of Garth’s life and he had no business interfering in the boy’s relationship with his mother. Maybe, Eric thought, he was misinterpreting things, anyway.
    “I’ve got patients waiting,” he said. “What do you need to talk about?”
    For the first time a small silence ensued. Then in a rush his twelve-year-old son said, “The thing is, there’s all kinds of stuff happening here this summer. But Mom says I have to visit you. I figured, if I talked to you, you wouldn’t mind if I didn’t come. It’s not like we had anything really special planned. I mean, what would I do every day? Here, I’ve got friends to hang with, and Mom needs me, you know. She just doesn’t like to say that to you.”
    Eric’s stomach felt as if the morning’s stack ofpancakes, eaten at a Rotary Club breakfast, was turning to concrete. Mom says I have to visit you. God. He’d lost his son.
    “Dad?”
    He couldn’t think of a damned thing to say.
    “It’s not like I don’t want to see you. It’s just, the whole summer…”
    Eric found his voice. “Let me think about this. Maybe talk to your mother—”
    That provoked some real emotion. Panic. “But you can’t! She’ll be mad I called you. Why should you have to talk to her? It’s just between you and me, right?”
    “Wrong. You know your mother and I don’t make decisions about you without consulting each other.” He and Noreen hadn’t been able to salvage their marriage, but they’d continued to share concerns about their son. Until recently, Eric realized, frowning again; he hadn’t spoken to his ex for more than a “Hi, is Garth around?” in quite a while. And something was clearly going on.
    Or had she simply not wanted to tell him that distance had killed his relationship with his son?
    Striving to sound dispassionate, he said, “I won’t tell your mom what you said. I’ll just discuss this summer in general, okay? But I’ve got to warn you, I was counting on some time with you.”
    “Yeah, but it’s really important…”
    “We’ll talk in a couple of days. Now, get to class.”
    Feeling sick, Eric stayed where he was for a moment after putting down the phone. Because of hisson, he’d hung on to his marriage longer than he should have. Even after the divorce, he’d stuck it out in a lousy job situation at a clinic in the Bay area because he wanted to be where he could see Garth often. Only when those overnight visits became unsatisfactory did he convince himself that having his son for the whole summer every year would be better, that it was time to make a change.
    He couldn’t win. Maybe there was no way a father who didn’t live with his kids could be anything but irrelevant to their lives.
    In frustration, he drove his fist against the wall just hard enough to hurt. The pain was a welcome distraction from the deeper anguish.
    “Eric.” His partner laid a hand softly on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
    When he lifted his head and turned to face Teresa, she let her hand drop. Snug black leggings showed under her white lab coat, which was beginning to strain just the littlest bit over her stomach now that she was four months along in her pregnancy. She’d remarried the year before, not too long after she’d bought into the practice and moved to White Horse. Today her dark hair was French braided, and she wore tiny gold studs in her ears. Her forehead creased with worry.
    He said the first thing that came into his head— the first thing that had nothing to do with his son. “Do I have a reputation?”
    “A reputation?” Teresa’s eyebrows rose. “I hope so! My