Blood Rules Read Free Page B

eaten?”
    “Yes. Couldn’t sleep. You talking on the phone woke me up; who called?”
    Colin stirred his coffee. “No one called. You must have been dreaming. You say you couldn’t sleep, but you were doing all right when I looked in on you. Anyway, what’s with the
français
all of a sudden?”
    Robbie shook his head, that same cheeky grin, the grin of innocence, splitting his face in two. “Just excited, that’s all. Silly.”
    He flushed crimson, embarrassed, and Colin, who knew better than to take his hand, which was what he wanted to do, said, “So am I. Butterflies.”
    “Me too.” Robbie perched on the bed and took a fingerful of bacon.
    “Hey!” Colin stabbed with his fork. “That’s mine!”
    “I’m a growing boy.” Robbie’s tone was unctuous. “I need building up. Besides, it doesn’t go to fat on me, like on
someone,
I know.”
    “Ouch! Leave off.” Colin sipped coffee. “Hey, this is good. Thanks.”
    The boy flushed again and looked down. “What’s K.L. like?” he asked suddenly.
    “Oh … noisy, a bit dirty. Hot and humid. But some lovely buildings, and lovelier people. You’ll like it. Anyway,
I
should be asking
you;
you’ve done nothing all month but read guidebooks.”
    “Yes, but I’ve been looking at the Australian ones, mostly. I can’t wait for Melbourne, Dad.”
    Robbie meant: for Celestine. For the mother of the mother of
my
mother, who went away and never came back. For my roots, my past, my self. As Colin formulated this to himself, he wondered what the boy would say about Leila to his great-grandmother, when they met again. He must have prepared something: a spell to exorcise the anger he felt toward his father, his mother, the unrighteous world that allowed such things to happen.
    Colin did not know how his son had dealt with Leila’s desertion. He’d never found a way of asking.
    “Wish we didn’t have to hang around in K.L.,” Robbie said.
    Colin had been invited to lecture in Sydney. Oxford had granted his request for a sabbatical without demur. Academic friends in Malaysia, eager to repay some hospitality, had invited him to stop over with them. When the ticket arrived and he saw the university had treated him to business class, it seemed like an omen. Colin cashed the ticket in for two economy seats and decided to take his son on the holiday of a lifetime.
    They needed a holiday. They had not taken one for over two years, not since Leila went out of their lives forever.
    “I’ll get up now,” Colin said, his sharp tone causing Robbie to start. “Can you take the tray? Thanks.”
    He watched his son carry the tray out of the bedroom. The boy’s hands and feet were too big for the rest of him, and he needed fleshing out a little; nature, having given him her all for so many years, had paused for breath just short of completion, leaving him out of sync and lanky. At fourteen, though, he showed no signs yet of reaching the moody phase that must come: emotional development proceeded like its physical counterpart, in fits and starts. Maturity came at its own pace; over the past two years, Colin had learned when not to push.
    As he swung his legs off the bed his meticulous lawyer’s brain reminded him that he had not lied to his son about the phone. No one had called.
    Robbie sat next to his father and map-read. “Exit Four. Two more to go. Then you leave the M-four, take the third exit, and you’re on a slip road.”
    When Colin said nothing, Robbie realized he’d been superfluous. For a moment he knew that hard, angry feeling like the start of a tension headache, but it passed. Today was too great to spoil with shit like that.
    He wanted to ask the questions he’d composed in his mind, but they spiked out like missile warheads. If he fired them, somewhere in the air between his tongue and Colin’s eardrums they would automatically become armed, possessed of unimaginable destructive force. This might be a good time, though. Dad seemed relaxed; he’d