The Affair: Week 5 Read Free

brains not only for business, but engineering. Michael Senior could put an engine back together blindfolded and come up with revolutionary mechanical advances in his sleep. I understand his son is even more of a mechanical genius.”
    “You say it like you knew Michael Montand Senior,” Emma said, curiosity making her find her voice.
    “I did, a little,” Mort said, glancing up at her with sharp blue eyes. “We were both members of the local Lions Club. Montand didn’t come around that much—I imagine he joined to be polite when someone asked him. But I met him a few times. Knew of his reputation and business. Knew about his son, too,” Mort said dryly.
    “What do you know about the son?” Emma asked, her pulse beginning to leap at her throat.
    “Just rumors, mostly, although I did have a few real-life run-ins with him when he was a teenager,” Mort said in his easygoing manner as he shut down his computer and closed the lid.
    “You’ve actually met him?” Emma asked.
    Mort nodded. “I’d just become the sheriff here in Cedar Bluff when Montand Junior was finishing high school. He tested the police staff of a few towns along the North Shore when he was young.”
    “He was wild, huh?” Jamie asked, taking a sip of her coffee.
    “He was troubled, that much is certain,” Mort said reflectively, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “His dad and his stepmom had their hands full with him. Some of these rich North Shore kids are spoiled rotten, but Montand had more reasons than some for dabbling in juvenile delinquency, I suppose. He never struck me as a bad kid, just mad at the world. He lost his mother really young, from what I understand, and never got along well with his stepmother.”
    “He lost a twin brother, too,” Emma said quietly. Jamie looked over at her in surprise. “I’m familiar with him through a patient,” Emma sidestepped.
    Mort nodded thoughtfully. “A twin brother, huh? Well, that makes sense. We brought Montand in one night for underage drinking and getting in a fight with some South Side jerk who boxed part-time. Montand was only sixteen or so at the time. The guy he was fighting was a monster and years older than Montand, but Montand had held his own. In fact, he’d gone ballistic on the guy in the parking lot of some Cedar Bluff dive that’s not open anymore.” Mort shook his head in memory. “That kid had a death wish. He like was a lit firecracker, burning at both ends and inside out to boot. Once he cooled down, though, he was nice enough. He even fixed our busted police radio for us before his dad came in to post bail.” Mort shook his head distractedly. “A twin brother, huh?” he repeated. “I’d never heard anyone say that. I
did
hear he married young to a girl he met in college. Montand Senior was dead set against the relationship, and was furious when his son brought the girl home and presented her as his wife. Senior tried to get the marriage annulled, but Junior was having none of it. At least that was what the gossip was. And then he lost her, too.”
    “What?” Emma asked, praying she’d misunderstood the last detail of Mort’s rambling reflection.
    “Yeah,” Mort said, meeting her gaze and nodding sadly. “I don’t remember what the wife died of, but I think she was sickly from the get-go. They couldn’t have been married for much more than a year before she got ill, and then she was gone by the time their graduation date arrived.”
    His words pounded in Emma’s stunned brain with the pulse of her blood. “Just goes to show you, I guess. Someone might look at Montand and think he’s got it all—money, good looks, success, glamorous businesses and yet—”
    “It’s like life is playing some kind of sick joke on him,” Emma finished dully, recalling Vanni saying similar words that night on Lookout Beach when they’d differed on the topic of death.
    “Yeah,” Mort said, taking a sip of coffee. “There’s no fortune big enough that