The Border: Part One Read Free Page A

against the light inside, before they pulled the door shut and stepped out into the parking lot. Leaning forward, Beth felt her heart beating at double-speed, but she could already tell from the shapes of the figures that they were strangers. She’d been so certain that she’d finally tracked Bob down to one of his all-night, away-from-home, lying-about-being-at-work lairs, and now she didn’t know whether to be glad she was wrong or disappointed.
    After a moment, she realized she was disappointed.
    “Fuck,” she whispered.
    “What was that?”
    “We’ll talk tomorrow,” she replied, “and Jack… Don’t get too worked up over this. It’s just Ben. Maybe everything’ll be okay this time.”
    “You don’t really believe that.”
    She paused, watching as the two figures made their way to a nearby car.
    “No,” she said finally, “you’re right. I don’t. But I can’t deal with this tonight, I’ve got other things going on. We’ll talk tomorrow, yeah? Not now.”
    Cutting the call, she kept the phone in her hand for a moment and watched as the couple got into their car. The man opened the door for the woman and held it while she got in, before closing it carefully and heading around to the driver’s side. Set against the backdrop of late-night pharmacies, all-night bars and every-night police sirens in this part of town, the chivalry of that one gesture seemed somehow magnified. Beth tried to remember the last time Bob had held the door for her, even in the driveway of their seven-figure house in the good part of town, but she came up blank. They were past the door-holding phase of their marriage and into the shouting-and-slamming phase.
    “Can we go home now?” Lucy asked, sounding exhausted.
    “Sure we can, sweetheart,” Beth replied, before a stray thought slipped into her mind. “But we might make one more small detour along the way.”
    ***
    “I need to swing by my father’s place,” Jack said suddenly, after driving for several minutes in silence since the call with his sister had ended. “I’ll drop you guys off at home first.”
    “This late?” Jane glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “Honey, it’s gone ten.”
    “I know, but it’s important.”
    She paused for a moment. “Are you going over to tell him about Ben?”
    “No-one else will.”
    “Do you feel the need to warn every member of your family that your brother’s coming home?”
    “Kind of,” he muttered.
    Looking over her shoulder, Jane saw that Stuart and Oliver were fast asleep in the back seat. She turned back to Jack, and for a moment she watched as he kept his eyes on the road. The problem with Jack was that when everything was fine, he tended to be very quiet, and when everything was up in the air, he also tended to be very quiet. Being quiet was his default mode, and it had taken her a long time to learn how to tell one type of silence from another. At that particular moment, however, she could tell that this was the type of silence that indicated trouble beneath the surface. He was already getting himself tie up in knots.
    “Have you called ahead to see if he’s up for having visitors?” she asked finally.
    “I’ll call in a bit.”
    “You should. He might have gone to bed already.”
    “He might be drunk already, you mean.”
    “Jack -”
    “It’s fine,” he continued, as he slowed the car and turned onto their street. “I’ll drop you off and then I’ll go see him. I’ll be quick. He needs to know.” He eased into the driveway. “He has to know,” he added. “I’m not letting him get out of this one. If the rest of us are worried, he has to be worried too. I’ll just go to his place and tell him, and I’ll be back before the kids are in bed.”
    ***
    Two minutes later, as the kids trudged to the front door, Jane watched Jack backing the car out of the driveway.
    “Oh God,” she muttered under her breath. “Why now?”
    ***
    “Dad?”
    Jack knocked again, but there was still no