Chapter 17
Sadly, Mr. Internet didn’t seem to know anything useful about the Oregon “Oliver Collins.” Allison scrolled through pages and pages of results on her phone, but none of the Oliver Collinses that turned up was the right Oliver Collins. Too young. Too old. Wrong country. Wrong face.
“I hate when Google fails me,” Allison said with a sigh. They were back in her room, Roland on her bed and Allison in her wicker chair by the window. “Everyone should be on the internet. At least when I’m trying to find them.”
“You’re not,” Roland said. “I had a hell of a time trying to find you online.”
“McQueen likes his ladies to keep a low profile. I have a great Pinterest account, though. All book covers.”
“Of course,” he said. “You can’t find me online, either. No computers allowed in our cells.”
“It really was prison, wasn’t it?”
“Not at all. Prisoners get conjugal visits,” Roland said with a grin. He rolled onto his side facing her. “You said you had a backup plan to find Oliver?”
“I do, but you’re not going to like it.” Allison sat forward in the chair and tugged gently on a loose lock of Roland’s hair.
“If it involves digging through Dad’s medical records, I’m not going to do it,” Roland said. “I won’t stop you, but I won’t be part of it, either.”
“I doubt Oliver’s current address would be in your dad’s old files,” Allison said. “I’ve moved three times in thirteen years. I’m sure he’s moved at least once.”
“Good point. What’s the plan?”
“You maybe want to leave the room for this,” she said with a wary sigh.
Roland narrowed his eyes at her.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“The thing is... McQueen has a whole company that does venture capitalism. They find start-up companies to invest in. But you don’t invest in a company first without doing lots of background checks on the company founders. You don’t want to accidentally give money to a con man or a sex offender. So McQueen has a couple of women on his staff who do nothing but dig up people’s pasts.”
“You’re going to ask your ex...whatever to help us find Oliver?”
“I was thinking about it,” she said.
“Okay,” Roland said. “Call him, then. As long as his ladies on staff don’t do anything illegal.”
“Nah. They have all the databases that private detectives use. It won’t be a big deal to get a phone number or address. I’m calling. Are you staying?”
“I can handle it,” he said.
“All right. Here goes.”
Allison made the call.
McQueen answered after two rings.
“Allison? This is a quite a surprise,” he said.
“Hey,” she said. “Sorry to bother you.”
“No bother at all, sugar. What’s on your mind?”
Sugar? She did the mental math—it would be right about eleven in Louisville right now. Good chance he was already on his third drink of the night.
“I need your help with something.”
“Name it,” McQueen said.
“Name it?” she asked.
“Name it and claim it. You’re talking to a man sitting in a doghouse. Got nothing else to do in here.”
“What did you do now?” Allison asked.
Roland eyed her with suspicion and amusement.
“I made the mistake of answering my lady love’s questions about you.”
“You said you already told her about me.”
“I apparently neglected to inform her of your age at consummation.”
“Oh...dear,” Allison said in sympathy. “I guess she’s mad?”
“She’s not happy, that’s for damn sure. I’m under orders to make amends.”
“Should I write your girlfriend a letter of recommendation for you?” Allison asked. If Roland furrowed his brow any harder, she could put a pencil between the folds.
“That’s not the worst idea I’ve heard all day. Now tell me what I can do for you,” McQueen said. “I hope it involves the loss of a limb. That might appease the future missus.”
“Roland and I want to find one of the kids who used to live here. Nothing came up when we Googled him,” she said. “Can you help?”
“You and Roland, eh? Hmm...might do it for you. Not sure I’ll do it for him.”
“Be nice, McQueen. He’s sitting right here.”
“Put him on.”
“What?”
“Put the man on the phone. I would like to talk to him.”
“Oh, hell, no,” Allison said in an exaggerated Kentucky accent.
“What?” Roland whispered.
Allison put her hand over the phone.
“He wants to talk to you,” she said in a whisper.
Roland shrugged. “I’ll talk to him.”
“No,” Allison rasped.
“Allison...” McQueen sang her name.
“Speakerphone,” Allison said. “That’s my offer. I want to hear what nonsense you tell him.”
“Offer accepted,” McQueen said. “Put the boy on.”
Allison sighed heavily and hit the speakerphone button.
“All right, McQueen. Here he is.”
“Am I speaking to Brother Roland Capello?” McQueen asked.
“You can call me Roland,” Roland said, smiling at Allison, who was already rolling her eyes.
“And you can call me Mr. McQueen.”
“Of course, Mr. McQueen.”
“Oh, my Lord.” Allison sighed.
“I understand you and Allison are seeing each other now?” McQueen asked.
“You understand correctly,” Roland said.
“And you’re a monk of the Benedictine persuasion. Do I also understand that correctly?”
“I’m on leave from the order,” Roland said. “But technically, yes.”
“This is weird,” Allison said to them both. “This is very weird. This is weirder than the time I had sex with my brother who is also a monk.”
“You mean two hours ago?” Roland said.
“I did not need to hear that,” McQueen said. “Not enough bourbon in the whole goddamn world.”
“You dumped me,” Allison said. “You’ve obsessed about me more in the last forty-eight hours than you did in the entire six years we were together.”
“I don’t obsess about my big toe, either, but I sure as hell would if someone made me chop it off,” McQueen said.
“How much have you had to drink tonight?” Allison asked. “You sound like Matthew McConaughey.”
“I’ve had three shots of Knob Creek Single Barrel, one-hundred-twenty proof. We call that ‘guilty conscience’ bourbon in the trade,” McQueen said. “It’s not helping as much as I’d like. I best increase the voltage.”
“Guilt is the soul’s way of reminding you that actions have consequences,” Roland said. “So says my abbot.”
“I am a forty-five-year-old man with two grown children and a baby on the way with a woman I hardly know from Eve. Young man, I know actions have consequences.”
Roland looked at Allison and mouthed, “Does he always talk like this?”
“I heard that,” McQueen said. “Tell me, Roland, do monks drink bourbon?”
“We bust out the Maker’s Mark on special occasions,” Roland said. “Feast days, parties, anniversaries, days ending in Y.”
“Hmm.”
“McQueen, that’s a good Kentucky bourbon,” Allison said.
“Maker’s is ninety proof,” McQueen said. “But I suppose it’s a decent enough breakfast bourbon.”
Roland laughed again.
“Are you laughing at me, young man?” McQueen demanded.
“With you,” Roland said. “I’m starting to understand why Allison stayed with you for six years.”
“I could show you why she stayed with me for six years,” McQueen said.
“McQueen, that’s—”
“I was referring to my bank balance,” McQueen said.
“That’s not any less insulting,” she said. “That’s it. Chitchat is over.” She took McQueen off speakerphone and shooed Roland from the room. He went, reluctantly. Very reluctantly. “Okay, we’re alone again. Will you help? Seriously?”
“I’ll help. What exactly am I doing?”
“I need the contact information for Oliver Collins from Oregon, about age twenty-six.”
“And why am I hunting this boy down for you?”
“We think he might know something about my fall or whatever it was. We want to ask him a few questions.”
There was a pause before McQueen answered and Allison hoped the man hadn’t passed out on her.
“You really are planning on staying there with them, aren’t you?” he asked.
“For now,” she said. “But even so, I need to know what happened.”
“I’d want to know, too. I hope you have the family I could never give you someday,” McQueen said.
Allison swallowed a lump in her throat.
“I should hate you,” she said. “I really should. Why can’t I?”
“You know what they say...ours is not to wonder why. Ours is but to drink bourbon and rye.”
“They don’t say that. You say that, McQueen.”
“Is that so? Then I am a very wise man.”
She whispered a good-night and hung up before McQueen could say something else to make her remember why she didn’t hate him. She texted him Oliver’s name, his age and what little else she remembered about him—blond, blue eyes, from Portland. McQueen sent back a thumbs-up emoji. Message received.
She left her phone in her room and found Roland in the kitchen putting together what seemed to be a cocktail of pills into a tiny shot glass.
“Bourbon is better,” she said.
“These are all Dad’s,” Roland said. “We’ve got Benadryl for the itching. A diuretic to help with swelling. A few others I forgot what they do but they’re very important, I was told. They’ll add literally hours to his life.”
She sat down across from him at the table.
“Sorry McQueen gave you the third degree. You handled it really well.”
“I expected him to be, I don’t know, more of an asshole,” Roland said.
“He can afford to be nice. You were nice, too. Nicer than I would have been.”
“I hate to say it, but I like him.”
“He’s a charmer.”
“Seriously,” Roland said. “I’m straight and even I was thinking, Yeah, I’d sleep with this guy.”
Allison laughed. “Now that is quite a mental picture.”
“You still have feelings for him?” Roland asked. His tone was neutral but she could see a flash of nervousness in his eyes.
“I had feelings for us,” she said. “I liked us. I was used to us. He ended it and it felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. Turns out there’s pretty nice flooring underneath.”
She saw Roland trying not to smile. He didn’t try very hard.
“I’ll always care about him,” she said, “but I’m not pining for him.”
“That’s good.”
“Very good. I pined after you for years,” she said.
“You did?” he asked.
“I was still a virgin at nineteen,” she reminded him. “I think a big reason for that is a little part of me compared every boy to you. And they all paled in comparison.”
“I’m not that wonderful,” he said. “Really. I’m not.”
“You were to me,” she said. She watched for a moment as he added pills to the shot glass. “Deacon told me earlier today about Rachel. He asked me not to bring her up but I don’t want it to be like that with us. You don’t have to talk about her with me. I want you to know I know so there’s no secrets with us.”
Roland had looked up sharply at her when she said Rachel’s name but he didn’t seem to be angry.
“It must’ve been really painful to lose her in that accident. We don’t need to talk about it. All I’ll say about it is I’m very, very sorry,” she said.
“You lost your mom. Everyone in this house lost somebody,” he said.
“Everybody in this house found somebody, too,” she said.
Roland smiled and said no more about it.
“I’ll take those up to Dad if you want,” she said.
“You won’t talk about Oliver to him?” Roland asked.
“No.”
“Good,” he said. She kissed his cheek and started from the kitchen.
“It was my fault,” Roland said softly, but Allison heard and turned around.
“What was?”
“Rachel dying.”
“I had a cold. When my mother died, I mean. I had a horrible cough and I couldn’t sleep, so Mom went out to the drugstore at midnight. She’d been drinking—not much, just enough to be tipsy and tired. But she lost control of her car. Knowing the area, she probably swerved to avoid a dog or a tumbleweed she thought was a dog. Was her death my fault?”
“Of course not.”
“See?” she said, and kissed his forehead.
Roland took her hand and kissed it. She sensed he had more to say but all he said was, “Tell Dad I’ll be up later.”
“Of course.”
She left him in the kitchen and went up to the third floor, where she found Dr. Capello shuffling around his bedroom in his green-and-blue tartan plaid bathrobe and matching blue slippers. Something about the sound of the slippers on the floor and the loose way the robe hung on his shoulders made him look even older than his years.
“Hey, Dad,” she said from the doorway.
“There’s my girl,” he said, and waved her inside.
“Don’t get excited to see me,” she said, and held up his medicine cup.
He pursed his lips. “Did my eldest put you up to this?”
“I volunteered,” she said. She hadn’t done it to be nice, although she wouldn’t tell Roland that. She wanted a chance to be alone with Dr. Capello again, to see if he said anything about Oliver.
“Talk about dirty pool,” Dr. Capello said. “The monk knows I’ll be nicer to you than him.”
“You have to be nice to me,” she said. “I’m armed and dangerous.”
“I don’t believe it for one second.”
“It’s true. Deacon, for some reason, gave me a can of pepper spray today.” She pulled it out of her pocket and showed it to him.
“Ah,” Dr. Capello said. “I’ll be nice, then.”
She shoved the pepper spray into her pocket again and came into the room.
“Any idea why he keeps spare cans of pepper spray around?” she asked him. “I noticed Thora carries it, too.”
Dr. Capello nodded slowly. “It’s not something I should be talking about.”
“Why not? He’s your son. You’re allowed to talk about your children,” she said.
“What did he tell you?” Dr. Capello asked.
“He said there are a lot of psychos around.”
“He would know.”
“What does that mean?” Allison asked. She sat in the big armchair by the bed. Dr. Capello’s shoulders slumped a little.
“We have a rule in this house, if you’ll remember, and it’s a good rule. We don’t talk about the past. The kids’ pasts, I mean. No more than we have to. It’s for their sake. Kids like them, they needed security, a permanent home. I never wanted them to think they’d ever have to go back to their old lives.”
She remembered Dr. Capello telling her that when he brought her to the house the first time. He said all the kids in the house had been through tough times and she wasn’t supposed to ask them about their old lives or their old families. None of them had asked her how her mother had died. She never asked them how they ended up at The Dragon, either. No reason to. They were all so happy here, none of them wanted to remember the pain in their pasts. None of them wanted to remember they were born anything other than Capello kids.
“I respect that,” Allison said. “But they’re not kids anymore, you know.”
He waved his hand. “Bah. You all were born yesterday.”
Allison sat back in the chair and said nothing, only waited.
Dr. Capello picked up his medicine cup and then put it down again without taking anything.
“His biological father,” Dr. Capello said. “He’s in prison. Two counts of aggravated assault, one count of murder. He’ll die in jail if we’re lucky. Let’s hope we’re lucky.”
“That’s horrible,” Allison said. “Deacon’s biological father killed someone?”
“Classic psychopath,” Dr. Capello said. “I read his file. Liar, manipulator, glib, shallow, remorseless, I could go on and on. But don’t listen to Deacon. There aren’t a lot of them around. True psychopaths make up about two percent of the population. In prison it’s more like...fifty percent. In politics, maybe ninety percent.”
Allison smiled. “Well, thank God Deacon turned out so well despite his father,” she said.
“Not God’s doing,” Dr. Capello said, then pointed at himself. “My doing.”
She smiled. “Well, thank you, then. But that explains why Deacon’s a little...paranoid, I guess?”
“He had a violent childhood before he came to me. It’ll change a child,” Dr. Capello said. “I hope that answers your question?” His tone implied that he’d prefer she dropped the subject.
“Yeah, it does. I wish it was a better answer.”
“We all do, doll.”
Her stomach knotted up at the revelation. Poor Deacon, growing up with a murderer as a father. Yes, that sort of thing would definitely change someone. Because of her mother dying after drinking and driving, Allison had been so cautious around alcohol she’d never once gotten drunk in all her twenty-five years. Not even McQueen could ever talk her into having more than one drink, even when she wasn’t driving anywhere.
“Now,” he said. “I’m going to bed before my eldest gets up here to hassle me some more.”
“I’m not leaving until you take your meds,” she said.
“It’s hard to take them when you’re nauseous.”
“Not taking them will make it worse, though, won’t it?”
“I’m the doctor here, kid. Not you.” Dr. Capello eased himself down onto his bed. He seemed more fragile tonight. His eyes looked puffy and his skin more sallow. “You know what the awful irony is? My grandparents died in this house of lead poisoning. I did everything I could when I took over the place to make it safe and habitable. Yet, here I am, two generations later, poisoning myself to death.”
“Poisoning yourself?” Allison helped Dr. Capello lie back on his pillows. She brought the covers over him to his chest.
“The kidneys clean poison out of your body. When the kidneys can’t do their job anymore, the poisons stay in the system.”
He patted the bed next to him and Allison sat at his side.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“It’s not comfortable, but it’s not quite pain, either. What hurts is the unfairness. To give your life in service to mankind and then...this.”
“No, it’s not fair at all,” she said, reaching out to take his hand. He held hers in his and squeezed it. She took heart in the strength she felt in his hands. There was life in him yet.
“You know what else isn’t fair?” Allison said. “You still have to take your meds.”
“Ah, dammit.”
“I know a man trying to change the subject when I see it.”
“How about you recite me another poem?” he asked. “A good long one. An epic, maybe? The Iliad?”
“‘Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.’”
“Prometheus Bound,” he said.
“‘Such is the reward you reap for loving mortals.’”
“My mother would have adored you. How about The Odyssey?”
“How about you recite me a poem?” She stood up, crossed her arms over her chest and waited.
He chuckled a little, wagged his finger at her.
“Oh, that’s your trick not mine. But I know one. If I can recite one poem, will I still have to take my meds?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“How about this?” he said. “I recite my poem and you keep that nagging monk out of my room so I can pretend for one night I’m a grown man.”
“All right,” she said. “Deal. Recite.”
He smiled a little and tapped his temple as if trying to jar the poem free. He recited the poem to her.
“So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.”
Allison applauded. “William Carlos Williams. A classic. A very short classic.”
“You know what it means?”
“An ode to a wheelbarrow?”
A deal was a deal. She watched as Dr. Capello took his pills one by one.
“Dr. Williams was a pediatrician,” he said. “He wrote that while sitting at the bedside of a dying child.” Dr. Capello blinked and in an instant tears were in his eyes. And hers.
“I never knew,” she said. “Wonder why he thought of that.”
“I’d say he was looking out the window and trying to think about anything other than the little child he couldn’t save. All doctors keep a graveyard inside their hearts for those patients. That’s why I like my view so much.” He reached out and tapped the glass of his window, which looked out onto the ocean. “It comforts me.”
“Looking at the Graveyard of the Pacific comforts you?” she asked.
“Of course it does,” he said, gazing out his window at the dark shifting waters in the near distance. “Compared to that graveyard out there, mine’s tiny. A doctor with children in his graveyard takes any comfort he can get.”