Chapter Five

~ Scotty ~

I gently wiped away a drop of soup from the corner of my father's mouth and then fed him another spoonful. It pained me to see the once robust man in this condition.

My father wasn't paralyzed, but he might as well be. His body had betrayed him. He couldn't even hold a spoon to lift it to his mouth. The stroke he'd had ten years ago had devastated his body, but I suspected his mind was as sharp as ever, even if it was fogged by the drugs the doctor prescribed for him.

It was the eyes. Although they were no longer as vibrant as they had been when I was younger, I could see his desire to speak to me when I came to visit. He just couldn't. Speech was one of the things he had lost.

"Is the soup okay?" I asked just to fill up the silence. "If it's too hot, let me know."

My father's faded grey eyes strayed to my face. His hand twitched as if he was trying to move it. I smiled as set the spoon in the bowl and then reached down to grab it. My father's grip was surprisingly strong.

Once he looked me in the face, his lips moved, but no sound came out. I knew he wanted to tell me something. I just didn't know what it was.

I leaned in closer. "What is it, Dad?" I asked softly.

His eyes darted to the far side of the room. I glanced in that direction to see his nurse watching us through the open doorway. She always watched through the doorway. I was never allowed to be alone with my father.

I made a show of wiping the corner of his mouth and then set the napkin on the nightstand next to his bed. When I looked again, the nurse had gone back to watching her soaps.

I glanced back at my dad. "What is it?" I asked again.

My dad's eyes darted to the picture frame sitting on the nightstand and then back to me. I glanced at the nurse before picking the picture up and bringing it over between the two of us.

"I can't believe how small I was here." I had to have been around two years old. My mother had still been around then so I assumed it was her taking the picture.

I kind of wished it was the other way around. I only had a couple of pictures of my mother.. Cynthia had ordered the rest of her pictures boxed up and put into storage when she married my father. I would have been happy to take them all with me when I moved out, but I had never been able to find them. I suspected she tossed them.

I frowned when my father started tapping the picture frame in a haphazard way. Thinking he wanted to see it, I turned it around. My father's lips pressed thin and he started to get agitated.

When he crooked a single finger, I brought the picture fame to within reach of his hand. He kept tugging at the top of the frame as if trying to pull it down...or turn it over.

I flipped the picture frame over and pushed it back toward my father. He tapped the small black cardboard stand attached to the back of the frame.

I shot the nurse another look to make sure she was still watching her soaps and then slid my hand over the back of the frame and the cardboard stand.

I frowned in confusion when I felt a bump under my fingertips. It was embedded in the stand part of the frame. I turned the frame on its side and peered down at it. I could see a small rise in the cardboard telling me that something was there.

I felt around some more until I discovered that the edge of the cardboard was sticking up. A gentle pull, and the back of it came off, something silver falling onto the blanket covering my father.

My eyebrows snapped together when I picked it up and realized that it was a key. The name of a bank was engraved on the side of it. It wasn't the bank our family used.

"Dad—"

My father's hand trembled as he worked diligently to close my fingers around the key. When I figured out what he was trying to do, I closed my hand in a fist.

My father let out a breath as he patted me before resting his hand on my fist. He started mumbling something. I pressed the back of the cardboard stand into place and set the picture frame back in the same place I had gotten it from before leaning toward my father.

"Tell me, Dad."

I didn't like the tears that came to my father's eyes when he mumbled. It felt like a dagger stabbing me in the heart. I knew he was trying to tell me something important. He was struggling so hard.

"Don't try to speak," I whispered in case the nurse was listening. "Can you slowly move your lips and mouth to say what you want to say?"

I watched intently as my dad slowly moved his lips, forming words that I could understand. He tapped his chest right over his heart. "Love you. Go. Run."

Now, I had tears in my eyes. "I won't leave you."

Spittle came out of his mouth when he grunted and mouthed, "Go!"

"I'm not leaving you. I'll figure out some way to get you out of here." I refused to leave my father behind. He was the only one I had left in the world, or was he?

"Dad, listen to me." I slid the key into my pocket and then grabbed my dad's hand with both of mine. "I met someone. We've been dating for about two months now. He knows about you. He'll help me."

My father knew I was gay so I had no problem telling him about Beck. He'd been the first person I told when I figured it out I liked guys and not girls. There had been no hesitation on his part as he accepted that bit of life altering news.

"I just need you to hang on until we come up with a plan."

My father squeezed my hand.

I squeezed back and then reached for the bowl of soup. I started feeding him again, and just in time, too. Two spoonfuls in and I heard the nurse walking into the room.

"He's eating well today." I smiled up at her when she walked to the other side of the bed. "We're almost done."

I grabbed the napkin and wiped his face again.

The nurse took my dad's vitals as I finished feeding him. Once I was done, I set the bowl on the nightstand and then leaned in to press a kiss to my father's cheek.

"I need to get going, Dad. I still have a few things to do to get ready for work tomorrow."

The nurse walked away as I was talking to him, but she was back a moment later with a glass of water and a small white paper container with two pills.

"It's time for his medication," she said.

God, I hated her voice. It was so monotone. There was no inflection in it at all. If I didn't know better, I would have suspected that she was a robot.

My father was already sitting up because I'd been feeding him. I simply sat there as the nurse tipped the white container to my father's lips and then held the glass of water to his mouth so he could swallow the pills down.

As soon as she walked away, my father spit out the two pills. My eyes widened for just a moment before I grabbed the napkin off the nightstand and wrapped the two pills up in it. I stuck the wadded up napkin in my pocket along with the key.

"You get some rest and I'll be back to see you next Sunday," I said in a louder voice. "I love you."

My dad patted my hand again. I think he did it to remind me about the key, but also to tell me he loved me, too.

I got up and started for the door. I hated leaving, but I was only allowed a couple of hours with him each visit and I had used those up.

"Mrs. Prescott requested that you stop by the study before you leave."

Damn. I had almost made it out.

"Thank you," I told the nurse, wishing I could ignore the woman's words, but I knew if I did, Cynthia wouldn't let me see my father next Sunday.

I made my way down to the first floor and then headed for what used to be my father's study and Cynthia now called hers. Anxiousness was a swirl of knots in my gut.

I was a little worried about what Cynthia wanted to see me about. As far as I knew, there were no cameras in my father's room, so she couldn't know about the key. Unless the nurse saw us.

My palms started to sweat when I reached the study door. I quickly wiped them on my pant legs and then knocked on the door. When I heard a voice from the other side, I pushed the door opened and stepped inside.

The room used to be decorated in rich mahogany tones, brown leather furniture, a large framed painting of my parents hanging over the fireplace. That had all been replaced by glass and chrome and a picture of Cynthia.

What a narcissist.

"You wanted to see me?"

Cynthia glanced up from her laptop. "What? No greeting for your dear mother?"

Stepmother.

"Good afternoon, Cynthia." I plastered a fake smile on my face and clasped my hands behind my back so she couldn't see them ball into fists. "It's good to see you."

We both knew I was lying.

"I have some friends coming to dinner next Sunday."

Anger surrounded me like a red cloud. "Sundays are my day to visit Dad."

"And you may, but you will be attending the dinner. They want to meet the son of Jonathan Prescott." Her lip curled back as she looked me up and down. "I'll expect you to dress nicer than this. A tuxedo wouldn't be amiss."

I knew better than to argue with the woman. She had me by the balls and we both knew it. If she said jump, I didn't even ask how high. I just jumped. Until I could get my father away from her, it had to be that way.

"Dinner is at seven," Cynthia continued. "Be on time."

When she went back to looking at her computer, I knew I had been dismissed. I wasn't exactly against that gesture simply because I wanted to get away from the woman before I opened my mouth and said something that would get me banned from ever seeing my father again.

If she wasn't married to my father and didn't have his power-of-attorney, I'd tell her what she could do with her high-handed attitude.

What was curious was why I was being ordered to attend a dinner party at the house. Usually, when something like that went on, I was warned to be nowhere near the place. Not that I wanted to meet her friends. Cynthia and I definitely did not socialize with the same people.

Man, Beck was going to flip when I told him about my day. I usually tried to avoid seeing him on days I went to visit my father because I was always a mess by the time I got home. My pain at leaving my father and my anger at Cynthia for forcing me to leave my father warred against each other every damn time.

As soon as I got into my car, I pulled my cell phone out and put it in the window holder. I waited until I was on the road before dialing Beck. My car wasn't exactly a new model, but at least it had built-in Bluetooth.

"Hey," Beck said when he answered, "I wasn't expecting to hear from you today. I thought we were going to touch base when we had lunch together tomorrow."

"Yeah, my day went sideways so I thought I'd call."

"Sideways how?" Beck asked.

"Well, it kind of started when I was feeding my dad his lunch. He seemed a little bit more aware today than he usually is. Less foggy, I guess."

"Okay, is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"So, what happened?"

"That's the weird thing. He started gesturing to the picture of him and me that he keeps on his nightstand. I thought he wanted to see it, you know? But when I grabbed it, he had me look at the back of the frame. There was a key hidden in the back of the frame."

"A key?"

"Yeah, it's to some bank. Not the one we've always used, though, which is weird. He told me he loved me and then he ordered me to run."

"I thought he couldn't talk."

"He kind of can't, but I understood him anyway."

"Okay, if it's a key to a bank, it's probably to a safety deposit box."

Yeah, I figured.

"That wasn't the end of the weirdness."

"There's more?" The astonishment was clear in Beck's voice.

"When I was getting ready to leave, my father's care nurse told me Cynthia wanted to talk to me."

"Oh, no."

"It's nothing bad." I think. "Just weird."

"What did she want?"

"I've been ordered to go to the house next Sunday in a tux for a dinner party Cynthia is planning."

"Next Sunday?" Beck's voice went a little high. "I don't suppose dinner is at seven o'clock, is it?"

I frowned as I took my eyes off the road for just a moment to stare at my phone. "Yeah, it is. How did you know?"

"This could just be a coincidence, but my father called today and ordered me to be dressed in a tux so that I could go with him and my sister to attend a dinner with one of his friends. Julia even hunted me down and reminded me and told me to behave myself."

"Do either of them know Cynthia?" I wondered out loud.

"Couldn't tell you, man."

"So, either both of us are going to be having dinner with our families next Sunday or with each other and our families."

No pressure there.

"We'll have to pretend like we don't know each other."

"Actually," I said as an idea hit me, "

let's pretend like we've met through the bar."

"We did," Beck reminded me.

"No, I know. I just meant if they suspect that we might know each other, let them. We just can't let them know how well we know each other. You're simply my bartender and I am a customer."

"That might work better."

"I just hope the night isn't a complete cluster-fuck." Pretty sure it was too late for that, and Sunday hadn't even gotten here yet.

I was not looking forward to this.