Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

He wouldn’t be welcome to visit following the birth of their baby, and if he had the gall to send the child a present then or later, it would be returned. Stay out of my life, Dad. This time you’ve gone too far to forgive. There are undoubtedly diplomatic ways of handling an offended child, some wise and some crafty. . but ask yourself this: would a diplomatic father have gotten himself into such a situation to begin with? Would a man with even minimal insight into human nature have offered his son’s fiancee a bounty (one so enormous it probably had little real sense or meaning to her) to give up her firstborn child? And he’d offered this devil’s bargain to a girl-woman of seventeen, an age when the romantic view of life is at absolute high tide. If nothing else, Devore should have waited awhile before making his final offer.

You could argue that he didn’t know if he had awhile, but it wouldn’t be a persuasive argument. I thought Mattie was right—deep in that wrinkled old prune which served him as a heart, Max Devore thought he was going to live forever. In the end, he hadn’t been able to restrain himself.

There was the sled he wanted, the sled he just had to have, on the other side of the window. All he had to do was break the glass and take it.

He’d been doing it all his life, and so he had reacted to his son’s e-mail not craftily, as a man of his years and abilities should have done, but furiously, as the child would have done if the glass in the shed window had proved immune to his hammering fists. Lance didn’t want him meddling? Fine! Lance could live with his backwoods Daisy Mae in a tent or a trailer or a goddamned cowbarn. He could give up the cushy surveying job, as well, and find real employment. See how the other half lived! In other words, you can’t quit on me, son. You’re fired. “We didn’t fall into each other’s arms at the funeral,” Mattie said, “don’t get that idea. But he was decent to me—which I didn’t expect—and I tried to be decent to him. He offered me a stipend, which I refused. I was afraid there might be legal ramifications.”

“I doubt it, but I like your caution. What happened when he saw Kyra for the first time, Mattie?

Do you remember?”

“I’ll never forget it.” She reached into the pocket of her dress, found a battered pack of cigarettes, and shook one out. She looked at it with a mixture of greed and disgust. “I quit these because Lance said we couldn’t really afford them, and I knew he was right. But the habit creeps back. I only smoke a pack a week, and I know damned well even that’s too much, but sometimes I need the comfort. Do you want one?” I shook my head.