Listen to the Lambs by Daniel Black

Author:Daniel Black
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781466890664
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Chapter 22

Doubt dwarfs imagination. It eats away at ideas from the inside out, leaving only hollow possibilities and vague notions of once-revolutionary thoughts. This The Comforter discovered as she wrote the note to connect, or reconnect, the third and fourth Lazaruses. Finding the boy hadn’t been difficult—how many Lazarus Loves could there be?—but choosing what to write, what might move son closer to father, proved nerve-racking. Sometimes words sat on the page lazily, doing no work at all, and other times the tone droned along with absolutely no power to heal. Never the two in transformative harmony. Countless drafts forced her to settle upon Your father’s in trouble. Only you can save him. He needs you now. And he’s sorry. The final sentence she added as an afterthought, an invitation to mend a breach borne far too long. She’d left it in his mailbox, at 2412 Windsor Street in Buckhead. He’d bought the house not because he liked it, but because he believed, in his venomous heart, that it insulted a father who’d left him with nothing. Too angry to love, Quad found himself alone with Hatred as his only companion. Occasionally Lizzie brought the kids by, a boy and a girl, who adored their uncle’s grumpy though playful nature, but, otherwise, he brooded in silence, unable to purge what his mother promised would one day kill him.

The note lay folded in a business envelope with Quad’s name drawn in calligraphic letters across the front. That’s what caught his attention, the remarkable penmanship, written in a style so ancient it appeared out of time. When he read the words, he didn’t shudder or curse. He simply smirked and returned the note to the envelope. But he couldn’t forget it. All day, he extracted it and read it again and again, as if the next read might miraculously say something different. By nightfall, his spirit was totally consumed with his father’s future. He’d dreamed for years of beating the bastard, of screaming in his face about all the pain he’d carried, but now all Quad wanted was for the man to be all right. Quad cursed himself for being unable to hate him. “Shit!” he mumbled all night until, staring at the rising sun, he, too, rose and received the invitation to a new life.

He knew where his father was. Quad had read the paper and seen news blasts. He also knew his father hadn’t written the note. Lazarus’s penmanship was awkward and unsure, like that of a child just learning to write. Still, Quad felt the urgency, the fullness of his father’s need, so he knew the note represented the man’s heartfelt sentiment. But after all these years, why didn’t he simply let things be? Quad had found a groove, a comfortable rut, a deep hole in which to dwell, and, for all intents and purposes, this note had come to destroy it. He’d channeled Hatred into a tailored suit and worn it, whether out or at home, until it became his everyday attire.

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