Old Sins by Penny Vincenzi

Author:Penny Vincenzi [Penny Vincenzi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409066217
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2008-02-06T16:00:00+00:00

The Connection Nine

Los Angeles, 1982

FATHER KENNEDY WAS having serious problems with his conscience. Mrs Kelly had made it perfectly plain to him that she didn’t want anyone knowing where she and Miles were going; indeed had entrusted him with the information under pain of great secrecy. It was essential for several reasons, she had said, that nobody knew; the police might come inquiring for Miles, those no-good friends of his from the beach might want to find him; and kind as Mr Dashwood was, she didn’t really want him knowing either. If she and Miles were to make a clean start, then she didn’t want him turning up, upsetting Miles, interfering. She felt bad about it in a way; on the other hand, she did feel, as she had confided to Father Kennedy more than once, that he could have done more to help, that he was just being plain stubborn now, digging his heels in as hard and as awkwardly as Miles, only Miles was little more than a child, and Mr Dashwood was old enough to know better. It could have made all the difference in the world to Miles, and his future, had he given him a job in his company, and it wouldn’t have hurt any. Sometimes, she had said, she wondered if Miles wasn’t right, and Mr Dashwood wasn’t a little ashamed of him – and of her, as well.

Father Kennedy, having the advantage – or maybe the disadvantage – of knowing rather more about Hugo Dashwood and his relationship to Miles than Mrs Kelly, or indeed anyone else in the world, he imagined, found it very hard to understand why the man wouldn’t help his own son; he had often thought about the puzzle over the years; ever since Miles had graduated so well and then wasted himself. Obviously it would be very damaging for the boy, even when he was grown up, to learn that his mother had had a sexual relationship with another man, and that the father he had been so fond of had not been his father at all. It would inevitably lead to the painful realization that the reason for his father’s suicide had been his mother’s adultery; the whole story was obviously much best kept untold. Especially as Miles disliked Hugo Dashwood so much. That was a sad thing, under the circumstances.

But on the other hand, that should not keep the man from giving Miles a job; he was clearly fond of him, proud of him, and besides, a man did not put a boy through college if he was ashamed of him, didn’t like him. He was as good as the boy’s guardian; why should he persist in this strange, stubborn attitude?

Father Kennedy could see all too clearly why the poor souls at his refuge should behave badly, refuse to help themselves, let alone others, but he could not see why a man who clearly had more than his fair share of the world’s bounty in the palm of his hand should not pass a little of it on to his own flesh and blood.

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