Season of Betrayal by Margaret Lowrie Robertson

Author:Margaret Lowrie Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tatra Press
Published: 2006-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The McCauleys were unable to prevent Barrett being sent away this time, despite having successfully fended off a custodial sentence almost a year earlier, when he was accused of roughing up a liquor store clerk who refused to sell him a six-pack of Rolling Rock beer, despite his phoney ID.

Mac’s time at the juvenile offenders’ home crushed any lingering hopes the McCauleys clung to about their son’s future. When, after six months and three days, he was released, no one seemed to expect much of him, except perhaps more trouble.

Thus, it was a total surprise and complete relief to all, including Mac himself, when a small private arts college in northern Georgia sent a letter announcing his acceptance for the fall term. Only Mr. McCauley knew at what cost. But it paid off when his son further surprised everyone by seeming to settle down to college life. Oh, Mac still liked beer and girls and fast cars, but he appeared to be giving at least an equal attention to his academic requirements as well. For a change.

There was one incident the McCauleys managed more or less to hush up, involving an alleged assault upon a waitress at a café near the campus, but Mac insisted it was her drug-dealer boyfriend who broke her cheekbone and left her partially blind in one eye. He said she’d only accused him because she knew his parents were an easy touch, anxious as they were to protect the family name from further disgrace. It was true, too, the McCauleys paid child support for some years to a girl who had to leave the college in her sophomore year. This was before DNA testing but Mac refused to have even a blood test, which might’ve clarified matters because, he told me, there was no point. He already knew the child wasn’t his. If the senior McCauleys were foolish enough to get taken in again by some silly girl he’d only poked without promise a few times, well, that wasn’t his problem. He’d warned them. If they chose not to listen, if they chose to go ahead and give money to that slut, well, it was nothing to do with him, was it.

Despite these distractions, Mac somehow scraped through college, with surprisingly reasonable grades, even getting a coveted job on the school paper, where he had shown a knack for turning a phrase and finding the heart of the story where others couldn’t. In telling stories, then, Mac had found his promise. After graduation, he got a job at a real newspaper, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, thanks to one of Mr. McCauley’s cousins, who sold advertising there. He started off small, late shift on the police beat, but within a few years, Mac’s investigative work on nursing home scams won him a prestigious national prize and a job at a much bigger newspaper up north. That, in turn, led to his being hired by the magazine in New York, and, with a few stops in between, Beirut.

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