Adam Drake stared at the ocean from a window seat in their favorite restaurant. Kay had been gone a year, but the memory of her laughing, sitting across the table from him was as vivid as a beautiful hologram. If only they had found a cure, or her chemo had worked, he would still be holding her hand. Still be looking forward to every minute he got to spend with her.
That kind of magical thinking didn’t help. The reality was, she was in pain and now she wasn’t. The pain was now his. She was dead. He wasn’t. The Bible might say there’s no greater love than laying down your life for a friend, but what it doesn’t say is the greatest pain comes when you can’t. Especially when the friend is your wife.
He could not believe it had been a year. Every day of it had been a miserable, aching, lonely waste and drinking too much hadn’t numbed the pain. It just left him with sleepless nights, thinking of their three short years together. All he had was one whirlwind year courting the most beautiful girl in Oregon, one happy year still in shock she said yes, then one long year watching her succumb to cancer.
“Mr. Drake, you have a phone call, sir,” said Joyce, the Tidal Rave’s dining room manager, touching him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m sorry for intruding, but he said it was an emergency.”
Drake got up and followed her past the window tables and booths to the front desk. How had someone found him? He hadn’t known where he was going when he took the day off.
“Drake here.”
“Adam, I’m sorry to bother you,” his father-in-law said, “but I need your help.”
Senator Hazelton, a four-term United States Senator from Oregon, rarely needed anyone’s help and had never asked for his. Coming on the anniversary of his daughter’s death, Drake suspected the Senator, or more likely his wife Meredith, was making sure he was all right.
“How’d you find me?”
“As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, there are some perks. I tracked you by satellite,” Senator Hazelton said dryly.
Some perks, Drake thought.
“I know you don’t want to think about business right now, but I need a favor. A friend of mine could use some legal help. I can’t think of anyone better than you to help him.”
Drake was now certain his mother-in-law’s concern had prompted the call. The Senator knew top lawyers in Portland, Washington D.C., and the country, for that matter. He didn’t need Drake’s legal talents to help a friend, even when he was at the top of his game, which he hadn’t been for the last year.
“My friend’s company is handling some important research for us,” the Senator continued. “His secretary was killed in his office last night and aside from the tragedy of it all, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. You’ve prosecuted complicated cases like this where corporate theft may be involved. Would you give him a hand, act as a consultant, and guide him through this?”
So that was it. A supporter was in a mess at an unfortunate time, and the Senator owed him a favor. True, Drake had handled some big trade secret cases in the D.A.’s office as the lead felony prosecutor.
“Senator, I don’t think I can help you. I’m just not ready to take on a case like this right now,” Drake said.
Senator Hazelton hadn’t seen him in six or seven months. If he had, there was no way in the world he would ask him for help. Dark bags under his eyes, a puffy face, he looked haggard and felt like a fighter too tired to come out of his corner for the next round.
“Adam, I need you on this one. There are reasons I can’t discuss over the phone. I need someone I can trust.”
There was more to this than just walking a constituent through some crisis, Drake thought.
“All right, Sir. Tell your friend I’ll call him tomorrow when I get back to town.”
“Actually, I invited him to come over tonight. Could you be here by seven? We’ll have dinner. Meredith has been asking when we’ll see you.”
“Okay, I’ll try to be there by seven,” Drake said and ended the call.
He knew he couldn’t put off seeing Kay’s parents forever. Tonight was as good a night as any to get the meeting behind him. They lost a daughter, he recognized that, but hugs and kisses weren’t going to help him sleep through the night, or make anything matter again.
Drake walked back to his table to finish his coffee. His father-in-law was used to getting his way, in politics and life in general, but he never interfered in his life. He appreciated that. If the Senator wanted his help now, he’d get it, whether it was politics or his mother-in-law asking to see him. Either way, it didn’t matter. They were all that was left of his family, and he’d do what he could.
Drake’s father died in Vietnam on his second tour, wearing a green beret. Aside from the legend that went with his Distinguished Service Cross, Drake only knew his father from his mother’s stories. She raised him as a single mom, working as an emergency room nurse, until she died in a car accident caused by a drunken teenager. He’d been a sophomore in college then. There was no other family, and he’d been on his own after that, until Kay.