Free Third Strike by Zoe Sharp

apology “—came up clean. What the hell happened over the last six months?”
    “I’m as amazed by his behavior as anyone else,” I said. “I dread to think how my mother’s going to react when …”
    My voice trailed off slowly before I could finish. I felt three pairs of eyes swivel in my direction but I didn’t see them. My sight had turned inwards, riffling through the disordered filing cabinet of memories and senses.
    “If you feel anything for your mother, Charlotte,” my father had said, “then just leave me here and go before it’s too late.”
    “Oh my God,” I murmured. “My mother …”
    “Do you think your mom even knows what’s happening?” Parker asked, not quite catching it. “If she doesn’t, then I don’t envy you the task of telling her what her husband’s been up to.”
    “No,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s trying to protect her.”
    “Oh, yeah, of course,” Bill said, unable to maintain his silence any longer. He threw up his one remaining hand in frustration and I saw his other shoulder hunch as the ghost of his amputated arm tried to join the party. “Okay, so this guy got caught with his pants down, but, hey, that’s okay because he’s ‘trying to protect her.’” The sarcasm overflowed to the point where it dripped. “How the hell do you figure that?”
    “No matter what I, personally, might think of my father,” I said, pinning him with a fierce gaze, “I happen to know he’s a brilliant surgeon. And you know what makes him so bloody good at his job? It’s because he’s put whatever classifies as his heart and his soul into what he does for more than thirty years. I find it very hard—no, make that impossible—to believe he’d just throw all that away for the chance of a cut-price lay.”
    “People change,” Parker pointed out. “They have … breakdowns, crises, or they simply burn out. Ever considered that?”
    It was Sean who shook his head. “To burn out professionally you have to have some kind of emotional overinvestment in your work, and Richard Foxcroft’s a very cold fish,” he said. “But I would say that he does care about his wife—very much so.” He glanced sideways at me. “And his daughter.”
    I gave a bitter, incredulous bark of laughter. “Well, he’s got a bloody funny way of showing it.”
    “You didn’t see how he was, Charlie,” he said softly. “Back in February, when you were shot. He might have a bloody funny way of showing it, but he cares all right. I never thought I’d hear myself standing up for the bloke, considering he hates my guts, but don’t kid yourself that he doesn’t care about you.”
    “So much so that he tells me I’m a useless cripple,” I shot back, disregarding our current audience, feeling my lip begin to curl. “Yeah, right, how stupid of me! How could I possibly have mistaken that for anything except paternal affection? And then we find him about to screw an underage prostitute. What are you saying—that perhaps my mother bought it for him as a wedding anniversary present?”
    “Guys, guys,” Parker murmured, eyes flitting from one to the other. “Uh, can we get back to the matter at hand here?”
    “This is the matter at hand,” Sean said, and his face was as cold as his tone now and his eyes were very dark, as close to black as anyone I’ve ever met. All I could see in them was my own reflection and, from what I could read of it, I was flustered and angry and defensive. It wasn’t a good look for me.
    “The whole reason you went to see your father yesterday morning, Charlie, was because you knew he’d lied to you the day before,” Sean said patiently, spelling it out. “But his behavior goes against everything you know of the man. Why are you so quick to believe the worst of him?”
    The silence that followed his question lasted only around four seconds, but it passed like a slow decade.
    “Maybe,” I said, low, “it’s because he’s always been so quick to believe