Free The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel by Patry Francis Page A

“I should probably get back. I left a ton of work at the office.”
    “You can’t leave now. Maria will be offended if you don’t sit for a few minutes.” Gus patted the stone like it was a couch in his living room. “ ‘What can I get you to drink?’ she’d say. She was like that. Traditional mom, you know?”
    He pulled the pint of Jack Daniels from his pocket. “Sorry I don’t have a glass. Mom would have made sure you had some ice, too.”
    “I kind of doubt she would have served me that either,” Hallie said. She waved away the bottle, as she sat beside him on the stone. Even half-drunk and sitting on his mother’s grave, Gus Silva was so handsome, she felt dizzy.
    “Always the doctor’s good little girl, right?” he said and shrugged. “I guess that means there’s more for me.” He took a long pull from the bottle.
    Hallie cringed at the image she’d been trying to live down all her life. The girl genius. Dr. Nick’s perfect daughter.
    “Not as good as you think,” she said, taking the cigarette from his hand. She dragged the smoke into her lungs. Nick would have been more shocked and angered by the smoking than if he’d caught her drinking whiskey with Codfish Silva’s son. On his mother’s grave, no less.
    The cigarette tasted of nicotine, but also of something else. It took a minute before Hallie realized it was Gus himself. It reminded her of the scent that had followed her into the foyer, and trailed her home on the night of Neil’s play. She inhaled deeply, and began to cough.
    Gus laughed, extending the bottle in her direction. “Now you have no choice. You have to accept my hospitality.”
    “I think one new vice is enough for today.”
    “Come on. Please?”
    Hallie laughed. “Why do you care? Like you said, if I don’t have any, there’s more for you.”
    But Gus remained serious. “If we both drink, it will be easier to tell the truth, and I want us to tell each other everything. Even the stuff we never told anyone else.”
    Holding his eyes, she accepted the bottle of whiskey. Then she threw back her head like he had when he drank. Her throat burned, and her eyes watered.
    “ Jesucristo! ” she yelled. “That’s worse than smoking! Are you trying to kill me?” But even as she jumped up and shouted, she was reaching for the cigarette from Gus’s mouth.
    “I’d slit my wrists before I ever hurt you,” he said. “I hope you know that.” Then he undermined his seriousness with a loud hiccup.
    “I didn’t mean . . . I never thought—” she stammered, wondering how she could have been so insensitive. She sat back down on the stone, so close she could see the amber flecks in Gus’s dark eyes. She’d only had one gulp of alcohol but she felt intoxicated.
    “I know,” Gus said, putting a finger to her lips. “But I do mean it. All my life, my biggest fear was that I would grow up to be like him. And I wasn’t the only one. Whenever I went to New Bedford, I could see it in her family’s eyes. They loved me; I was all they had left of my mother. But they couldn’t look at me without seeing the man who killed her. Eventually, I gave us all a break and stopped going.”
    “I don’t see much of my mom’s family, either,” Hallie said, passing the cigarette back to him. “Not since my grandmother told Nick he should put me in boarding school where I would be properly cared for. They never thought he was good enough, you know? Even with a Harvard education and his medical degree, he was too Provincetown, too eccentric—and probably too Portagee , too. They couldn’t believe their debutante daughter had married a fisherman’s son.”
    “Their loss, right?” Gus said. They fell into a strangely comfortable silence as they looked out on the landscape of carved stones.
    “Do you still miss her?” Hallie finally asked.
    “Not like I did when I was a kid, but yeah, I miss her. You know what scares me? There’s so much I already forgot. And if I don’t