Ben filled in the blanks. He had heard it often enough before. Older man, younger woman. The combination rarely yielded satisfactory results. According to his mother, that was why his own father had left. In pursuit of youth. In this case, youth had a name. Claudia Gershon. Ben had a half brother named Jason who was half his age. For his father, things had worked out. Obviously, for McNair it hadn’t.
“Go on,” he encouraged when McNair continued to remain silent.
The older man shrugged. “You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. Older man trying to hang on to his youth, beautiful young woman bringing it to him in a gift-wrapped box.” There was a faraway look in his eyes as he spoke.
The man had gotten it bad, Ben thought. He thought of his own mother. “And how did Mrs. McNair feel about you hanging on to your youth? Or Gloria’s,” he amended wryly.
McNair’s eyes went flat as he regarded him. “She didn’t feel anything.”
“And why is that?” Ben was playing devil’s advocate, but there was something a little too pat about the man sitting before him. He seemed a little too held together. Ben was used to people coming unraveled under the pressure of the crisis they were enduring. This man looked annoyed, nothing more. Fathers didn’t look annoyed or inconvenienced when their sons were taken—they looked angry. Distraught, capable of mayhem themselves. On occasion, they looked lost. But not annoyed.
He wanted to get to the bottom of Stephen McNair.
“Because there is no Mrs. McNair.” The annoyance deepened as McNair moved to the edge of his seat. “Look, I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. I’m rather new at this father business. Andrew is the result of a liaison I had with a young woman seven years ago. One of those flash-and-fire things. The whole thing lasted perhaps three weeks, perhaps less. I hadn’t heard from her since. She died nine months ago, leaving me a letter and the boy. Both came to me via her lawyer. I had some lab tests done, DNA, that sort of thing, and the results were conclusive. Andrew was mine. Naturally, I saw him as my responsibility.”
“Naturally.”
McNair stopped, narrowing his eyes. “Are you mocking me?”
Ben straightened, all business. His remark had been a slip. “I’m not here to mock, Mr. McNair, or to sit in judgment. My only function is to help. I’m sorry if I gave you any other impression.” He was going to have to work on his poker face, Ben thought.
“Look, I’m sorry if I don’t live up to your expectations of the grieving father. It’s not easy for me to show my emotions. But make no mistake about it, I am worried about my son and I want him back.”
Ben nodded. “You were saying about Gloria…”
Scrubbing a well-manicured hand over his face, McNair sighed and continued. “I was completely besotted with her for several months.”
Besotted. Now, there was a word he didn’t run into every day, Ben thought. But somehow, coming from McNair, it seemed to fit the narrative. “What happened after several months?”
“I came to my senses. Realized that a man in my position—responsible for the livelihood of so many people—couldn’t continue behaving like some smitten adolescent. I tried to let her down as gently as possible, make her see reason.” McNair looked at Ben to see if he understood the awkward position he’d been in. “Unfortunately, Gloria didn’t choose to be reasonable about it. I don’t think she really cared about me as much as she did about the money. I think she thought I was going to marry her.”
“And you weren’t.” Ben waited for him to continue.
He shook his head. “She wasn’t wife material.” His expression became superior. “Gloria became very possessive, flying into jealous rages when she thought that I was seeing someone else.”
Ben was undecided whether the man thought himself to be a much-abused saint, or was only trying to present himself as one. “And were you?”
“No.” The response was indignant. “And whether I was seeing someone or not is not the point.”
“No, but everything is a piece of this puzzle. In the interest of brevity, why don’t you shorten the story for the time being. Why did Gloria suddenly kidnap your son? Why now, rather than last month or next week?”
“Because I officially broke off our relationship in no uncertain terms last Thursday.”
“Thursday,” Ben echoed.
“I see why you might need a recorder,” McNair commented impatiently. “Yes, Thursday. I told her I couldn’t have a woman stalking my every move no matter how beautiful she was.”
Ben toyed with the carved paperweight one of his sisters had made for him when she was twelve as he played with logistics in his head. “What did she do with Andrew while she was stalking you?”
The question took McNair aback for a moment before he responded. “She had him with her.” He continued with his narrative, impatient to be done with it. “Of course, I took total responsibility for the affair even though she was the one who seduced me, and I offered her quite a sizable severance package to tide her over until she found another position. After all, I wasn’t heartless.”
Ben wondered if Stephen McNair actually saw himself as benevolent and blame-free. “But that didn’t fly with her.”
“No, it didn’t ‘fly.’” McNair wrapped his tongue around the word disdainfully. “When I came home two nights ago from a business trip to Washington, D.C., I found that Gloria was gone and she’d taken Andrew with her.”
“Did she leave a note?”
The question caught McNair off guard. “No.”
“Then you just assumed she’d kidnapped Andrew.”
“She was gone, he was gone, her clothes were gone. I came to the logical conclusion.” He paused as if debating something, or hunting through the photographic memory he’d boasted of. “And she’d threatened me earlier.”
“Threatened?” Ben said, instantly alert. “What kind of a threat?”
“She said she’d take Andrew away where I could never find him if I didn’t marry her. That she was going to make me pay for what I ‘did’ to her.”
He supposed if the woman was being completely irrational, she might forget to write a note, although in his experience, writing a note would have added to the drama. Perhaps twisted the knife in a little harder. A woman making a dramatic statement wasn’t apt to overlook writing a note.
But this woman hadn’t. The minor point bothered Ben.
Something else was bothering him, too. Ben looked at the other man. “And you waited almost five days before reporting this to anyone?”
It was an outright challenge and Ben half expected McNair to explode. Instead, the man looked contrite. “I was hoping that she was just angry. That she’d return him. I wanted to spare her being arrested if it was at all possible. I still do. You might have trouble understanding this because you’re still young and not in my position, but I find I still have some residual feelings regarding Gloria.”
For
