But when she did, any sense of intensity or criticism drove him away. He'd never explained it to her. He thought telling her when she frightened him might make him even more vulnerable. After his early years with his cousins constantly telling him how worthless he was, any hint of that in the years since made him want to run. It was the button Kate's mother pushed in him, with unpleasant results every time.
“It is mysterious,” Clarke confirmed to him about Kate. “Not so much mysterious as dark. And I don't want either Liz or Kate to know that we talked about this.
I mean that, Joe,” he said fervently on their second gin. Clarke was beginning to feel tight, and Joe was grinning a lot. He always got expansive when he drank. It took some of the pressure off him.
“So what's the dark mystery?” Joe asked with a boyish smile. He was growing ever more fond of Clarke, and always had been. He thought he was a good man. They respected each other and had from the first.
“I'm not her father, Joe,” Clarke said quietly, suddenly sober again.
He had never in thirteen years said those words. And as he looked at Joe, the younger man's smile faded as their eyes met.
“What does that mean? It doesn't make sense.” He looked worried now. He could sense something ugly lurking near.
“Liz was married before. For a long time. Nearly thirty years. We've only been married for fourteen. Feels like forever though at times,” he said with a grin and Joe laughed. But he also knew how much Clarke loved Liz.
He had to, to put up with her. “Her husband was a friend of mine, he was a good man, gentle, kind, from a great family. His brother and I went to school together, which was how I met John. He lost everything in the crash of'29, not only his own and his family's, but all of the money of the people whose investments he handled, and some of Liz's fortune as well. Fortunately, her own family had kept a tight rein on most of hers, and they were luckier than John.
Most of her money was intact after the crash. But John lost it all.” It was a story Clarke didn't want to tell, and Joe was suddenly afraid to hear. “It damn near killed him at the time. He was the most honorable man I knew, and it destroyed him on the spot. It took him two years, locked in a bedroom upstairs, sitting in the dark. He tried to drink himself to death, but it didn't work. So he shot himself in ‘31. Kate was eight when he died.
