Read Online Josie and Jack by Kelly Braffet - Free Book Online

tenure I’m stuck with the ridiculous fool for the rest of my career.”
    I took a tiny sip of my vodka. “Maybe he’ll leave.”
    Raeburn’s empty glass fell to the floor. It landed on the thick carpet with a dull thud. As he bent over to pick it up, he said, “What an intelligent idea, Josephine. We’ll make a scholar of you yet.”
    “Maybe he’ll drop dead without warning,” Jack said.
    “Only if I kill him,” Raeburn said. “Not that it matters. The world’s doomed anyway. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll live through the nuclear firestorm when we blow ourselves up. Just Ben Searles and millions of mutated cockroaches.” He smiled radiantly. “That clever Margaret. Do you know what she did? She’s gone and enrolled in one of his classes. To see the devil firsthand, she says. To campaign against him from the inside. Clever little minx.” His eyes focused on me. “Sometimes, Josephine, I think I ought to bring Margaret here to meet you. You might benefit from knowing her.”
    “Oh, by all means, bring her up,” Jack said with a slow, ugly grin. “I’d love to meet her.”
    Raeburn leaned forward in his chair, his face a malevolent mixture of loathing and glee. “You, she would eat alive,” he said to Jack. “She would destroy you. She is a pragmatist. She is a logician. She has a mind far superior to any I’ve seen in years.” He poured himself another glass of vodka—the bottle was now half empty—and raised it, presumably in a toast to the incomparable Margaret Revolt. “The last student I had who showed so much promise was your mother. For all the good it did her.”
    “Mary was one of your students?” I said.
    Jack answered: “Absolutely. Flourished under his care like a hothouse flower, didn’t she, Daddy?”
    Raeburn drained half the glass at one gulp. He gave me a pitying look. “She was brilliant. Not as brilliant as she wanted to be—not as brilliant as she thought she was—but brilliant. God, when I was young I had such grand plans. Such grand plans. I was going to change the world. Tear it down and build a new one. Some help she turned out to be. I should have known about the two of you. The moment I saw you lying in your cribs. I looked deep into your eyes, and there she was, looking out at me.”
    He raised his glass. Jack’s face was expressionless.
    “We have to fight it,” Raeburn said. “Fight the idiots, the Searleses of the world, fight your crazy fucking mother who almost managed to ruin everything—” His words were beginning to slur together. “You must take advantage of this—of the world that I’ve given you. I made it, children. I made it for you.” He stared into his glass.
    When his bladder let go, we knew he was passed out for the night. Jack’s hand found mine and we left our father alone then, with the dark stain of urine spreading at his crotch. Jack led me to his room. Lit a cigarette. Took off his shirt.
    “I never knew Mary was one of his students,” I said.
    “I never told you,” he said.
     
    The first night that Jack and I were alone again, I managed to convince Kevin that it was safe for him to come around. I used the phone in the kitchen. Jack watched from the counter, his beer dangling between his legs. The windows behind him were blank with darkness and it was as if there were no world beyond the two of us in the kitchen. I had to close my eyes against him.
    “Forget Jack. I want you to come up. Jack will be fine. Everything will be fine. I want you to come,” I said again, sounding more desperate than I meant to. “I want to see you.”
    After a long pause, Kevin said, “I want to see you, too.”
    “Come up tonight.” I hung up.
    Jack jumped off the counter. “You should have told him to bring drugs. No admission without Percodan.”
    I was mixing rum and Cokes in the kitchen when I heard Kevin pull into the driveway. Jack met him at the front door and held it wide open; from the kitchen I could hear snatches of what