Read Online Written in Time by Jerry Ahern - Free Book Online Page B

family of the past.  
    Jack leaned against the kitchen counter, next to his ashtray. He passed the second envelope over to David, then returned to his ashtray. “Check out what’s inside, son. Pass things around.”  
    “No. I was just going to stare at the envelope, Dad.”  
    “There’s no reason to get pissed off,” Jack told him. “Well, maybe there is, but wait until you’ve looked at all the new stuff, and then get pissed off. No sense doing it twice.”  
    Elizabeth and Clarence were studying the Xerox from the first envelope. “Dammit!” Clarence exclaimed. “This is some kind of nutball jerking you guys around.”  
    Ellen kept her voice calm. “When Jack and I did that book where we had this guy framed by his boss to look like a Russian spy? I did a lot of research about altering photographs. If these photographs were faked, they were done on equipment beyond state-of-the-art. And look at Jack’s holster.” Jack had obviously planned to mention the holster as well, because he disappeared into the hallway for a moment and returned with the black Hollywood rig, his pet Colt Single Action Army in the holster. “It’s empty, right?” Ellen asked perfunctorily. Jack carried a gun almost every day of his life and he never passed around a gun that was loaded.  
    “Yeah, but show everybody.”  
    Humoring her husband, Ellen removed the gun from the holster and opened the loading gate “C-o-l-t, right?” Ellen asked.  
    “Stop after you hear the O,” Jack said.  
    Ellen drew the hammer back to the second click, spun the cylinder—empty as promised—drew the hammer back the rest of the way and lowered it, closed the loading gate and returned the gun to the holster, placing the loop over the hammer. “Look at the holster in the Xerox, Clarence, and look at the holster on the table.”  
    “Want me to get my hat?” Jack asked.  
    “We get the idea, Daddy.” Elizabeth was taking the photos from the second envelope as quickly as David passed them to her.  
    Ellen studied her son’s face for a moment, not liking the expression that she saw. David had inherited bullheadedness from her side of the family, and David was not going to choose to believe this, no matter what he saw.  
    “This is a load of crap,” David announced as if on cue. “You’ve had that holster in a bunch of your gun articles, the single action, too. Somebody could have lifted the image, maybe.”  
    “I don’t think so, Davey,” Ellen announced.  
    “You didn’t really make a dessert,” David said, getting up so suddenly that his chair almost fell over. “This is just to keep us from wanting one.” He stormed out of the room. If she hadn’t known better—and maybe she didn’t know better at all—she might have thought that David was fighting to hold back tears.  
    “I’ll go after him,” Jack said, starting for the hallway.  
    “No! I’ll go after him, because maybe all David wants right now is to be left alone, not reasoned with.” Ellen pushed past her husband and ran down the hallway toward the front door. She half expected to hear the Saab starting up, or screeching out of the driveway, but as she reached the front porch, she saw the glow of a cigarette from the darkness.  
    Always more than a little night-blind, with great care she ventured out onto the darkened front porch. There were flashes of lightning in the clouds off to her left, and from behind the house. The storms were supposed to come in from the west and start to swing north. As yet, there was no thunder.  
    “It’s still far away,” David said, his voice sounding a little strained.  
    “You got another one of those cigarettes?”  
    “You quit years ago, remember?”  
    “Every once in a while, I take a drag on one of your father’s cigarettes.”  
    “It’s a Marlboro, not a Camel.”  
    Ellen Naile heard the first distant rumble of thunder. “Give it to me, and I’ll break the filter off.”  
    David shook