Читать книгу Family Reunion - Peg Sutherland - Страница 10

CHAPTER FOUR

RAYMOND LYON suppressed a belch.

The food at Chez Charles always gave him heartburn, but he didn’t complain about it much. Maybe there was no such thing as a free lunch for the rest of the world, but the rules were a little different when your father owned the joint.

“We oughtta fix this place up, hire somebody who can actually cook, when the old man croaks,” Ray said.

He watched his older brother wipe his fingers on a white linen napkin and screw up his face as if he smelled something bad. Alain was like the old man in that way, always acting as if he was above the rest of them. Ray supposed it ran in the family; most of the Lyons seemed to behave that way.

“Have a modicum of class, why don’t you, Raymond.”

Alain’s hoity-toity attitude ticked Ray off. He decided to bring up the one topic that would upset his brother. “I moved the old lady again.”

Alain glanced around. He had a full head of hair, touched with silver at the temples, the perfect hint of dignity for a man pushing fifty, whereas Raymond, who wasn’t even forty yet, already had a hole in his haircut, right at the crown of his head. Life wasn’t fair.

“Not here,” Alain said.

Ray ignored him. “To Arkansas. Close enough to keep an eye on her.”

“How is she?”

Ray shrugged. “Old. How good can she be? You know, she could kick any time. And that might not be a bad—”

“She’d better not,” Alain said with the authoritarian tone that always made Ray want to do just the opposite.

“Might simplify things.”

“And it might blow up in somebody’s face.”

Ray knew what that meant. Somebody’s face, as in not Alain’s. Alain was in this up to his prissy red suspenders, but Ray knew that the smoking gun would lead right back to him, and only him, if their little scheme was ever uncovered. Damn. Alain was wily. Slick. And Ray was just the stupid kid brother, the way it had always been.