Thanks for your interest and feedback! And yes, Don's harsh reaction will be relativated in the following chapter(s).
Please enjoy!
3 – CHAPTER THREE – 1.442³
Mr Eppes entered the living room with two bottles of beer and handed one of them to his son. "By the way, have you seen Charlie?"
"Charlie? Er, yeah… He told me he might be working late today." Don took the bottle of beer, but didn't touch its contents. He was sick. A queasy feeling had been spreading through his stomach. Perhaps it was his conscience?
Charlie had deserved it, however. He'd certainly been out of order. How the hell had it entered into his mind to work on this mob case together with the first lawyer who'd come along? And against him, Don, against his own brother? Of course Charlie had deserved one in the eye for this. He had to realize that he, in no uncertain way, had to keep his hands off this mafia case!
And besides, Don hadn't really done anything bad. You could still pump the tires up again. Don still had the valves. All that could be fixed. It wasn't as if he had damaged anything. However, what he had said in Larry's office… what had he said again? Don remembered only dimly, as if the whole thing had simply been an ugly nightmare. At any rate, there'd been harsh things said; things he hadn't meant that way…
Heavens, what had gotten into him? How had he been able to attack Charlie like that, Charlie, his baby-brother? What was going on with him recently?
It's this silly case, Don thought defiantly, nearly desperately. They finally had to stop this mafia group before something terrible would happen. And if Charlie was now getting involved… Oh no, anything but that! How would Don get a moment's peace then?
"Is everything alright between you two?" Alan's voice brought him back into the here and now.
Don decided to lie, completely spontaneously. If their father now started to get involved too, that would just make the whole thing more complicated. "Of course it is. Why?" Surely his father hadn't noticed how irritated Don had come in, right?
"I don't know. I only thought…" Alan didn't finish his sentence. "Well, I'm going to bed then. You're staying overnight?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm staying."
For this decision, Don had needed less spontaneity. He would wait for Charlie. And this time, he wouldn't let Charlie run away like his brother always did. Don had to talk to him and to apologise. He knew it even though he also knew that Charlie was in the wrong. They had to dispose of this thing once and for all. It had never been a problem before that Don worked at the FBI! Why should everything suddenly be different? No, they had to clear that up eventually. Alex Norvtcharov's destiny had showed Don that you couldn't always rely on a 'later'.
More in order to distract himself, Don looked at the clock. Only 10 pm. And yet, he felt already so exhausted that he could barely keep his eyes open. His inner clock was seriously winding down. It urgently had to be wound up again. He had to wait for Charlie, though. He would certainly come home soon. In the meanwhile Don could as well take a look at the file. Maybe something would catch his eye that they hadn't noticed until now.
However, the words didn't really find a way into Don's mind. He couldn't concentrate. His thoughts were distracted again and again. And then, in perfect slowness, his eyes closed and the file slipped out of his hand.
It was late summer. The sun was shining warmly onto the two of them, making her hair shine golden. She was fair and beautiful. Lost in thought, she was looking across the deep-blue ocean spreading out endlessly in front of them.
She turned towards him, smiled silently and took his hand in hers. They were walking over the warm, soft sand, wordlessly and perfectly happy. The beach was quiet and deserted; nothing to disturb them, no creature near or far. No creature unless the fire-red one crawling out of the sea in the not too far distance. A cancer. Alan's throat tightened.
He awoke. The rushing sea yielded to the gently drumming of raindrops against the windowpanes. The sea, the beach, the cancer and Margaret – everything had disappeared. Nevertheless, Alan was looking through the dark at his hands. They were empty. He had just dreamed everything. Only the dry feeling in his throat was still there.
On the spur of the moment Alan set out for downstairs into the kitchen. He wouldn't be able to get back to sleep quickly, anyway.
The light in the living-room was on, lighting the clock on the wall. Just half past eleven. But it wasn't the only thing the light revealed: on the sofa, there was a sleeping Don whose right arm was hanging down, seemingly pointing at a grey-brown file. While Alan let the water float down his throat, looking down at his eldest son, an idea was forming in his mind.
Charlie was still in a weird mood, too depressed and confused to be angry, but too angry to be sad and thoughtful. He felt strangely lost.
At some point in time, he had come back to Larry, though he had been blocking Larry's attempts to talk about the things that had occurred. He didn't want to talk. In the past, he'd been confiding in Larry only too gladly. However, so many things had gone to pieces. Everything was different now.
Finally, they had gone to the campus, watching the first stars appear before the clouds had become thicker bringing rain with them. They'd said good-bye and Charlie had gone to his bicycle. As soon as opening the lock he had remarked that something wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Then he had detected that the valves of the inner tubes were missing. And he didn't have to think for long to find out to whom he owed this mess. And still, he could hardly believe it – Don, his brother Don, had made let out the air of his tires? But that was far below his dignity!
Still, it didn't make sense in getting annoyed about it now. He couldn't change it. Larry had already left, so Charlie willy-nilly hit the road on foot on his way home. Generally, it wouldn't have been unwelcome to him to think things through by walking through the cool night air. He also thought wryly that he would have been able to do that on his bike as well. And with his bike he probably would have escaped the worst part of the rain. However, in principle the rain didn't bother him much. At least it cooled the atmosphere and made the air cleaner.
The heavy drops were now pounding Charlie, creating a bit of inner satisfaction. His head became clear. He would have to talk to Don, to make it clear to him that his actions certainly couldn't be seen to be totally acceptable. Indeed, he would have preferred to avoid this conversation, but it couldn't go on like this for much longer. After all, it was one thing to shun a conflict; but it was a completely different thing to be forced to use these sorts of tactics with one's own brother.
Soppy, he entered the house through the garage, directly installing his bicycle there. Where in earlier times calculations for Don's cases had adorned the blackboards you could now see terms and formulas for the law firm. Only Charlie's cognitive emergence theory had borne up under all the changes. He let his gaze wander across the calculations and was just wondering if he should go to bed immediately or better still work for a while when he realized that something wasn't right. Something didn't fit in the general view here. For although many people would like to call his garage untidy, there was order in his chaos. And to him there was obviously a disturbance in this order. Charlie looked more intensely and nearly immediately discovered the file on the desk.
Confused, he flipped it open. It quickly became clear to him what he was holding in his hands: Don's current case file. What was it doing here? A consolation prize? Some sort of message? Did people arrange this sort of thing among FBI-agents? Did Don maybe expect Charlie to simply accept the file and pretend that nothing had happened? Were these the conditions; so that he'd talk to Charlie in a normal way again? "You have some nerve, Don," Charlie murmured, though at once scanning the pages almost automatically for clues that would help him to set up some kind of equation. He had already made up his mind working the case for the firm. And if here – yes! There it was.
Filled with fresh energy Charlie started to work. In all the excitement he had completely forgotten how wet he was.