Remember When

lines fanning out from them. Though it had gone stone gray, he still had most of his hair.
    He looked his age, and eschewed any thought of face or body sculpting. He liked to say he'd earned the lines and gray hair honestly. A statement, he knew, that caused his fashionable and youth-conscious son to wince.
    He supposed if he'd ever been as handsome as Trevor, he might have been a bit more vain. The boy was a picture, Steve thought. Tall and trim, tanned and golden.
    And he worked at it, Steve thought with a little twinge. The boy spent a fortune on wardrobe, on salons and spas and consultants.
    He shook off the thought as he reached the door. It didn't do any good to poke at the boy over things that didn't matter. And since Trevor rarely visited, he didn't want to spoil things.
    He opened the door and smiled. "Well, this is a surprise! Come on in." He gave Trevor's back three easy pats as Trevor walked past him and into the entrance hall.
    "What're you doing out this time of night?"
    Deliberately, Trevor turned his wrist to check the time on the luminous mother-of-pearl face of his wrist unit. "It's barely eleven."
    "Is it? I was dozing off in my den." Steve shook his head. "Your mother's already gone up to bed.
    I'll go get her."
    "No, don't bother." Trevor waved him off. "You've changed the security again."
    "Once a month. Better safe than sorry. I'll give you the new codes." He was about to suggest they go into the den, share the pot of tea, but Trevor was already moving into the more formal living room. And helping himself from the liquor cabinet.
    "It's good to see you. What're you doing out and about and all dressed up?"
    The casual jacket, regardless of label and price, was hardly what Trevor considered dressed up.
    But it was certainly a step up from his father's choice of Mets T-shirt and baggy khakis.
    "I've just come from a party. Dead bore." Trevor took the snifter of brandy-at least the old man stocked decent liquor-swirling it as he sprawled into a chair. "Cousin Marcus was there with his irritating wife. All they could do was talk and talk and talk about that baby they made. As if they were the first to procreate."
    "New parents tend to be wrapped up." Though he'd have preferred his tea, Steve poured a brandy to be sociable. "Your mother and I, we bored the ears off everyone who couldn't run and hide for months after you were born. You'll do the same when it's your turn."
    "I don't think there's any danger of that as I'm not the least bit interested in making something that drools and smells and demands every minute of your time."
    Steve continued to smile, though the tone, and sentiment, set his teeth on edge. "Once you meet the right woman, you'll probably change your mind."
    "There is no right woman. But there are any number of tolerable ones."
    "I hate hearing you sound so cynical and hard."
    "Honest," Trevor corrected. "I live in the world as it is."
    Steve let out a sigh. "Maybe you need to begin to. It must be meant to be that you came by tonight. I was thinking of you before you did. About where you're going with your life, and why."
    Trevor shrugged. "You've never understood or approved of my life because it doesn't mirror yours. Steve Whittier, man of the people, who built himself from nothing. Literally. You know, you should sell your life story. Look how well the Gannon woman has done with her family memoirs."
    Steve set his snifter down, and for the first time since Trevor had come in, there was a warning edge in his tone. "No one is to know about any of that. I made that clear to you, Trevor. I told you because I felt you had a right to know, and that if, somehow, through that book's publication the connection was made to your grandmother, to me, to you, you'd be prepared. It's a shameful part of our family history, painful to your grandmother. And to me."
    "It hardly affects Grandma. She's out of it ninety percent of the time." Trevor circled a finger at his ear.
    Genuine anger brought a red flush to Steve's face. "I don't ever want to hear you make light of her condition. Or to shrug off everything she did to keep me safe and whole. You wouldn't be here, swilling brandy and sneering, if it wasn't for her."
    "Or him." Trevor inclined his head. "He had a part in making you, after all."
    "Biology doesn't make a father. I explained to you what he was. A thief and a murderer."
    "A successful one, until the Gannons. Come on now." Trevor shifted, leaned forward, the brandy snifter cupped