Eighty-Three
Faith Ward walked around the motorcycle and examined it just as she had been taught. She took her time, mindless of the resentful eyes that watched her every move.
Jason's motorcycle was a beautiful piece of machinery. Chrome-laden and powerful, it gleamed like it was showroom new. There was nothing about the motorcycle that even indicated it had ever been ridden.
“What are you going to do with it?”
Faith answered the question by gracefully throwing her leg over the bike and settling down comfortably on the black leather seat. “I am going to ride it, of course.” She met Alan Quartermaine's gaze. “That's why Jason left it to me.” Faith leaned back and considered her uncle. “Jason said that when he died, you all would take his motorcycle and lock it away in the garage and make some kind of shrine out of it. ‘Shrine' is my word, by the way,” Faith added, “but that is what he meant. The entire concept made no sense to him.”
The Quartermaine family's almost ridiculous worship of Jason was a story that Justus had related to Faith almost from the beginning of Justus' entry into their family. Faith listened without comment as her brother recounted Alan and Monica's blatant preference of Jason – in any form – over their other son A.J.
Faith knew their favoritism bothered Justus, although he never made mention of it to her. Justus did not have to say a single word for Faith to understand. As children, they lived firsthand the kind of favoritism shown by Alan and Monica.
With their father Bradley Ward so often away from home, Faith and Justus became their mother's sole responsibility. Justus grew older and began to resemble Bradley Ward in appearance and charming personality. And their mother grew colder toward Justus with each passing day.
Whispers of their father's many affairs eventually provided the only explanation that Faith could come up with for their mother's coldness. And when Bradley was murdered, his young children were shipped off to live with their grandmother Mary Mae.
“What was it?” Alan interrupted Faith's unpleasant memories. He ventured closer to Faith and Jason's motorcycle. The fluorescent lighting of the garage revealed the dark circles beneath the grieving doctor's eyes. “What was it that you said or did that made Jason accept you into his life and his family?”
“I got to know the man Jason was,” Faith replied bluntly. She did not temper her words. “I never treated him like some kind of god. I didn't blame him for stuff he didn't do and I called him on the stuff he did.”
Faith started up the motorcycle. “You know, I'm sorry about Jason's death,” she said over the almost musical hum of the bike's engine. “And the saddest part about it is that his death won't bring you any closer to the son you still have left.”
