Chương 7
“I’m not.”
“I’m looking at your affidavit.”
Silence.
“You said you gave birth to me.”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t a technical mistake. That’s a lie.”
“I know.”
“You swore to it.”
“I know.”
“Who notarized it?”
“Howard’s secretary.”
“Did she know?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mom.”
“I don’t know, Daniel.”
He stood and walked onto the back deck.
Dry grass filled the yard beyond the railing.
A neighbor’s dog barked twice.
“What did you pay?”
Claire went quiet.
Daniel gripped the phone.
“What did you pay?”
“Tom paid Howard.”
“How much?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
“Five thousand.”
In 1992, it had been a serious amount of money for his parents.
“Where did you get five thousand dollars?”
“We borrowed against Tom’s truck.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
He remembered that truck.
A brown Ford his father complained about selling when Daniel was little.
Tom had always claimed the transmission failed.
Another small family story changed shape.
“Was that legal fees or a bribe?”
“I thought legal fees.”
“Thought?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t want to know.”
“No.”
The honesty hurt.
Daniel lowered himself onto the deck step.
Claire said, “I need you to understand something.”
“I don’t.”
“I know. But I need you to hear it. We thought Eleanor would die.”
Eleanor was visible through the kitchen window, sitting at the table.
“She didn’t.”
“No.”
“You had thirty-five years to notice.”
Claire began crying then.
Quietly.
Daniel hated hearing it.
He hated that part of him still wanted to comfort her.
“I have to go.”
“Daniel—”
He ended the call.
Two days later, Nina called.
She had obtained the current certified birth record and requested archival records from the state.
“There are inconsistencies,” she said.
“That sounds diplomatic.”
“It’s lawyer for ‘I don’t like this.’”
Daniel sat in his truck outside a job site.
He had returned to work because staying home had become unbearable. He renovated kitchens and bathrooms with a crew of four men, and that morning he had installed cabinet hinges while thinking about whether his entire legal identity was the product of a crime.
“What happens now?”
“We wait for the archive response.”
“How long?”
“Could be weeks.”
“I don’t have weeks.”
“You do.”
He looked at the house where his crew was working.
“I really don’t.”
“Daniel, this happened thirty-five years ago. Moving fast won’t make the record clearer.”
He hated her for being right.
That evening Eleanor had a fever.
Daniel drove her to the emergency room.
The fever turned out to be another infection, treatable but serious enough for admission.
At registration, the clerk asked Eleanor for an emergency contact.
She looked at Daniel.
He shook his head slightly.
Not because he refused.
Because he did not know.
Eleanor gave Rachel’s name.
Daniel noticed.
He did not mention it.
In the waiting room, Rachel bought two terrible coffees from a machine.
Daniel took one.
“You’re doing the thing,” she said.
“What thing?”
“Where you act useful so you don’t have to feel anything.”
“I’m at a hospital. Useful seems good.”
“You’ve reorganized her medication list three times.”
“The list was bad.”
“It was alphabetical.”
“That’s not useful.”
Rachel sipped the coffee and made a face.
“Wow.”
“What?”
“This is punishment coffee.”
Daniel took a drink.
She was right.
He drank it anyway.
After Eleanor was admitted, Daniel and Rachel went home.
At midnight Claire called.
Daniel stared at the phone.
Rachel said, “Answer it.”
“Why?”
“Because you want to.”
He answered.
Claire asked about Eleanor.
Daniel told her.
Then neither spoke.
Finally Claire said, “Susan is coming.”
Daniel sat up.
“Aunt Susan?”
“She called me.”
“Why?”
“I told her.”
Daniel’s anger returned.
“You told her before asking me?”
“She was involved.”
“It’s my life.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that after you make decisions.”
Claire went silent.
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“When?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
He almost told her not to come.
Instead he said, “Fine.”
Susan arrived carrying a grocery-store pie.
Daniel stared at it.
His aunt looked embarrassed.
“I didn’t know what people bring to this kind of thing.”
“A lawyer would’ve been good.”
“I considered bourbon.”
“That would’ve been better.”
Susan was fifty-five, six years younger than Claire, with dyed auburn hair and the restless energy of someone who always seemed to be late even when she was early.
She set the pie on Daniel’s kitchen counter.
Then she hugged him.
He did not hug back.
She released him quickly.
“Fair.”
Rachel excused herself to shower, which Daniel recognized as kindness.
Susan sat.
“What do you know?”
“Enough to know everyone lied.”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
He appreciated the lack of defense.
“For how long?”
“All of it.”
“Why?”
Susan stared at the pie box.
“Because when you were little, Claire and Tom were good parents.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No. It’s the excuse.”
Daniel waited.
Susan had helped Eleanor during treatment. She had been the one person who knew where Eleanor was when Claire and Tom claimed she had disappeared.
When Eleanor returned wanting Daniel, Susan initially supported her.
Then Eleanor relapsed.
Two days.
A motel.
Mark.
Susan found her there.
“She was unconscious,” Susan said. “There was a needle on the floor.”
Eleanor had told Daniel she relapsed.
She had not told him that.
“You thought I wasn’t safe with her.”
“I knew you weren’t safe that night.”
“That night.”
“Yes.”
“And thirty-five years?”
Susan looked away.
“That’s where it gets ugly.”
Claire and Tom had already begun the fraudulent record process.
Susan learned after the fact.
She threatened to report them.
Claire threatened to tell Eleanor’s probation officer that Susan had helped hide her after the relapse.
Daniel stared.
“My mother blackmailed you?”
Susan’s eyes hardened.
“Your mother was terrified.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“Yes.”
Daniel stood and paced.
Susan continued.
“I should’ve reported it anyway.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was twenty-five and stupid and scared, and because I loved you, and because Eleanor disappeared again, and because Tom sat in my apartment and cried.”
May you like
Daniel stopped.
His father rarely cried.
