Beautiful Lies

thirty-seven

You might remember I made a promise to Linda McNaughton. But it was more than a month before Jake and I had our legs under us again. And a bit longer after that before I was able to convince Jake to help me keep it. Jake’s leg was still in a cast when we rented a car and headed out to Jersey. The Firebird was gone; it never turned up again. The guy who’d probably taken it and then tried to kill me with it—or scare me, as Alexander Harriman had said—had a bullet in the back of his brain. There was no way to know where he had dumped it.

“Come with me,” Jake said, looking pale when I pulled in front of the trailer.

“You don’t want an audience,” I said. “Give yourself a few minutes alone with her and then wave me in.”

He nodded and left me listening to “Roxanne” by the Police on the radio. I watched as he made his way on crutches up the walk, as she opened the door for him and he disappeared inside. I closed my eyes and imagined him surrounded by turtles, telling Linda McNaughton that he was Charlie, her grandson lost so many years ago. I could see her, gray hair and matching sweat suit, covering her mouth, tears springing to her eyes. I could see her throwing her arms around him and him holding her awkwardly. I wanted to be there with him. But it was their moment, alone. I wanted them both to have that.

About a half hour later I saw him in the doorjamb waving for me. I looked for joy on his face and I didn’t really see it there. But he looked happy enough, a little flushed as I approached. It was bitterly cold outside, the ground frozen hard, the trees black and dead around the trailer park. But it was warm inside. Linda sat teary on the couch, clutching the photograph I’d taken from her and sent Jake to return. She stood and embraced me.

“I didn’t think you’d be back,” she said. “Either of you.”

We stayed for a while. What can I say? It was awkward. They were strangers to each other. She talked about his parents and he listened, attentive and present. She told him a bit about his early years, how he’d walked and talked early, how he’d had a plush frog that he carried with him everywhere. He smiled and made the appropriate responses. There wasn’t much he could share about his years growing up that wouldn’t have caused her pain, so he glossed over it, gave her vagaries about his life. We drank tea with her. Then:

“Mrs. McNaughton,” he started.

“Please call me Grandma,” she said, looking shy. “Or at least Linda.”

I could tell he wasn’t comfortable saying it but he did. “Grandma,” he said with an uncomfortable laugh, “we have to go now.”

We didn’t really but I stood with him and nodded.

“Oh, of course,” she said, and I detected a little relief there. “Perhaps you two could come this Sunday for dinner. We don’t have much family, but I have a sister who’d love to see you.”

“I’d like that,” he said. He hugged her and I saw her tear up again as she held on to him. She stood in the door and watched us leave, the same way she’d watched me when I left her the first time, her arm suspended in the air in a wave. Back in the car, he was quiet as we pulled away toward the highway. I placed a hand on his thigh. “How was that for you?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. Not like I expected. I guess I hoped to feel more connected to her.”

“You will,” I said. “Give it time.”

I’ve come to believe, as I said, that it’s not blood that connects us but experience. For everything we’d been through, for all the lies, for all the wrongs done by my family, they were still my family. I never once stopped thinking about them that way; they never became strangers to my heart. And even though the ideal I had held in my imagination proved to be completely false, it didn’t change the way I felt about them. They could be only what they were. That had to be enough.

We pulled to a stop in front of my parents’ house and sat for a minute. There it was, that picture postcard of my childhood. The house was decorated for Christmas with pretty wreaths in each window, those plug-in candles glowing. I could see the tree with its white lights and tiny red ribbons glinting through the bay window. I didn’t want it to seem like a false front. But it did. I hoped it was a feeling that would pass.

“They don’t want to see me, I’m sure,” said Jake.

“Why would you say that?”

He gave me a look. “I blew the roof off of your life. And theirs.”

“I don’t see it that way,” I said, opening the door and stepping outside.

We made our way carefully up the front walk, worried for the icy patches and Jake’s crutches. My father came out to help; my mother waited, arms folded at the door. We all went inside, had hot chocolate by the tree.

I’d stripped away the script of our lives. Doesn’t it feel that way in your family? Everyone has his role, and as long as everyone keeps true to the part that has been cast for him, things go on as they always have. You laugh about the same things, fight about the same things, harbor all the same old resentments, share the same memories, good and bad. But when one person starts to improvise, starts to write her own lines, the whole script has to be thrown out. Everyone else misses cues, there’s an awkward silence, then chaos. Then, if you’re lucky, you all create a new production together. One based in the present, based on honesty, one that’s fluid and malleable to change. We were in the awkward-silence stage. Lots of uncomfortable pauses. Lots of shared memories, especially those involving Max, that didn’t seem appropriate to mention any longer.

“I want you to know, Jake and Ridley,” my father said during one of those silences that had been precipitated by my noticing an ornament given to my mother by Max. It was a silver ballerina with a delicate crystal tutu, inspired I think by the Degas painting. “I want you to know that I never suspected for a moment the true nature of Project Rescue.” He was silent for a second, not looking at either of us but down at the cup in his hand. “What we did with you, Ridley, was wrong. We’re guilty of a lot of failures with you even beyond that, but I can never be sorry for taking you that night. I can never regret having the chance to be your father. Still, it’s important for me to let you both know that I never would have been a part of the abduction and selling of children. Not for any reason.”

Jake nodded politely, but I knew he wasn’t convinced. I chose to believe my father. I knew him well and really couldn’t see him being a part of it. Jake didn’t know him as well and was having a hard time swallowing it.

“It was Esme Gray, then?” asked Jake. “She flagged the kids she thought were in danger? She was the one who told Max about Jessie?”

That was one of the big unanswered questions for me. Alexander Harriman said that the murder of Teresa Stone was an accident, the point at which Max realized he’d lost control of Project Rescue. But who had arranged for Jessie’s abduction that night? And how had Max wound up with her? There was a big piece missing here. And Esme, the only person who might have answers, wasn’t talking about any of it.

“I don’t know,” my father said after a long pause. “I really don’t know, Jake.”

“And you don’t want to know,” said Jake, holding his eyes.

My father sighed and looked away. “I’m sure there are more answers coming. An investigation is under way, as you well know.”

I heard the resentment in his voice then. And I saw it in my mother, who sat quietly on the far corner of the couch, present but distant, a fake half-smile on her lips. She was enduring this visit, not participating. Jake was the truth they didn’t want to face, the spotlight they couldn’t extinguish. And he was here to stay. They both wished that none of this had ever happened. If they could turn back the clock and keep me from stepping in front of that van, they would. They would choose to go dark again.

You’re probably wondering, What about me? What was my wish? Would I turn back the clock? I can’t answer that. Like I told you, I don’t believe in mistakes or in regret. We don’t know the other road, the one we didn’t take, or where it leads.