Blood of Cain

22

Only one customer was in the Starbucks, a man sitting in one corner. He had an iPhone on the table, as well as a tablet and small keyboard. Everyone else was outside, listening to Senator Logan speak. Andrea and I ordered coffee and sat at a table in the opposite corner. I took a chair where I could see the front door. “Your husband’s an eloquent speaker.”

“He’s passionate about what he’s saying as it relates to the betterment of the nation.”

I smiled. “I wish him the best. Why the federal agents at this point in the horse race?”

“The Secret Service offers protection where they think it’s needed the most. Lloyd is a front-runner, doing great in the polls. That means he has his share of detractors, people who would rather harm him than try to beat him at the ballot box.”

I looked over her shoulder and spotted the agent, Robert, standing outside the large front window. “Andrea, do you and I have a daughter?”

Her eyes opened a little more. Nostrils widening. “What? A daughter? Sean, what the hell’s going on? Is this some kind of a joke? Why are you showing up twenty years after we said goodbye, coming out of nowhere to pop up at my husband’s campaign appearance?”

“Because a young woman’s life might hinge on what you tell me.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that a girl, maybe twenty years old, walked into in my life. She knew that I had a shamrock-shaped birthmark on my left arm. And there’s no way she could know that unless someone told her. You always said you loved that birthmark, loved touching it because you said it gave you good luck. This girl said because of it — the birthmark, she knew that she was related to me. But she didn’t say how. She didn’t get a chance, really. She was running from the scene of a killing. Police believe she murdered a man, maybe more than one.”

Andrea shuddered, her eyes on the cup of coffee in her hands. “Dear God,” she whispered.

“I have my doubts that she’s the killer. But right now I need to know if you were pregnant when we separated.”

Andrea lifted her eyes to mine. She started to speak when the front door opened wide and two men walked inside. The agent, Robert, remained outside. The two coming into Starbucks were older, wearing suits. Splashes of gray in one man’s hair. The other was balding. A straightforward walk. Wingtip shoes loud against the tile floor.

“Tell me, Andrea, were you pregnant?”

“Sean … this can’t be happening. Maybe one of Lloyd’s opponents is doing something to try to destroy the campaign.”

As the men walked toward us, I glanced at my phone on the table and discreetly pressed the video record button. The taller of the two, a man with a shave so close the pores on his face seemed threadbare, stepped closest. He said, “Excuse me, Ms. Logan. We need to have a word with this man.”

Andrea looked up from the table. “This man is a friend of mind. Everything’s fine, Andy.”

The agent nodded. “We understand. However, we still need to ask him a few questions.”

“Okay, but I want to be present to hear his answers, too.”

The agent scratched his clean-shaven face with one finger. He looked at me. “Mr. O’Brien, why are you at this rally today?”

I smiled. “Last time I checked it was a free country, and people could attend political rallies. What if I came to hear what the senator has to say?”

His chest swelled. The second agent stepped closer to the table. The sentinel at the window touched his earpiece.

Andrea said, “Sean, please. They’re just trying to do their jobs.” She looked at both agents and added, “Sean and I go way back. We’re simply catching up. That’s all.”

“Well, Ms. Logan, you’re catching up with a man who was in the middle of shootout a while back involving a radical Islamic group, Russian arms dealers, and weapons-grade uranium found in an old German U-boat. Mr. O’Brien has quite a history. Delta Force, serving in the Middle East. And a checkered past that’s either buried and sealed due to the nature of it, or he simply vanished off the radar for almost two years.” He looked down at me, his face well within the wide-angle lens of the phone. “So, Mr. O’Brien, we’d like to know why you’re here, and what’s the nature of this conversation?”

I looked him dead in the eye. “I’m here because I have a right to be here. And the nature of what Andrea and I are talking about is private. None of your business.”

“All right, stand up. We’ll have the discussion elsewhere.”

I reached for my phone, video recorder still capturing the moment. “I have done nothing wrong, and I’m not going anywhere with you unless it’s to a cable news station, where they can broadcast the video I just recorded of your little inquisition, and we can take calls from viewers who’d be happy you ask you questions about First Amendment rights. How do you think that would flatter the campaign of Senator Lloyd Logan?”

His face smoldered for a brief moment, the tops of his ears red. He started to reach for my phone when Andrea raised her hand. “Gentlemen, we know you’re just doing your job. Please, leave us. Sean is one of the most honest, patriotic men I’ve ever known. And he’s right; what we’re discussing is private. Please, respect that. We’ll be done soon.”

I smiled at the agents as they checked their egos, exhaled tension, turned around, and left us alone in the coffee shop. Andrea raised an eyebrow and asked, “I remember hearing about that big takedown. News reports said it stemmed from the recovery of nuclear material on a German U-boat off the coast of Florida and involved Russian arms dealers and a radical Islamic sect. So you were in the middle of that?”

“By default. I was just a team member.”

She smiled. “I’m almost afraid to ask what other career choices you’ve made these last twenty years.”

“Andrea, if we had a daughter, if you had to give her up for adoption, I understand. I’m not here to judge, to do anything that might have an impact on your life or your husband’s political aspirations. I only want the truth. If we had a child together, she or he would be about the same age as this girl. Sometimes to help someone in the present, to shape the future, you have to know the past — to understand how the puzzle pieces interconnect.”

Andrea looked away, her face filling with two decades of sequestered thoughts. She blinked back tears, a red rash spreading on her throat.

Now, I knew. But I wanted to hear it from her.

“Sean, I’m so sorry. I should have told you. I owed that much to you. My parents were so unforgiving at the time, Dad especially. I think he took it to his grave. I literally went into hiding, and I gave the baby up for adoption the week that she was born.”

“So the baby was a girl?”

“Yes. And hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about her. Wonder what she’s like, what’s she’s doing, whether she’s happy. I’ve prayed for her.”

Her eyes seem to burst in tears. Two decades of hidden thoughts, emotions, breaking through the dam she’s built to hold it all back. She stood and simply hugged me, her tears soaking into my shirt.

“It’s okay, Andrea. You did what you felt was right. Did you ever see the child again?” I reached in my coat pocket and handed her a clean, white handkerchief.

After she dried her tears she said, “No. Adoption records were sealed. And I thought not interfering would be the best thing for the child and the family that adopted her. So I didn’t try to meet the adoptive parents.”

“If you never saw her, you never told her about my birthmark, correct?”

“Yes, there’s no way. And I’ve never mentioned your birthmark to anyone else, either. No reason to.”

“Then how would Courtney know? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Courtney, that’s a lovely name. Please describe her to me?”

“Her eyes are mesmerizing, like yours. She has dark hair, and she’s about your height. Very independent. I think she’s been through a lot in her life.” I could see Andrea’s eyes beginning to well with tears again.

“Is she charged with murdering someone?”

“She’s wanted in connection with at least one death, possibly two.”

“I feel so … so disconnected. I never got pregnant again, and I’ve often thought it was God’s way of punishing me for giving away a gift he gave. What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know.”

She stood from the table, her face troubled. “I best be getting back. I hope you can help this girl, especially if somehow she is our daughter. If she is … tell her … tell Courtney how much her mother loved her and how hard it was to give her to someone else.”

I stood and Andrea hugged me again, her arms holding onto my shoulders for a long moment. “Goodbye, Sean. Stay safe.” She looked up at me through moist eyes and kissed my cheek just as Senator Lloyd Logan walked through the door with the news media snapping pictures.