Fifth Avenue

SIX MONTHS LATER
EPILOGUE

Diana Crane, Chief Attorney

Redman International

49th Street amp; Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10017

(212) 555-2620

Dear Jack:

So, here we are again. Will you receive this letter? Will you answer it this time? I have sent you about a dozen letters over the past few months, only to have them returned unopened. Where are you? I send the letters to your parents and they tell me they forward them to you. Are they? They only tell me that you’re well. Are you traveling? Has it gotten easier?

I don’t know if you’re connected to the world or if you unplugged yourself from it. Knowing you, I’ll assume the latter and hope for the former.

Wherever you are, do you get the news? Are you aware that the stock market crashed? We survived it. That Monday, while Wall Street was crumbling, we were signing a deal with Anastassios Fondaras for $8 billion. Iran insisted he buy more ships to keep up with demand and we were happy to offer up WestTex. After a massive round of layoffs and restructuring, Redman International’s stock is now trading in the high fifties. Not where it used to be, but better.

If you’ve been reading any of these letters, then you know that George made a full recovery. What you might not know is that Elizabeth was indicted last week. Ten years. I think she’ll do five. Maybe three, if she’s lucky. I did my best.

Also, I’ve written this before but the status hasn’t changed. Leana is still missing. No one has seen her since she left New York Hospital last August. She disappeared, though we know she’s alright. At a benefit last Saturday, Helen Baines told me that Leana has called her, but she refuses to tell anyone where she is. I’m thinking she’s with Mario De Cicco. I checked and he’s no longer in New York.

I’ll leave you with this. Three weeks ago, I was on Wall Street when I saw Vincent Spocatti in the crowds on the street. I know it was him, just as he knew it was me. We looked at each another and then he lifted his head and smiled before turning the other way. I reported it to the police, but there’s little they can do and Spocatti knows it.

There’s nothing more to tell you, really, only that I miss you and wish you were here in your office at Redman International. Nothing is the same anymore. Everything’s changed. I don’t live at Redman Place. I sold my apartment and moved to the West Side. Now, I have a different view of Central Park, a cat for company and…what else? Nothing, really. Thank God for work. As my father used to say, work saves us.

If you receive this, please write. You’ve had time. I need to know that you’re all right and that at least one of us is moving forward.

With love,

Diana

P.S. I still think about him, you know? Given all that he did, it’s ridiculous. But after all this time, Eric is still part of me. Do you still think of Celina? Sometimes, it’s as if they never died, isn’t it?

Jack Douglas folded the letter in half and returned it to its envelope, which he’d carefully opened with a knife. Like all the letters Diana sent, he would return this one to his parents and they would forward it back to her. He sealed each letter in such a way that suggested he’d never opened it or read its contents. Jack wasn’t ready to renew their friendship. He would contact her again, but he would wait a while longer before doing so.

Just now, he was sitting in the back of a dusty white Jeep, his skin brown from months in the sun, the top of his sandy hair bleached with streaks of blond. He was leaner than he had been in years, his body hard and toned from hiking through the jungles of Venezuela. Above him, he could hear the faint but familiar shrieking of macaws and cockatoos. Below him was the sound of rushing water. He was thousand of miles away from New York City and he loved it.

He thought of Diana’s letter. Of course, he still thought of Celina. A day didn’t go by that he didn’t think of her and all that could have been. He loved her. With Elizabeth Redman now going to prison, he wondered if he ever would see the Redman family again.

He wondered if he cared?

He left the jeep and walked to the center of the long, rickety bridge that stretched before him. A woman had just jumped from its rotting planks and now was screaming as she plummeted to the roiling river below.

Jack moved to the wooden rail and leaned forward. He watched her bounce thanks the bungee cord strapped to her ankles and her long dark hair cracked like a whip in the humid air. Watching her and listening to her jubilant cries, he felt strangely at peace and knew what he was doing was right. This was part of his own healing.

Beside him, a young Venezuelan woman began pulling the frayed bungee cord back to the bridge. She was tall and slim, her arms and shoulders taut with muscle. Her bare feet dug into the gray wooden planks as she continued to hoist up the heavy cord. Once the cord was retrieved, she turned to him.

“Listo?” she asked.

Jack nodded. “Listo.”

“You do this before, yes?”

“I’ve done this before,” he said.

From his pocket, he removed the blindfold he promised to wear when Celina jumped all those months ago. He showed it to the woman, who shrugged. She helped him over the wooden rail, attached the bungee to his ankles, pulled hard on the nylon strap and checked the buckles.

Jack put the blindfold into place.

With the sudden darkness, his senses became acute. The river was louder, the sun somehow stronger. He could feel the thrum of nature and then his heart beating in his chest.

The woman touched his arm. “Jump,” she said. “Fly.”

Poised at the edge of the bridge, Jack took a breath, nodded and let go of the wooden rail. For a moment, he just stood there, perfectly balanced with his arms held out at his sides. His hair stirred in the breeze. His palms faced a brilliant, cloudless sky he couldn’t see. He was aware of everything and nothing. The faint, exotic smells of the jungle enveloped him, consumed him and for the first time in months, he smiled.

He thought of Celina then and when he jumped, he jumped hard, rising gracefully into the air and into the sun.

For an instant, he was free.

Michael Archer remained in New York. In the six months that had passed since his annulment from Leana, he had left their apartment on Fifth and moved into a large, airy loft in the Village that overlooked the Hudson.

His life was quieter. He rarely went out and he saw only close friends. He refused prime roles in movies and on Broadway, and he refused to be interviewed. Although his agent was hounding him to write another book, he hadn’t written a word in months. His dreams were bad. He supposed he was now something of a recluse.

It was in late September, two months after the incident at The Hotel Fifth, that he received a letter from one of George Redman’s attorneys, suggesting that he join George for a blood test. Michael refused. He didn’t need a blood test to confirm that he was George Redman’s son. His mother’s journal confirmed it.

In her own hand, Anne described-in detail-her affair with George and how she knew that Michael was George’s son. If Redman couldn’t accept that, then Michael decided it was best that he wasn’t part of the man’s life.

Leana came to him in dreams.

He would be walking up Fifth Avenue and she would suddenly appear in the crowd, wearing the very dress she wore that night at The Hotel Fifth, her skin pale and lucent, a tiny pinpoint of bright light wavering from the hole in her stomach. In the dream, she held out her arms to him, called out his name in a voice that wasn’t her own but one that he assumed was his idea of his mother’s. And then she disappeared. When Michael ran after her, it was Louis Ryan’s face he saw, not Leana’s.

He heard from Leana only once since they annulled their marriage. When she called, she was somewhere in Europe with Mario De Cicco, though she wouldn’t say where. In spite of all that had transpired between them-and the truth that they were half brother and sister-he admired her for keeping the conversation as light as she could.

“I’m an expat,” she said. “Imagine that. And I’m happy. For the time being, we’re travelling Europe. We’ll visit other parts of the world and then we’ll choose a place to settle and raise a family. I’ll call you when that happens. Could be several months or several years, but I’ll call.”

“I’m sorry for everything, Leana.”

“I know you are,” she said. “But it’s not your fault-we both were used by him. Just hear me on this-if we don’t let go of all of it, if we don’t move forward, it will color the rest of our lives until we do. And if that happens, he wins, which we can’t let happen. I’m moving on with my life. I want the same for you. We deserve to have our lives back.”

“You’re right.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“Call me when you’ve settled.”

“You’ll hear from me again,” Leana said, and she was gone.

It wasn’t until January that he was ready to sit at his desk and look seriously at his typewriter, the one his agent sent him months ago as a gift.

He knew he couldn’t go on like this. By withdrawing from the world, by hanging onto the past, he was killing himself and everything he’d worked so hard for. His agent had given him a number of story ideas, but only one mattered to Michael, only one was paramount, and if he wanted to move on, if he really wanted to deal with the past, the only way to do so would be to write about it.

He looked at the typewriter. He never wrote on a computer and his agent knew it. He liked the sound of a typewriter. He liked the feeling of removing a piece of paper when he was finished creating something on it. He liked the rhythm of the words as they were pounded out.

He put a blank sheet of paper into the typewriter and closed his eyes. That title, that opening sentence and the first few paragraphs came to him at once. They had been lingering in his mind since the original manuscript was burned.

But could he do it? Could he really write the story that had changed so many lives? And if he did write about it, if he did tell the truth even if he did change the names, would he be ready for all the controversy that would ensue? Michael wasn’t sure. Novel or not, people would know the story he’d written was based on fact.

Maybe he’d change the names later. Maybe he wouldn’t. What mattered now was getting it on paper.

And then he remembered what the man Cain said to him that day in his apartment. Just moments after he read the first chapter and destroyed the manuscript, Cain asked how Michael could use these events, these places. Michael’s answer was immediate-perhaps he would use a pseudonym.

He rested his hands on the typewriter and was relieved to find that it no longer seemed as threatening. He thought of Leana then, thought of all the Redmans, chose a generic pseudonym and after a moment, he began to type: