Pick Your Poison

23

The rain let up minutes later, but rivulets continued to trail down the windshield. I watched one and then another and another meander and disappear. I could have easily run to the Victorian during this temporary reprieve, but I remained paralyzed in my car.

Those words, Rose made her step down, kept replaying in my head like a broken car alarm, over and over and over.

I don’t know how much time passed, but my tears had dried. I was left feeling numb and more alone than I could remember. That was when another man’s words came back. Jeff Kline’s words. Ben Grayson was living on your property because he wanted to be there. Yes, indeed. Ben had come to find Daddy, to find Kate and me.

“How very clever of you, Daddy,” I whispered. Was anything he’d told us true? Had there even been a fatal plane crash right before Kate and I were born? I doubted it.

And did he have any idea how much this truth would hurt when it came pouncing out from the past? How did I reevaluate a lifetime founded on deception? Where did I begin?

I felt overwhelmed and unequipped to deal with any of this. I wanted none of such a messy past. But having made the first vital connection, my synapses continued to fire. My father made Hayes step down because someone threatened to expose the judge as corrupt, had threatened to reclaim her children.

Cloris. Also known as Connie. Also known as my mother.

I shook my head, sprinkling the windshield with water from my drenched hair. Don’t think about that part, Abby. Not now.

Rain pummeled my car anew, and for some silly reason—maybe denial was kicking in—I entertained the notion that Daddy could have been honoring a friend’s request when he forced Hayes to resign—simply been helping some friend protect their adopted children, not his own. After all, he had powerful business connections and measurable influence in political circles.

But I knew the truth, and the more I tried to push it away with implausible explanations, the more its presence grew. But that voice in my head came back with, You don’t have solid proof. All you have is an overheard sentence spoken by a cruel old man.

And I had to be one hundred percent sure.

Eugenia Hayes knew everything. At least, she used to know. Could I drag the truth from the cloud of confusion fogging her mind? Maybe if I could hear the words from her, from the woman who sealed the deal, I could accept that I was raised by a man who then spent a generation lying to my sister and me.

The same curly-haired woman sat filing her nails at the information desk at the nursing home. When I marched past her, she spotted me and called out, “You can’t go up there!”

Over my shoulder I said, “I’ll only be a few minutes. I need to talk to Eugenia Hayes.”

I continued toward the elevator.

“Don’t make me call security. No visitors for her.”

I turned and went back to the desk. “Has something happened? Is she sick?”

“You upset her last time, and her son had a fit. Seems she called him and rambled on about bribes and crooked lawyers. She got so worked up she had to have three breathing treatments. After that, Mr. Hayes told the doctor not to let in anyone else.” She lifted her eyes, her withering gaze intended to shame me. “The son doesn’t come here much, you know. Of course, after you explained to me about Eugenia’s operation, I could understand his shame, but—”

“Wait a minute. I never said anything about any operation.”

She kept on talking, ignoring me. “Then I knew what had upset her son so much. Mr. Hayes was worried that little tidbit about his mother’s operation would get around town, don’t you know.” She paused, glanced around the deserted lobby, then whispered, “About her sex change.”

She resumed her normal tone. “I told him I wouldn’t tell—but he kept denying Eugenia started out as his father, Eugene. But we know better, don’t we?” She winked. “So you’re the one who got him so mad.” She smiled, pleased with this logic, and started buffing her index finger.

I had to talk to the judge. Now. So I did what lately seemed to come so naturally to Charlie Rose’s daughter: I lied.

Leaning on the desk, I said, “Eugenia told me about her son, how he keeps visitors away. How he’s embarrassed by her. She’s lonely up there. Craves company. Do you want to contribute to making her last days on earth totally miserable? I don’t think that’s why you work with the elderly, is it?”

She set her nail buffer down. “Well... no.”

“Please let me talk to her. I’m begging for a few short minutes.”

“Maybe I could call the nurses’ station... say you’re an out-of-town relative and have the son’s okay to visit.” She pointed a finger at me. “But you have to give me your word you won’t upset her.”

“I promise.” And that was probably another lie. But I didn’t care.

Judge Hayes sat with the head of the bed propped up, her eyes clear and alert. “It’s about time you showed up,” she said. “I told that man who keeps insisting he’s my son to find you, get you back here,” she said. “Did you locate him?”

“Your son?” I asked, dragging a chair to the bedside.

“No, that snake Feldman. Don’t tell me you forgot already?”

Judge Hayes was chastising me about forgetting? “Yes, I found him. But something he said troubles me. Do you remember the man who pressured you to resign?”

“Resign? I’ll never resign. I’ve done things I shouldn’t, but always in the best interests of the children. So many children... beaten, forgotten, neglected...”

I sighed. Reality lasted for only the tiniest interludes with her. I had another trick I’d thought of on the way up in the elevator, though, and took my address book from my purse.

“What’s that, counselor?” she said, obviously curious.

“This is evidence,” I said.

“Evidence? You’d better mark it as an exhibit, then.”

“I submit this as exhibit A. Proof Charles Rose illegally adopted the twin children of Cloris Grayson and forced you to resign when she came looking for them.”

“That’s inadmissible. Inadmissible!” Her face flushed to an unhealthy shade of purple, and she grasped the siderails of her bed.

I placed a hand on her bony knee. “It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll keep your secret.”

She collapsed against the pillows, closed her eyes, and inhaled feebly. “If I didn’t resign, Rose told me the truth would come out about the forgeries.”

“Were all the adoption papers Feldman presented in your courtroom forged?”

“No. But Rose would make sure every placement I’d made would be investigated.”

“And children might be returned to their mothers?” I said.

“To mothers who didn’t want them. Or they’d be forced back into orphanages.” Her cloudy eyes were filled with sadness.

“So if you resigned, he’d make sure that didn’t happen?” I said.

Her features hardened again. “He promised that snake Feldman would be out of business, too.”

“And the twins’ documents were forged?”

“Yes, yes.” She tossed her head and kinky gray wisps of hair fanned out on the pillow. “He said if his girls had to go back to their mother, their hearts would break.”

I closed my eyes, tears burning against my lids.

Judge Hayes touched my arm. “Bobbie? I’m tired. This has been hard on an old woman.”

I blinked hard, pushing down the emotion. So I was Bobbie now. “Can I get you anything before I leave?” I said.

She nodded at the water pitcher and I filled her glass. She took a sip, then handed the glass back.

“I don’t blame the man for wanting to protect those children, do you?” she said.

I shook my head no, not wanting to upset her any more than I already had. But I was lying again. I did blame him. God, how I blamed him.

I returned to P Street and waited for Steven, no longer doubting that my father had deceived my sister and me all our lives. I paced in front of the window, trying not to think, wondering how I would tell Kate, and realizing that working through the emotions that had flooded me in the last few hours might take me a lifetime. First I had to come to terms with the knowledge that Daddy could have had a hand in murdering my mother. Yes. He might have murdered her to keep her from staking her claim on her own children. Or had he helped Feldman do the job? They certainly both would have benefited from her death.

My head throbbed and I still couldn’t seem to arrange the facts in logical order. Did I know for certain Daddy had had anything to do with killing Cloris? Or did I merely fear he might have been involved?

I wasn’t sure. I only knew I would stick to this investigation until I had enough hard proof to bring Feldman and the ghost of Charlie Rose to justice. Nailing Samuel Feldman was now the most important thing in my life.

I stopped pacing and took a deep breath, aware of the stuffy room, my clenched fists, and the awful headache. Darkness had descended early, the smoky-black clouds transforming the late afternoon into night.

And that noise? What was that noise coming from above me?

I had been so distracted, I had no clue whether the sound had just begun or had been going on since I arrived. The way the wind was blowing, and with all Steven’s construction work, something could be very wrong upstairs. The repetitive banging persisted, so I climbed to the second floor to investigate. I smelled rain. A window must be open.

But when I reached the landing, the mystery was solved. The door to the bathroom was swaying back and forth, and every few seconds it swung hard enough to hit the wall.

So where was all the wind coming from? The tiny window in there couldn’t possibly be allowing these huge gusts. I walked over, grabbed the door as it swung toward me, and peered into the bathroom.

A gaping hole replaced what had once housed a commode, sink, and tub. All those fixtures were below me now, a pile of rubble resting on the mudroom ceiling. As Steven had predicted, the bathroom had collapsed and the far wall had crumbled into the yard.

Just then a violent cracking and crunching started beneath my feet. I had no time to grab for the door frame as the damaged entrance gave way.

Down I plummeted, into the saturated mound of broken wood and insulation, the journey a horrible aberration of a water-slide ride. Then everything went black.