(2007) Chasing Fireflies - A Novel of Discovery (40 page)

'Well, then ... who was the kid on the table?"

"Heck if I know." He shrugged. "All I knew was that I didn't kill him, and more importantly"-he paused and rubbed his hand across the cover of the notebook-"that meant my son might still be alive."

When I'd interviewed the driver of the prison truck that drove Unc back from the funeral, he had told me that Unc looked mad, not sad. And that he had not cried. I had never made sense of that. The Unc I knew would have cried his eyes out. 'Why didn't you say something?"

He shook his head. "What did I have to gain? Yes, I was real sorry for whoever was looking for that kid on the table, but when I started putting the pieces together, I doubted anybody was. I figure he was dead long before he got burnt. I kept my mouth shut, because if I had said anything, I would have let whoever took my son know that I knew the body wasn't his. If I said nothing, and my son was still alive, I could help keep him that way by keeping my mouth shut."

I shook my head. 'Well ... what if he's still alive?"

"He is."

"Well, where? Why don't you go get him?"

Unc looked at Lorna, then Mandy, then me. "I did."

The questions swirled. "But? What about the ... the ransom note? It was a fake?"

He nodded and smiled. "Keep going."

"How'd you know?"

"I grew up playing cards with my brother. I knew when he was bluffing long before he could."

"But you went along with it?"

He nodded again.

I sat back, the video of our life flashing across the backs of my eyelids. I described what I saw. "He knew that you knew he'd taken the bonds, and he needed something to keep you quiet." I turned to Sketch, then back to Unc. "Well ... what was it?"

He pulled a single sheet of paper from the notebook, then reached up, touched my ear, and looked across at Suzanne's grave. "Your mother wanted to call you junior."'

I looked at the sheet of paper. It was a birth certificate. Across the top it read, WILLIAM WALKER McFARLAND JR. BORN MARCH 31, 1976.

Unc put his hand on the back of my neck and held me as if he were afraid I'd escape. He swallowed. "I told you once that the second hardest decision I'd ever made was signing those papers and letting them take my son. Making him a ward of the state. That's 'cause the hardest ... the hardest thing I've ever done has been living every day, watching him grow into a man that I'm danged proud of, and not telling him. Of living that lie my whole life.

"But I couldn't risk losing you a second time. Dying was hard enough once. I'd rather not do it twice. Then by the time you got old enough, and saw how the town saw me, what they thought of me, the story that has dogged my past, I was afraid you wouldn't want me." He nodded at the birth certificate, pulled me toward him, pressed my forehead to his, and tried to laugh. "I told your mom I wasn't about to call you junior. Told her I was giving you the most valuable thing I had. So I gave you my name." He lifted my head and whispered, "Told her we were gonna call you ... Liam."

The name bounced off the insides of my head, rattled down my neck, circulated through me, and hovered above my chest.

He looked at me, his lips tight. He nodded. "Liam." The whisper jolted the word loose, flipped it a few degrees, and then it slid down into the hole in me where it echoed like a gavel.

"But ... why didn't you ... ?"

He shrugged. "Wasn't worth it."

"Wasn't worth it? But you lost everything."

He shook his head and smiled, his lips quivering. "I gained everything."

"What?"

"You . . ." He put his hands behind my head. "You're my inheritance."

"But...

"Son ..."

The word stopped me.

He filled his chest. "'Cause nothing"-he poked me in the chest-"not one single thing ... compares to you."

For the first time in my life, I'd heard the word son. Aimed at me.

"But..."

He held up a finger. "Before the trial, Jack produced Ellsworth's last will and testament, which I knew was fake."

"How?"

He reached into the notebook. "'Cause I had the original." He pulled out a document that was several sheets long. "The reason Dad had Perry Kenner at the house that evening was because of this." He handed it to me. "Dad didn't trust Jack. He loved him, but he said he was `akin to meanness and a close cousin to downright nastiness.' So he wrote up this, which splits everything down the middle. He'd told me about it the day before. Unlike the one Jack produced, it gave me-the younger brother-managerial control of all Zuta Properties." He shook his head. "He knew Jack would never go for that. But neither Dad nor I thought he'd kill over it. My guess is that Jack stumbled upon Dad and Perry, they told him the truth, and he shot them both, then Suzanne, leaving the gun in Perry's hand. He must've stolen the bonds somewhere shortly after we exited the vault, coming up through the tunnel beneath."

"Well ... what about ..."

"One thing at a time. I got out of prison, came home, and started secretly looking for you. I knew Jack wasn't saying something, so I swam back up the drain, into the basement, and crawled up under his desk. I did that for months. Just listening. Sure enough, he slipped. Made a phone call and started talking about `moving him someplace out west where he'd disappear.' He left his office, I crawled up and inside, pressed redial, and talked to the voice on the other end of the line. It was my second break."

Mandy broke in, "And the first?"

He looked at Lorna. "The pardon. Lorna used to work in housekeeping at the governor's mansion. Worked the night shift. Responsible for the guesthouse. Seemed the governor was having more guests than his wife knew about. He started coming on to Lorna, she refused him, he started talking about firing her, so she took some pictures for safekeeping, filed them away in a safety deposit box ... and resigned to go to work with the department of corrections. Guess they had better benefits. She didn't tell me about the pictures until I'd been in prison a couple of years." He looked at her. "Still not quite sure why she pulled them out of hiding. She mailed copies off with a real sweet note and told him that William McFarland deserved a pardon. And that if he didn't get one, the next set of copies was going to his wife and the media."

I looked at Lorna, who smiled and shrugged.

Unc continued, "Next thing I knew, this big guard who was always picking on me unlocked my door and walked me outside into the clean air." He laughed. "We still got those negatives, too."

Mandy just shook her head. "Kind of a lucky break."

"I was due one." He looked back at me. "Once you got old enough, and I knew that Jack couldn't try anything even if he found out about you, I tried to tell you ... a thousand times. A man ought to know his own story. I owed you that. But you grew up with people spitting on me and screaming at me from across the street and I ... I just figured that . . . well, maybe you were better off not being related. At least on the surface. Then I got scared that if I told you, you'd get hacked, take off, and never look back."

Mandy sat up. "I'm not sure any of this will stand up in court."

He shook his head. "I'm not going back to court."

Her eyes narrowed. `Why not?"

"Don't have anything to prove."

She waved her hands across the notebook. "What about ..."

He shook his head, looking from Lorna, to me, and finally to Sketch. He sat the kid in his lap and said, "I got everything I need."

"But we can't let him get away with ..."

"Mandy, darling ..."

Mandy still had her attorney's face on. "You know, Jack's not going to just let you waltz into his office, take a few swings at him, and forget about it."

"He will when I show him this." He looked at Lorna, held out his hand, and she placed an envelope in it. He handed it to me. "Tommye wanted me to give this to you."

I slid my finger under the flap of the envelope and tore it open. I unfolded the single sheet of paper.

Unc laughed. "I'd like to see his face the next time you show up at a shareholder's meeting. He's gonna crap a brick." He looked at Sketch and put his hands over the kid's ears. "Oops, sorry. You weren't supposed to hear that."

Sketch smiled as if he'd snuck in on one of the better-kept secrets of life.

I read the letter out loud: "The Last Will and Testament of Tommye McFarland. I, Tommye Lynn McFarland, being of sound mind but infected and dying body, do hereby leave everything I own, or possess, in any way, shape, or form, to Chase Walker, formerly ... and hereafter ... known as William `Liam' Walker McFarland Jr."

On the bottom, the letter had been notarized and signed by three witnesses-a notary I did not know, Lorna, and Unc. Across the bottom she'd written in cursive, Chase/Liam, visit Dad's new vault, safety deposit box #1979 (fitting, don't you think?). Try the keys around your neck. You'll like the paper trail. You owe me. But you can pay me when you get here. I love you-T ommye.

I stared and reread the letter. "She knew? I mean, about you and me?"

"Yeah, she figured it out a long time ago. Said you had my eyes."

"Why didn't she ever say anything?"

"I asked her not to."

I thought back over our lives together. "That explains a lot."

Unc looked at Tommye's will. "I imagine he'll contest this, but ... he knows as well as I do that it's akin to a royal flush."

I interrupted him. "I thought you said you didn't like to play cards."

"I don't. But I never said I didn't know how." He shook his head. "Funny thing, too. Jack's the one who taught me."

I stared again at the birth certificate, doing the math in my head. "You mean I'm already thirty?"

"Yeah."

"I just lost two years of my life."

He looked at me, his eyes wondering. "You mad at me?"

"You mean for making me live a lifetime, wondering, not knowing ... and you keeping it a secret the entire time?" I looked out across the swamp, Tommye's grave, and the black water flowing some hundred yards away, floating out to the sea. I shook my head. "I've spent most my whole life looking down a dark driveway. Hoping to see headlights. My whole life I've envisioned my dad driving up, hopping out of his truck, and taking me home-a shiny new bike in the back. And every time my dreams lasted long enough to let me see his eyes, he had your face."

Unc-my dad-dropped his head to his chest, set the kid on the ground, and wept, his tears dripping into the black soil below.

We stood up and started walking out of the Sanctuary, Ellsworth's creation rising up all around us. Sketch walked alongside the man who'd always been my dad, holding his hand. All at once, he stopped and tugged on the hand, and Dad knelt down. Sketch's eyes narrowed, and a wrinkle appeared just above his nose. His lips grew tight, and then he opened his mouth, his neck growing red and his shoulders rising.

The vein in his neck swelled, and I could see his pulse quickening. He looked at Lorna, Mandy, me, and then the big, callused hand next to him. He gently placed his inside. Finally, a whisper cracked. "A-r-e-" He took a deep breath and spoke slowly, taking his time, making possibly the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard. "A-r-e w -e a f-a-m-i-1-y n-o-w?"

Dad scooped his little body up in his arms and pressed him to his chest. He wrapped his arms around the kid and laughed like a man who had returned from the battlefield to find his family sitting on the front porch, a yellow ribbon wrapped around every tree for a mile. Finally he wrestled the word out of his mouth. "Yes." Then he threw Sketch over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and tickled his ribs. "Yes, we are." He laughed a deep belly laugh. "And you can take that to the bank."

Mandy stopped him and looked at Sketch. "You can talk?"

He shrugged.

She put her hands on her hips. "Why didn't you?"

"D-i-d-n-t w-a-n-t t-o."

I put Sketch on my shoulders and waded back through the swamp. He sat atop me, pulled on my ears, and snatched at the fireflies buzzing around his head. When the water reached my chest, it hit me-after a lifetime of wondering, I finally knew the story of me.

Love does that. It names the nameless and gives voice to the voiceless.

-was in my office polishing my article when Red walked in and said, _ "You 'bout finished?"

I clicked SAVE, pressed PRINT, and handed it to him.

He leaned against the window that faced the jail and began reading. When he finished, he laid it on the desk and said, `Jack know about this?"

"Not yet."

He laughed. "Might catch him off guard."

"I hope it's not the last time."

He raised an eyebrow. "How you coming on that other article?"

'Which one is that?"

"The other one."

"Still missing a few pieces."

"Got any leads?"

I shrugged. "I think I know what happened, I just can't prove it."

He walked to the door. "Keep digging."

I put my computer to sleep and grabbed my keys.

'Where you going?"

"Taking my little brother fishing." I shrugged. "Well ... sort of."

"What's biting?"

"Vicky, I hope."