Forrester fell silent. He was breathing deeply, as if his monologue had exhausted him. ‘I believe Johnnie would have found the son, a son who would have been somewhat dysfunctional and out of touch. He – after all – did not have a regular kind of upbringing – born with an absentee father, losing his mother at such an early age, and then being shipped back and forth between numerous and sundry foster parents and juvenile facilities.’
‘Yes, okay,’ Annie said, eventually finding the necessary spirit to say something, anything. ‘He’s a loner, a man without a past …’
She stopped suddenly. She believed, perhaps, that she was referring in some way to herself. ‘And then this father he never knew he had shows up, and they are reunited.’
‘And the father tells him of himself, his life, shows him what he has written, and the son discovers the real reason that he was left behind,’ Forrester said. ‘The son discovers the truth about his father and Harry Rose. The son is devastated. His life, the life he thought he had, is smashed to pieces like a car crash. He understands his father’s bitterness and regret, he begins to comprehend the depth of betrayal that Harry Rose had perpetrated against them, and he knows that the money Harry took from his father was also taken from him.’
Annie frowned. ‘Surely Johnnie would be ashamed of his past?’
‘Perhaps,’ Forrester said. ‘Perhaps not. He gives his reasons in the pages he wrote. There was a lot of money, a great deal of money, and half of it belonged to Johnnie Redbird. He spent many years in Rikers himself, and then again in Mexico, and all the while Harry Rose denied him what was rightfully his … he felt his son should know the truth so they could do something about it … so they could regain their legacy. They spend time together, a time they never had, and they begin to see eye to eye. They cry together, they talk for hours, they
begin to understand that without Harry Rose their lives would have been entirely different. The son imagines how it would have been to have a father. He sees the decisions that were made, how his life has been a war zone because of this man, and he feels the pain and anguish that comes with knowing the truth.’
Annie looked at Forrester. He spoke with such passion and vehemence it scared her. ‘So perhaps they would speak to Harry Rose, go see him on Rikers Island?’ Annie suggested, glad for a moment to be speaking, to be asking and answering questions. By speaking about these things she could distance herself from them. There was a sense of disquiet that unnerved and disturbed her and she wished that something would happen to make it disappear.
Forrester shook his head. ‘Redbird could never go back to Rikers. He was an escaped felon, and though many years had passed there might still be people there who would recognize him.’
Annie was silent, and then she looked up. ‘So he sends his son?’
Forrester smiled, nodded agreeably. ‘He sends his son perhaps, yes. And the son speaks with Harry Rose to find out if there really was any money, or if Harry lied when Johnnie came to see him at his house.’
‘And Harry tells the son where the money is.’
‘Or that there is no money, that it is all gone … all of it swallowed up in attempting to defend himself and his family.’
‘His wife and his child,’ Annie said.
‘His wife and his daughter,’ Forrester replied.
‘It doesn’t say whether he had a son or a daughter in the manuscript.’
Forrester hesitated, and then nodded in affirmation. ‘You’re right Miss O’Neill, it doesn’t.’
‘So the son returns to see his father and he tells him that Harry Rose has no money.’
‘And Johnnie Redbird is incensed, angry that he has been
betrayed a third time by a man he believed to be his friend, and so he considers how he can save face, how he can hurt Harry Rose for all the wrong that has been done. And then there is another thought, that perhaps Harry is once again lying …’
‘And the son too … he wants retribution?’ Annie asked.
‘The son too,’ Forrester said. ‘The son has regained his father, but he has all these years behind him where he went without anything. No family, no roots, nothing. And then he finds out that there was something that should always have been his, and this old man in Rikers Island has denied him his birthright.’
‘But they can’t hurt Harry Rose any more … Harry Rose is in Rikers, and will be until he dies.’
‘But they can still reach someone,’ Forrester suggested.
‘Harry’s child,’ Annie said. ‘They can still get to Harry’s child, and the one thing that Harry was always afraid of was that his child might find out the truth about him.’
‘And so the son goes back to Rikers –’
‘And tells Harry that they will find the child and tell them the truth about Harry Rose, what he did and where he was … and see if Harry’s child has the money.’
‘And Harry’s child … the child who is now an adult?’
‘Will find out the truth and know that Harry Rose has been hurt in return for all the wrong he did Johnnie Redbird.’
Forrester smiled. ‘Not only that the father has been hurt, but the father was a crazy man, a killer just like Johnnie Redbird, and is now spending the rest of his life on Rikers Island. The child will find the father, but even as he is found the child realizes that everything they ever imagined was a lie.’
Forrester paused, breathed deeply. ‘It seems possible, does it not? Perhaps even possible that Johnnie’s son found some way to hurt Harry’s child, something deep and meaningful?’
Annie nodded, but felt uncomfortable. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but nothing came out.
She sat forward in her chair. She felt the power of the story, and the way Forrester had concluded it seemed to serve the ends of justice. Johnnie Redbird had been a bad, crazy man, but in his own way Harry Rose had made decisions that were just as bad, just as crazy, and in some ways had been the worst of them. He had given his word, and then he had broken it. Annie tried her best to see it as something separate, something disconnected from herself, but there was a feeling of invasion, emotional and mental invasion, that she could not shake off. She shuddered perceptibly. She wished she was elsewhere. She
truly
wished she was elsewhere.
‘So you see,’ Forrester said, ‘there was some sense of justice in the end, was there not? Johnnie Redbird’s son found Harry Rose’s child, and though he searched he found no money. But sometimes the knowledge that the scales have been balanced is worth more than all the gold of El Dorado.’ Forrester raised his hand, again with that small theatrical flourish. He had concluded something.
Annie sat quietly for a moment. Her mind felt empty.
‘And now you want to know about your father,’ Forrester said.
Annie nodded. She tried to say something, but already there was an indescribable tension in her throat.
Forrester smiled. ‘Perhaps you would be so kind,’ he said, and lifted his coffee cup.
Annie took his cup and walked out back to the kitchen. She went through the motions automatically, saw her hands preparing the coffee, but her mind and her heart were back there in the store waiting for what Forrester would tell her. Everything went in to slow-motion. Everything was quiet. At last she held the refilled cup in her hand and was walking back the way she’d come. The distance between the kitchen and the store had never seemed so long. She set the cup down on the table and took her seat once more.
‘Your father,’ Forrester said, ‘was a brilliant man in his own way. There were many people who did not easily understand
him, why he was the way he was, but a lot of his idiosyncrasies were down to his background, the things that had happened to him early in his life.’
‘Things?’ Annie asked. ‘What things?’
Forrester shook his head, waved his hand dismissively. ‘He was a man of passion perhaps, strong-willed, not afraid to fight for what he believed in. A man of principle …’
Forrester paused. He lifted the coffee cup and took a sip. He set the cup down, withdrew his hand, and then he reached for it once more and turned the handle towards himself.
Annie felt the tension rising, a band of steel in her chest.
‘And he was an engineer, as I said before, but no ordinary kind of engineer.’
Annie frowned.
‘He engineered life Miss O’Neill, made things happen. He had ideas, and then he brought them to life.’
Annie shook her head. She was beginning to understand something, something she knew she didn’t want to understand.
Forrester was quiet for a time. He reached up and buttoned his shirt, tightened his tie, and then he leaned forward with his fingers steepled together. ‘There was a dark side to your father, and when you believed you understood what he might do he would do exactly the opposite. He was possessed by different moods at different times, but there was always something behind everything he did that was known only to himself. Your father had a remarkable ability to hide inside himself, to let no-one inside, and that – perhaps that alone – was the reason he finally lost.’
Annie frowned, ill-at-ease. The conversation was once again taking a turn that she neither understood nor felt comfortable with. ‘Lost?’
‘Lost,’ Forrester stated matter-of-factly.
‘Lost what?’
‘His wife, your mother … and you.’
The tension in Annie now was suffocating. It seemed
difficult to breathe, as though the air had become suddenly thicker, fluid almost.
‘But he died,’ Annie said. ‘He died back in 1979 … why do you say he lost us? We were the ones who lost him.’
Forrester reached inside his jacket pocket. From it he produced an envelope. He held it in his hand as if to let it go would be the end of him.
‘I have a picture here,’ he said. ‘A picture that perhaps may interest you.’
‘A picture?’
Forrester nodded. ‘A picture of Harry Rose.’
Annie shook her head. She was confused. She
needed
to know about her father, and yet even as Forrester was speaking she knew what was coming, she knew it in her heart of hearts, and she was fighting it all the way.
Forrester opened the envelope, and took out a small grainy monochrome snapshot. He held it for a moment, as if weighing it, and then he slid it across the table towards Annie.
Annie stared down at the photograph, a photograph that showed a fair-haired man standing proudly with a small child in his arms.
‘This is Harry Rose?’ Annie asked.
Forrester nodded, smiled benignly, as if he were granting a Papal indulgence to the moment. A special moment.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly, and his voice was like a whisper.
He leaned backwards, and when Annie looked up there was an expression on his face she hadn’t seen before. An expression of completeness.
‘And this child?’ she asked.
‘Is Harry’s daughter,’ Forrester said.
‘His daughter?’ Annie asked, her voice registering confusion and dismay.
Forrester smiled again. ‘Yes, that is his daughter.’
‘And he’s on Rikers Island?’
‘He is, yes … and all these years he was housed in a cell in the west wing of the penitentiary, a wing owned and run by
the Italian families.’ Forrester smiled as if sharing something special and unique. ‘So much so that it was often referred to as the Cicero Hotel.’
Annie stared at Forrester, and somewhere inside her a feeling grew, a feeling of being twisted up from within by some unseen hand.
‘And the girl … the little girl?’ she said, and tears were welling in her eyes, and the sense of breathlessness in her chest was enough to suffocate her right where she sat.
Forrester paused. He breathed in and out slowly, as if letting something go. ‘The little girl,’ he said.
‘The little girl is all grown up now,’ Annie said, tears rolling down her face, her vision blurred, her hands shaking uncontrollably.
‘She is.’
‘And her name?’ Annie asked, her voice trembling, tears filling her eyes.
‘Her name?’ Forrester echoed. ‘Her name Miss O’Neill … is Annie.’
Forrester smiled. He bowed his head.
Annie O’Neill, a wave of indescribable anguish overwhelming her for a second, dropped the photograph, sensed it as if in slow-motion as it made its way to the floor, and then tried to rise from her chair.
She could not stand, she had neither the will nor the strength.
Forrester reached out his hand, and closing it around her forearm he pulled her down into a seated position once more.
‘Sit,’ he said quietly, his voice almost a whisper. His hand tightened on her wrist. She could feel the blood-flow constricting.
Annie looked at him, this Robert Forrester, this man she had trusted, a man who had walked into her life promising some sense of understanding, some sense of equilibrium, and even now had torn everything out from beneath her.
‘Your father took my life away,’ Forrester whispered. ‘He
cheated me, he betrayed me time and time again … and whoever you may have imagined him to be he was something else entirely. He was a thief and a murderer and a traitor. He was a man who professed to have principles and honor, but he was a common criminal.’
Annie opened her mouth to speak. She could barely breathe. The tears that filled her eyes now rolled in fat lazy streaks down her face.
‘You know as much about him as I do,’ Forrester said, ‘and though I wrote these things for my own son, I also wrote them for you, so you would know, so you would understand what kind of person Frank O’Neill really was.’
No
, Annie was mouthing, the word audible inside her head, but from her lips nothing.
No … no … no … no
…
‘Yes Miss O’Neill, and yes again and again and again. Frank O’Neill was an evil man. And now you know, now you feel what I felt when he turned his back on me to let me die a little more each day on Rikers Island.’
She started to mouth the word
But
…
Forrester shook his head. ‘But nothing Miss O’Neill. You are the daughter of a truly worthless man. And my son –’
Forrester paused, smiled to himself. ‘My son understands who your father is also, and he hates you for what you are.’
Annie’s eyes widened. She did not want to understand what was happening.