Authors: Elizabeth Adler
On one of the remote farms he met a widow, a woman fifteen years older than himself. She was tall and thin and flat-chested and not his style, with hair already graying at the sides and faded blue eyes with crinkles at the corners from peering out at the endless flat wheat fields she owned, all the way to the horizon. Hundreds and hundreds of rich acres, as Boy was quick to notice. The farmhouse was weathered gray clapboard like all the others, and when he came calling his first task was painting the white trim.
“I like to keep things nice around here, even with Ethen long gone,” the woman said proudly. “I have no sons and I still run this farm myself. Ethen, my husband, was caught in the grainstore, y’know. He was up the ladder shoveling it down the chute when something got stuck and he jumped down onto the grain to see what had happened. And that whole mountain of grain just slid right over him, burying him. It was a week afore we found where he was, and the grain was ruined by then.”
Boy stared at her, imaging the decomposing body in the grain.
“He shoulda known better,” she commented grimly.
As the weeks passed she gave him more and more tasks to do—cleaning the machinery, helping with the plowing and the fertilizing, grooming the horses, cleaning the storage barns. Gradually Boy realized she did not want to let him go. She was a rich lonely widow and she liked having him around.
“You’re better company than the usual farmhands,” she said, offering him, a cold beer at the kitchen table with his dinner of fried chicken and grits. “How’d y’like to stay on permanent, as my manager?”
Their eyes met across the table and Boy knew that all
these acres of wheat fields and this farmhouse and all it contained, including Amelia Jane Ekhardt, were his for the taking. All he had to do was ask.
He thought about it and six weeks later he proposed marriage. The ceremony was performed at the nearest town without invited guests. Boy found his husbandly duty tiresome, but Amelia liked it well enough and she didn’t expect too much anyway. As master of the house, he shared her bedroom and strode his acres, and his dinner was set, steaming hot on the table, every night at five-thirty, with a bottle of beer to wash it down.
A few months later, when he could no longer stand the monotony of the daily routine and the boredom of the open plains, he cleaned out Amelia’s bank account of several thousand dollars and hopped the train to Chicago. He bought himself a fine suit of clothes and took a room at the grandest hotel and inquired where the best women and the nearest poker game could be found. With money in his pocket, he aimed to become a gambling man, but he wasn’t clever enough to beat the real pros and was soon reduced to zero again. He hocked his fine clothes and, back in the nondescript hobo’s outfit of worn jacket and pants, hit the road again.
And all the time, the knowledge of who he was and what might have been burned like acid into his brain. Every night, he sat hunched over a makeshift fire with a bottle of the cheapest hooch to ease the pain in his soul and the hunger in his belly, remembering the stories the Sheridan women had told him. Of how his mother was the daughter of a rich and titled Irishman whose family owned vast estates. Of how she had abandoned him because she was too young and too hurt to take care of him herself, though she had always sent money for his keep. Of how she never wanted to see him.
Boy had checked out the facts of the matter. He had gone to the library in Boston and found a volume of
Burke’s Peerage,
which revealed what they said was true. Since then he had asked himself the same question a thousand
times over: was he not entitled to his share of all those rich Irish acres? And the money? And maybe even the title too? It had been easy to find his mother’s whereabouts and he had gone there intending to confront her, but she had refused to see him and threatened him with the police. And since he’d had stolen money in his pockets he could not afford a run-in with the law.
But there was something else that burned him even more than that: it was the memory of her other son standing on the fine staircase in their grand house, asking him coolly who he was, as though he had no right to be there, and the fact that that kid was lord and master instead of him.
Shivering around those makeshift bonfires on icy winter nights when the wind cut right through a man, in company with other derelicts and drunks and the dregs of society down on their luck, Boy promised himself vengeance on them one day, and he knew just how to do it.
It happened that Boy found himself back in Boston the first semester Liam was at Harvard. He was broke and even in the slums he was dirtier and shabbier than most. He spent his nights in a charity hostel where they gave him a bowl of soup for his supper, and tea and bread for breakfast and a few coins in his pocket to get him through the day and on to his next destination.
In the refined streets and squares of Beacon Hill, he stood out like a sore thumb. Watchful eyes noticed him loitering along Mount Vernon Street and reported the matter to the police, and he found himself hustled into a paddy wagon, so named for the many Irish policemen. He was thrust into a cell and allowed to cool his heels and his temper for a couple of days, and then allowed out with a warning to stay away from Beacon Hill and get the hell out of town.
Instead he drifted back to Beacon Hill and robbed at knifepoint a smart grocery store called Daniel’s. It was easy; people didn’t expect things like that to happen in places like Beacon Hill, and he got away with over four
hundred dollars. He fled across the Charles River to Cambridge, where he bought himself some clothes, had his hair cut short, and shaved off his mustache. He rented a cheap room on Massachusetts Avenue and went back over the bridge to Beacon Hill and Mount Vernon Street again. This time no one seemed to notice him and he was able to observe the daily comings and goings of his mother, and also of her son.
The first really big fight Liam had with his mother was about whether he should be allowed to live on campus like the other students, or whether he should go home to Beacon Hill every night, the way she wanted. Lily had stormed and wept, saying if he loved her he would never leave her all alone. She reminded him of how much she had given up for him, and how hard it had been for her to let him attend boarding school.
In the end he had given her the choice: he would stay home with her and not go to college, or else he would go to college and live on campus. She had been forced to give in but she never let him forget it, and she was always coming around, bringing unwanted home treats and offering unwanted advice. The only respite came when she went to New York.
Liam understood that despite her charity work, she was an unfulfilled, lonely woman. She was forty-six, still youthful-looking and very beautiful, and he wished she would meet some nice man and get married and be happy. Then maybe she would let him get on with his own life. But he knew it was unlikely; Lily seemed uninterested in men.
Finn still visited him as often as he could; they were good friends, though his mother still didn’t know it. He was meeting him at a cafe on Harvard Square that night and he was running late. He was hurrying down Dunster when he became aware that he was being followed. It was a moonless night with black ice glinting on the sidewalks and long stretches of darkness in between the spluttering gas lamps. Thinking it must be a fellow student, Liam slowed down to see who it was.
Finn had grown tired of standing around in the cold and he was walking from the other end of Dunster to meet him. He saw Liam turn and look behind him and then stop and talk to someone, but he was too far away to see who it was.
“Wait a minute,” the stranger called.
Liam peered at the stranger as he came closer to the pool of lamplight. There was something familiar about him, but he couldn’t quite remember what.
“Hello, brother,” the stranger said. “I told you I would be back.”
Then he recalled the night, years ago, when an unknown boy had come to their house. “Good-bye, brother,” he had called as he left, and somehow it had stuck in his memory. And now he had just called him “brother” again.
“What do you want? And why do you call me ‘brother’?”
“What do I want? Why, to talk to you, of course. And why do I call you brother? Why, because we have the same mother, Liam. Mrs. Lily Porter Adams, the former Lily Molyneux.”
Liam’s thin young face flamed with fury. “Don’t you dare even mention my mother’s name, or I shall call the police.”
Boy grabbed Liam’s arms and twisted them behind his back; then he pressed a knife against his ribs. “That’s what your family always does, isn’t it, when there’s something they don’t want to hear, or someone they don’t want to see? Send for the police and have them removed. Well, you can’t have me removed now, brother, so you will just have to listen to what I have to say. Even if you don’t like it. And you might as well know your mother is my mother all right, only she abandoned me in Nantucket after the shipwreck. When I was born she left me there, like so much unwanted baggage, and took herself off to better things. To Mr. John Porter Adams and the good life. Which you, dear brother, so far have had sole enjoyment of. Only now I am back and I intend to claim my share.”
The knife nicked Liam’s flesh and he felt the blood begin
to trickle. He wondered, terrified, how Boy knew so much about his family. But it wasn’t true about his mother and he’d kill him for saying such a thing.
“You cheap bastard,” he roared, pushing Boy away. The knife clattered to the ground between them and they both stared at it.
Boy grinned menacingly at Liam. “Go on, brother,” he whispered. “I dare you. Pick it up and then let’s see the best man win.”
But before Liam could move, he grabbed the knife. He was through with talking. He stared at Liam. He just wanted to cut out all those years of hate. And he thrust the knife into him, again and again.
Finn ran the last few yards. He brought his stick down hard on Boy’s hands. Boy howled with pain, staring at his broken fingers, and then, spitting curses and insults, he leapt for his attacker’s throat. Finn whacked his silver-topped malacca cane down on Boy’s skull. There was a sickening crack, like a cue striking a billiard ball, and Boy fell stunned to the sidewalk.
Finn saw the blood seeping through Liam’s clothes and he groaned. He took off his overcoat and covered him, and then he removed his jacket and made a cushion for his head. He ran to the end of the street and told some passersby to get help, then he ran back to Liam. He had only been gone a few minutes but when he got back the would-be assassin had disappeared. He cradled Liam in his arms, tears trickling down his face. “Dear God,” he prayed, “don’t let him die. He’s so young. And I’ve only just found him.”
The ambulance came and took Liam to the hospital, where he was sent immediately to the operating room. The surgeon told Finn that he had multiple stab wounds and that he must operate right away. Finn told the police what had happened and they sent for Liam’s mother.
Lily flung through the door, wild-eyed with fear. She stopped dead when she saw Finn.
“I’m sorry, Lily,” he said gently. “Liam is still in the
operating room. There is no news yet. It’s lucky I was there to help him.”
“You
helped my son?” She sank into a chair, her eyes wide with disbelief.
“Don’t forget who he is, Lily. I care as much as you do.”
“How can you care?” she cried. “You don’t even know him. I brought him up. I’m the one who cares, I’m the one who loves him, I saw him through all the childhood illnesses, saw that he got good grades. I’m the one who’s always been there for him.” She glared murderously at him. “How dare you suggest that you
care
as much as I do?
That boy is my life.
”
She paced the corridor, terrified. “Who was it?” she cried. “Where is he? I’ll kill him myself. Oh, why, why.
Why
did he do it?”
“Maybe he was a thief. Maybe he demanded money and Liam refused to give it to him.”
Lily stared at him suspiciously. “And you just happened to be there, walking up Dunster. Just as Liam was walking down. That’s a remarkable coincidence, Finn. A bit
too
remarkable, it seems to me.”
He shrugged. “Just luck, I guess. But this is not the time or the place to be picking up our old fight. Let us just think of Liam.”
They sat silently opposite each other, waiting. Half an hour later the surgeon came to tell them that a deep stab wound had collapsed Liam’s right lung. Another had penetrated the abdomen, thankfully missing the vital organs, though it had caused severe internal bleeding. They had done what they could: now it was up to Liam.
He said they could see him for a few moments and they stood on either side of him, staring at his ashen face. He looked so young and so vulnerable, like a child again, Lily thought sadly. “Sleep well, my darling,” she said, bending to kiss him.
Finn took her home to Mount Vernon Street and she invited him in. “I think we have a few things to discuss,” she said.
They sat in John’s library on either side of the dying fire, looking at each other, both of them remembering the night when he had come here to see her under the pretext of speaking to John, and remembering how their love affair had begun.
She rested her head against the cool dark-red leather of the wing chair, watching as Finn poured glasses of brandy.
“Drink it,” he said. “You will feel better.”
“I want to know why you were meeting my son,” she said.
He sighed. “We have known each other for some time. We are, I suppose, good friends.”
Her face was the color of the ashes in the grate. “And why do you choose to be friends with him now? After all these years?”
“He is my son too.”
She looked at him sadly. “Did you ever stop to think of what might have been? Don’t you remember when I told you I was pregnant? Can you really not recall what happened, what you said, what you did that night? You disowned your son, Finn. You gave up all rights to him. You said he was not yours and that no one could ever prove he was. Well, let me tell you now, Finn, that what you said was the truth. Liam is John Porter Adams’s son and no one can ever prove he isn’t. You forfeited any claim to him that night. I am his mother and you will never get him away from me, even if I am forced to tell him the truth.” She stood up and walked to the door. “And now you can leave my house, and my life, and my son. I never want to see you again.”