You Only Get So Much (25 page)

Chapter 52

"You scared the
hell out of my wife with that stunt," Alex says.

It's 5:25 a.m. The house
is quiet. We're inside the kitchen. It's decorated with chickens from the
wallpaper to the copper statues above the cabinets. Pictures of roosters and
hen houses adorn every open space. Dusty knickknacks are set about the room,
giving it an unnecessarily claustrophobic feel.

Alex hands me a cup of
coffee. There's a picture of a chicken on it, go figure.

"Sorry about
that," I say.

"She said someone
was watching the place, so I had to get off shift early and come see what she
was going on about," he says. "And then to see it was you? Well,
that's just peaches."

"Sorry I
inconvenienced you—Frank," I say, emphasizing the fake name.
"But I think you owe me, so let's not call it even, just yet, OK?"

"I owe you? What
kind of bull are you pitching? I don't owe you anything."

He sits down at the
kitchen table, which ironically is set up exactly like his mother's house in
Minnesota.

He continues.

 
"Did you get your daughter out of
lock up?" he asks.

"Yes, and I appreciate
that."

"Then I don't owe
you nothing," he says.

"How about the
truth? It's bad enough I've got to deal with Jane's lies—sorry Esther
Mae's lies. But you had no reason to lie to me."

He gives a silent
chuckle.

"Sounds like you've
met my mom then. Nobody but me and Mom called her Esther Mae," he says.

"Why'd you tell me
you were Frank and not just explain who you were from the beginning?" I
ask.

"I don't appreciate
you being here," he says. "I said I didn't want to see you again and
I meant it. You think you know everything, but you don't. You married someone
who I didn't know. Let me say that again—I didn't know Jane. When she
left us in Minnesota, she was Esther Mae. My sweet, but troubled sister. I
can't explain her actions after that. Whether she's Jane or Lisa or anyone
else—it ain't my job to explain her because I can't."

"I don't need you
to explain her," I say, forcing down the frustration in my voice. "I
want you to explain yourself. "

"You know, it's not
as simple as you make it out to be," he says. "And I don't like you
coming around here causing me trouble. I told you that in Spokane. I was going
to talk to you one time and then you'd never see me again. What part of that
was confusing for you? Why can't you just leave it alone?"

The possible answers to
that question could fill a blue notebook.

"Alex, let me ask
you something. Let's say your wife disappears tonight—"

"Is that a
threat?"

"Um, no. Relax. If
your wife all of a sudden disappears, do you think you'd just
leave it alone
as you suggested? Or would you do everything in your power to find her and find
out why she disappeared?"

"It's not the
same," he says.

"You're goddamned
right, it's not the same and you know it. Now you're sitting here caught in
your lies and telling me I don't deserve some answers?"

"You're a stubborn
S.O.B aren't you?"
 
He rubs
the top of his forehead and places his elbows on the table.

After a moment he says,
"Follow me."

*
* *

The basement is dark
with old paneling and a low ceiling. On the right we pass a laundry room that
smells of dryer sheets and mildew. On the left is a family room of some sort
that is overrun with junk piled on furniture and scattered about the
floor.
 
It's a trash heap that
obviously doesn't get used by the family.

At the end of the hall,
Alex dials numbers into a combination lock that opens a latch on a solid wood
door. He steps into the dark room, but I hang back wondering if this might be
Alex's secret murder room or something crazy like that. I imagine the walls
being covered in plastic sheets and a set of butcher knives sitting on a silver
tray. Needless to say I have very little trust in Alex at this point.

Alex yanks a cord
hanging from a bare bulb and dim light fills the large room.

"I lock it so the
boys don't come down here and hurt themselves," he says.

The oblong shaped room
is a woodshop, not a crime scene. A large chop saw sits on finely oiled
counters. Numerous woodworking tools are neatly organized on pegboards next to
cabinets with intricate carved designs. The craftsmanship of the room is
beautiful and a stark contrast to the rest of the home.

Alex pulls a wooden
crate out from a cubbyhole under the counter.

"I can't tell you
about my sister, because I don't know anything," he says, handing me the
crate.

Inside the crate are
neatly stacked, but opened silver envelopes, just like the one's Ella stashed
in her kitchen drawer back in Minnesota. Each envelope is the same size, all of
them opened at the top.

"Look," he
says, nodding to the crate.

He sets the crate down
and pulls out an envelope. Empty. I grab another. Empty. I take out several
more, realizing that they all must be empty.

"I don't
understand," I say.

"I didn't either
for a long time," he says. "Look at the return addresses. See
anything familiar?"

I flip through the
envelopes and nearly choke on my own breath when I see it. The addresses are of
all the places Jane and I lived together. That ratty apartment after college.
That first house we rented that smelled like cats. The house we bought together
and had Aspen in. There were other addresses too, ones I didn't recognize.

"I started to get
those empty envelopes a few years after Esther Mae left Minnesota. I'd already
moved out of Mom's by then too. At first I thought they were some kind of mistake,
but when several started arriving on my birthday each year, I just figured they
were from her. They were always empty. No note. Nothing in them. It tore me up
inside. Every few months I'd get another. Like she was calling for me, but
didn't know what to say. I guess that was part of her bipolar, but it was more
than just that. That alone isn't enough to explain her."

"You didn't think
to just go to the address and see her? She told you where she was," I say.

"Good thinking,
smart guy. Yes, I did. In fact more than once I made the trip to Spokane to see
her."

I can see the tears well
up in his eyes, even in the dimly lit room. He takes several deep breaths.

"She acted like she
didn't know me each time. I went right up to the front door. She answered, holding
your little girl—"

He stops for a minute to
compose himself.

"She thought I was
a selling something. Like she didn't even recognize me. I know people. I can
read them. I deal with liars and con men as a guard in that prison every day. I
know when someone is trying to pull one over on me. And I can honestly tell you
that she did not know who I was. No idea."

"But you told her,
right?"

"Yes, of course.
She just said, 'sorry, you must be mistaken. I don't have a brother.' I called
her Esther Mae, that's when she said her name was Jane. I tried to argue with
her, but she was so calm and sure of herself. I even questioned
myself—could I have the wrong person? Why would this woman send me empty
envelopes?"

"When was
this?" I ask.

"Aspen was just a
baby."

"When did the
envelopes stop coming?" I ask.

"They never really
stopped, there was just a two-year gap in between them, which I now know is
when she transformed again."

"Transformed?"
I ask.

"When she turned
into another person—Lisa, but then they started again a few years later
when she moved to Port Orchard."

And now it starts to
make sense. Well, not make sense, but I understand what she'd
done—repeatedly. She transformed into someone else. She didn't fake her
death, she simply became another person. She was Esther Mae as a kid and left
home to become Jane—the woman I fell in love with who tragically died in
a fire. Then she became Lisa, who lived with a woman she knew—her Aunt
Ella, before leaving again and moving to Port Orchard and having a relationship
with Frank, before drowning in a river—

My train of thought
whips in another direction.

"Did she really die
in that river?" I ask.

Chapter 53

After everything I've
been through. Every trick. Jane and Aspen's deaths and quasi-resurrection. The
discovery of Grandma Ella. After all that, I never truly considered that Jane
was actually still alive—alive again I mean.

"You have to tell
me," I plead. "Did she die in that river or not?"

"I don't
know," Alex says and I believe him. He's hurting just like me, I can see
it in his eyes. "The letters stopped a few months before she
drowned."

"What aren't you
telling me then?" I ask.

He takes a deep breath
and runs his hand along the wood-working bench.

"I don't think
she's gone," he says. "This is exactly what she did last time after
the fire in New York. She went silent for a couple years, then started up again
somewhere else."

"You know she was
with your mom in Minnesota, right?" I ask.

"Yes, that's why I refuse
to talk to my mother. I haven't seen Mom in years and have no desire to see
her. I didn't know Esther Mae stayed there until after she went to Port
Orchard. Mom kept it from me. She also refuses to confront Esther Mae about her
actions."
  

"She's an
enabler," I say.

"In the truest
form, yes."

"Did you go see
Esther Mae—Jane—in Port Orchard?" I ask.

"Yes, but there's
more to it. This is why I made up a story, I'm sorry. I just wanted to get
Libby some help and to get her back to you. I didn't want to get involved and I
didn't know Libby at all. She of course, didn't know me either, so I couldn't
exactly go talk to her. And if I had have told you who I really was, and that I
was chasing some woman who I knew was my sister, a woman who acts as if she totally
doesn't know me, then you wouldn't have believed me anyway. I couldn't
win."

"You should have
just told me the truth," I say, attempting to shame him.

"You would have
spit in my face. You practically did anyway."

He's right. I would
have.

"I went to Port
Orchard," he says. "She put Frank's address on the envelope. I tried
to talk to her; but again, she just acted like she didn't know me. Practically
called the cops on me. I saw Aspen and only by chance learned her name was
Libby. She had a friend over at the house and she called her name. Otherwise I
never would have thought to look her up."

"Look her up? What
do you mean?"

"That girl looks
just like her mom—the girl I remember when we were kids. I knew it was
her, my niece. I prayed that she didn't have whatever mental disorder it was
that Esther Mae had. I didn't want her to be alone because her mom decided to
be a different person. And I was right."

"What did you
do?"

"I'm no
investigator, but I looked up Frank's address and found out what school district
the house was in. The school wouldn't tell me anything about a girl named Aspen
or Libby, so I tried something else. I called the teacher who served as the
yearbook advisor and pretended to pitch another company to print the school
yearbook. When she told me the name of the actual printer they used, it was
easy. I just ordered a new copy sent here."

Alex hands me a black
South Kitsap High School yearbook with a plastic cover. One of the pages was
tabbed with a yellow Post-It note. I turned to the tabbed page and saw it was
the T section. Halfway down the page was a picture of my daughter—listed
as Libby Taylor.

"There was nothing
I could do for Libby. She was stuck with her mom and I didn't know anything
about their relationship except that my sister was unstable. So I created an
online search alert for Libby and several variations of Lisa Taylor. Anytime
those names appeared online, I'd get an email. The Lisa Taylor name was a dead
end, because the name was so common. I couldn't follow all the alerts. I sifted
through the emails every day, but if there was one about her drowning in the
river, or an obituary, I didn't see it. Like I said, I'm no investigator. I'm
trying to live my life here too—raise my family."

"Trust me, I
understand," I say, for the first time actually realizing how difficult
this must have been on Alex too.

"So, when Libby was
arrested, I saw her name in an online search email. Since I work for the
Corrections Department here in Colorado, I called in a few favors and got the
details of her arrest in Washington. That's when I knew it was her and that I
needed to get her some help."

"Wait, so how did
you know to find me? And why didn't you do it before?"

"Billy, you've got
to believe me, I thought that this whole elaborate story wouldn't make a lick
of sense if I tried to explain it. And that maybe I was the one with mental
issues—like I was losing it. My wife accused me of cheating. She thought
I was having an affair with a woman I met online for God's sake. Imagine having
to explain this."

"Trust me, I
understand," I commiserate.

"I traced the real
estate records for the addresses on Jane's Spokane envelopes. Your name was on
them too. I tried to find you, but only after she went to Minnesota. Honestly.
Maybe not very hard at first."

And he wouldn't have
been able to find me anyhow, because I was hiding in Montana.

"I believe
you," I say.

"So—and I
already told you this, because it's the truth—I saw your name on your
father's obituary and I went to the funeral months before Libby was arrested. I
just wanted to see you and find out if you were the reason that my sister ran.
I know now that it was all her, not you."

"You showed me a
picture of you and her in a big semi-truck," I say. "That's what convinced
me that you were telling the truth that night," I say.

"I know. I'm sorry.
But you saw what you wanted to see. That really was a picture of her and the
real Frank. He had on a hat and it was blurry. All you needed was a little
encouragement to believe me. That blurry photograph of her was enough. If you
would have looked closer—and I'm sure you weren't looking at
him—you would have seen that Frank and I look nothing alike. But you were
focused on her, understandably."

Alex takes out another
crate from under the cabinet and pulls a file folder, then hands me the same
photograph he showed me at the diner. It's Jane and another man—the real
Frank—leaning out the window of a semi-truck.

"I swiped it from
Frank's truck, when I went to Port Orchard."

"Did you know the
real Frank?"

"Not really, he
came out when I knocked on their door wondering why I was bugging his
girlfriend," Alex says. "He was a good guy I think, just like you. He
got fooled too. It wasn't his fault."

My head is spinning. But
Alex's explanation fills in all the gaps. He'd been trying to connect with her
for years and she'd tease him by sending him these stupid, empty silver
envelopes. She acted like they were strangers. Instead of telling me the whole
story, he did the one thing that would do some good—reconnected me to
Libby. I don't agree with how he did it, but I understand why.

His explanation doesn't
tell me why she did the things she did. And I don't know the reason, but
knowing that her behavior was a pattern is somewhat comforting to me. That it
wasn't me who drove her away—at least not completely. She had it inside
her to run away. She'd done it before and likely did it again.

I'm drained. My brain is
exhausted. I can see the same feeling on Alex's face. I'm not sure why, but I
reach out and embrace him. Two men, hugging it out. Victims of the same game.
His sister. My wife. A total stranger to both of us.

I'm not perfect and I
know it. I have flaws and issues, but I didn't do this. I didn't send my wife
away. Alex didn't send away his sister and Frank didn't send away his
girlfriend. She did it on her own.

It wasn't my fault. I
couldn't have been expected to know that I was being duped because—if I'm
to believe Alex's theory—Jane herself didn't even know it.

I take a breath and
wonder, is she out there somewhere? Who is she today?
 
Truthfully, I really don't care anymore. I won't let her
impact who I am anymore, even if it hurts.