A Future and a Hope

by David Mathews

  The color drained from John’s face. His eyes flashed anger for a split second, but then he continued without breaking character. “I . . . I don’t understand what you mean. I’ve done everything I could to assist you and your family. I sent the obituary and death certificate to your father. And I gave him the burial details.” He feigned concern. “You did visit the gravesite, didn’t you? I can only imagine how painful that trip must have been. I wanted to be there to meet you, but I thought you might want to be alone as a family. You know, to grieve in private.”

  Caleb felt like punching the man in the mouth. That wicked mouth that spewed forth lie after lie. It was obvious that John Smith had plenty of experience in the art of deception. His eyes narrowed, and his voice became like steel. “You can cut the act right now. You know full well that Ellie isn’t lying there in Woodlawn at all. She’s alive! You want to know how I know that? Because I saw her downtown on Wednesday afternoon, and I saw her again this morning.”

  John’s face turned ashen, and his hands trembled. But the act wasn’t over yet. “I . . . I don’t know why you would say such a thing,” he stammered. “I wish she were here as much as you do.” He feigned suspicion. “Why did you really come here? Are you here for revenge? Do you want some kind of compensation for your pain and suffering? Are you trying to extort money from me?”

  “I’m here for one purpose and one purpose only.” Caleb took a step toward the man. “To hear the truth from you so I can find out what you’ve done to Ellie. Those documents you sent my father were fakes. And so was that marker. The cemetery office confirmed that Ellie never was in Woodlawn!”

  John’s eyes narrowed, and he stared angrily at Caleb. His demeanor changed again. “Is this some kind of cruel hoax you’re trying to pull on me? Telling me Ellie’s still alive? You must be crazy. I was going to ignore your accusations and chalk them up as coming from someone who’s been under a lot of stress and not thinking clearly. But now you’re slandering me as the one perpetrating the hoax.” He picked up the groceries. “Leave me alone to grieve in peace.” Pushing past Caleb, he hurried up the steps to the front door of 1C.

  Caleb bounded up the steps after him. “Hey, you’re not gonna brush me off any longer. I’m not going away until you tell me what I need to know!”

  Any traces of civility vanished. John set down the bags and fumbled for the keys to the apartment. His eyes were daggers. “You’re trespassing, kid,” he hissed. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get back on your high horse and ride out of here!”

  Caleb didn’t back down. “I came here for the truth, and I’m not leaving without it.”

  The man’s teeth and fists were clenched. “You’ll leave now, or you’ll go away with something else you hadn’t planned on.” He turned and managed to open the apartment door.

  Caleb’s anger flared. He stepped forward and grabbed the man’s arm. “Don’t you walk away from me, you lying coward!”

  Without warning, John’s right fist connected with Caleb’s left eye. Caleb staggered backward and nearly tumbled down the cement steps. Stunned and seeing stars, he doubled over and put a hand to his face. When he straightened up, John was standing in the doorway, cell phone in hand. “Like I said, boy, you’re trespassing. One more step and I call nine-one-one.”

  Caleb decided to call his bluff.

  With clenched fists, he stepped onto the stoop toward the man just inside the threshold. John quickly punched in the numbers.

  Caleb heard the phone dialing and the emergency dispatcher’s voice. “9-1-1. What’s your emergency?”

  John glared maliciously at Caleb as he responded to the question. This time, he played the part of the helpless victim. “Elmwood Village Apartments, 4391 West Cannondale Avenue, apartment one C,” he spoke rapidly, fearfully, breathlessly. “I was just attacked by a stranger. He followed me from my car out front and jumped me on the porch as I was trying to open the door!”

  The dispatcher said something unintelligible to Caleb.

  “I’m in my apartment now. I was able to fight him off long enough to get inside, but he’s still out there. I think he’s crazy or high on something. He’s got a wild look in his eyes and I think he’s going to try and kick my front door in. Please hurry!” John placed a hand over his phone, and cursed Caleb in a low tone. It was more like the hiss of a rattlesnake than a human voice.

  “I told you you’d be taking something home with you that you hadn’t planned on. Now, if you don’t leave right away, you won’t be leaving Atlanta at all for a very long time!”

  Caleb returned John’s icy glare, and with balled fists responded with a threat of his own. “This isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”

  He turned and deliberately walked slowly down the steps. At the curb he turned and looked back over his shoulder. There was an evil grin on the man’s face.

  Caleb fired a parting shot. “You’ll be hearing from me again. You can count on it!”

  Then he crossed the street and got into his car. He drove to the turn-around and headed back west. John Smith was still standing in the doorway, his phone in his hand, and his groceries on the stoop. In a final act of defiance, Caleb’s Camaro left two long, black streaks on the pavement in front of apartment 1C. In the distance, he could hear sirens approaching.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  GETTING TO KNOW YOU

  “I GUESS I WASN’T THINKING clearly.” Caleb stood in the middle of his parents’ living room with palms up.

  His mother left her position in the doorway and took a seat on the sofa. His father lowered his head slightly, arched his right eyebrow, and stared at his son over the top of his black-rimmed readers.

  Caleb remembered that look well. He could guarantee what was coming next.

  “The better statement might be, ‘I guess I wasn’t thinking . . . period.” His father shook his head. “Son, I can’t believe you confronted him. You took an awful chance by going over there.”

  Caleb pursed his lips and hung his head. “Yeah, I know. I guess it was a pretty stupid decision on my part.”

  His mother spoke from her seated position on the sofa. “I’m grateful nothing worse happened. Caleb, what if he’d had a knife or a gun? What then?”

  That thought hadn’t crossed his mind. “Like Dad said, I wasn’t thinking. But I am grateful. God was sure looking out for me. Even though it was a dumb idea.”

  “I hope you’ve learned a lesson from this,” his father cautioned. “Always seek the Lord’s will before making an important decision.”

  “Yeah, I should have. And I will from now on,” Caleb promised.

  He thought back to something his father had mentioned during their phone call that morning. “Dad, you said you were going to look into this hoax yourself. Have you talked to anyone about it yet?”

  “I did. As soon as I got off the phone with you, I did some inquiring of my own. Forging a death certificate is definitely against the law, but the penalty depends on what type of crime was committed with it. If it was used to defraud an insurance company, for example, or offered in a state or federal court as an official document, then it could be considered a felony.”

  “What about the fake newspaper obituary?” Caleb wanted to know.

  “Well, again, that depends on if it was used to perpetrate a crime. We still don’t know her father’s real purpose for trying to convince us of her death. I spoke with Lieutenant Jenkins at the police department, and he’s going to contact the Atlanta fraud division to see if they will start an investigation into the matter.”

  “I was thinking about possible motives on the way home.” Caleb sat down on the sofa next to his mother. “What if there’s a life insurance policy on Ellie that we don’t know about, or some distant relative’s will that leaves an estate to her father in the event of her death? Those would be reasons enough for the hoax, wouldn’t they?”

  “I suppose those are possibilities. But right now they’re nothing but conjecture and speculation. We’re
going to have to let the authorities do their job this time.” He tilted his head and raised the eyebrow again. “Without our help.”

  Caleb spent the next two nights in Baxter with his parents and sister. He awoke around ten-thirty Saturday morning feeling remarkably rejuvenated, both physically and mentally.

  His leg ached, but otherwise he felt fine. He got out of bed and went into the hall bathroom to wash his face.

  He stared into the mirror. “Oh, great. Just great.”

  The face that stared back at him revealed a puffy and swollen eye socket, and sported the beginnings of a mammoth shiner. Following supper that evening, Caleb drove over to B.J. and Allison’s to hang out with his friends and their baby boy.

  “Dude, what a shiner,” B.J. greeted him at the door of their small apartment. He followed Caleb into the living room. “You get into it with Chris Miller again?” he teased. “I had no idea you kept grudges this long.”

  Allison came into the room with the baby. Caleb gave her a hug and played with little Joshua.

  “So, what happened?” B.J. pressed.

  Caleb launched into a narrative of his encounter with Ellie and John Smith in Atlanta. When he finished, the couple stared back wide-eyed.

  “That’s unbelievable!” Allison declared. “Thank God Ellie’s alive.”

  “Roger that,” B.J. added. “But dude, what were you thinking, confronting her father like that?”

  Caleb grinned sheepishly. “You guys sound just like my dad. But seriously, B.J., what would you have done under the circumstances?”

  B.J. pondered the question. “I’d probably have done the exact same thing. Only I’d have gotten in a few jabs and right crosses before I left.” He pummeled an invisible opponent with his fists.

  Caleb laughed at his friend’s antics. “I doubt you’d have been able to leave, pal.”

  “Do you think Ellie’s in any danger?” Allison cast a worried expression his way.

  “That’s why I decided to confront her father in the first place,” Caleb explained. “I learned he’s definitely not a nice person. But that’s about all. The police are investigating, but I’m supposed to stay out of the way and let them handle it.”

  B.J. eyed Caleb’s shiner. “I’d do the same, pal,” he chuckled. “But where do you go from here? With Ellie, I mean?”

  Caleb shook his head ruefully. “I don’t know what to do. My dad thinks it would be too stressful for her if I suddenly showed back up in her life right now. Plus, I promised not to contact her for the time being. At least until we can figure out how to move forward.” A sudden fire flared up inside of him. “But I don’t think I can stand being away from her much longer. In fact, now that I know she’s alive, I miss her even more than I did when I thought she was dead.”

  “That’s tough, man,” B.J. sympathized. “Is there anything we can do?”

  “Thanks, but there’s nothing I can think of at the moment. Just pray, I guess.”

  “You can count on us for that,” Allison assured him. “We’ve been praying since Wednesday morning when you told B.J. about seeing her in downtown Atlanta.”

  Caleb was humbled to have such faithful friends. “Thanks, guys. I appreciate that.”

  Sunday afternoon Caleb drove back to his apartment in Columbus. By noon Monday he’d grown so sick of explaining the black eye to his coworkers that he thought about running to the drugstore around the corner and buying some makeup to hide the discoloration. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Explaining a black eye was one thing. Explaining makeup on a guy’s face was something entirely different.

  On Wednesday his office manager assigned him to a team of architects in charge of designing a new shopping mall on the far south side of Atlanta. The developer was wanting to begin construction in the next eight to ten months, and needed the final blueprints within the next ninety days. As a result of the project’s urgency, the team planned to make several trips to the construction site in order to visualize the layout and land utilization. This news suited Caleb just fine.

  Each day without Ellie seemed like an eternity, but hope remained alive and well that he would be able to see her again. How he’d go about doing that, and what he’d say to her eluded him, but he was confident it would be soon. Just not soon enough.

  In the meantime, his father heard back from the Baxter Police Department. He relayed the information to his son in an email, which Caleb eagerly devoured.

  “Caleb, I thought it would be better to put these details in writing for you. According to Lieutenant Jenkins, the Atlanta Fraud Division called in John Smith for questioning several days ago. In his written statement, he acknowledges some of his actions but denies any criminal intent. He insists his sole reason for the deception was purely a personal one. He claims to have panicked, fearing he would lose his only child again after just having had her reenter his life. They found no hard evidence of criminal motive, so he was dismissed on his own recognizance. However, some type of charges will likely be filed for forging the death certificate.

  “While he was being interrogated at the precinct, another investigator went to the apartment to determine if Ellie is in any danger. He says she spoke well of her father, and expressed gratitude for his desire to care for her. According to Ellie, he told her she’d been involved in a car accident and he had taken responsibility for her. She was completely unaware of the hoax, and did not know who we were when asked by the detective. But he found no evidence that she is in harm’s way. He did note that she appeared somewhat fragile, so he didn’t tell her about us, the hoax, or the possible charges facing her father.”

  Caleb was disappointed with the news, but not surprised by it. Mr. John C. Smith, actor extraordinaire, was true to form, still portraying himself as the benevolent father with nothing but paternal intentions toward his mentally fragile daughter. At least Ellie was in no imminent danger from the man.

  That was a huge relief. And there was some satisfaction to be had from the possibility that he would have to answer for his actions in court. But the investigation, which had just begun, left one thing unclear in Caleb’s mind. If Mr. Smith’s motives for the fraud weren’t criminal in nature, or for illicit financial gain, just why had he gone to such extremes?

  What did keeping Ellie away from him benefit the man? He didn’t believe the story about the fearful, long lost father for one second.

  Then what was his angle? He had to solve the mystery. Find the answer to that, and he’d find the way back to Ellie.

  The following Monday, the four member design team traveled to the south Atlanta suburb of Riverdale to survey the proposed mall site. Caleb had a difficult time focusing on the project. All he could think of was how much closer he was to Ellie that day.

  Where was she right now?

  Somewhere within that hi-rise office complex?

  What was she doing? Painting or designing something for her employer, whoever that was.

  He pictured her, as he’d witnessed many times before, sitting on an artist’s stool in front of her easel, head tilted to the side, that beautiful auburn hair captured by a purple scrunchie, humming happily as she masterfully turned the blank canvas into a majestic work of art with deft brushstrokes and dazzling colors.

  A week later, the team made its second foray to the future site of the Riverdale mall. This time, Caleb drove by himself. When they broke for lunch, he drove the fifteen minutes into downtown, hoping to catch Ellie on her way to lunch.

  He wasn’t planning to speak to her at all, or even let her see him. But he had to see her. Just a glimpse of her might ease the heartache he carried with him every waking moment.

  By eleven forty-five Caleb was in the lobby of the building where Ellie worked. He stood off to one side near a cluster of potted palms, where he would be inconspicuous but still able to see who came and went on the elevators. Pretending to read a pamphlet, he watched as the lunchtime crowd began to emerge from the three elevators and head for the revolving doors.

/>   Every time an elevator unloaded, he searched the pod of people for that familiar auburn haired head. By noon, Ellie still hadn’t shown up, and he began to second guess himself.

  What if he’d missed her in the crowd?

  What if she took a different elevator or a stairway elsewhere in the building?

  What if she decided to eat lunch in her office?

  What if she wasn’t even at work today?

  By ten past the hour he was ready to give up. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. It was about time to head back to the job site.

  Feeling his anticipation fading into discouragement, he fought back and decided to give it another five minutes.

  The door to the middle elevator opened and the first person off was Ellie. His heart skipped a beat. She looked absolutely beautiful. He could almost smell the fragrance of her bouncing hair as she passed within thirty feet of him.

  It was all he could do to keep from calling out her name and running up and taking her in his arms. Instead, he decided to follow her. Just the sight of her was salve for his aching heart.

  He noticed she wasn’t alone. A man maybe a few years older walked beside her. He was a nice looking guy, tall with blond hair, and dressed in a sport shirt and khaki slacks. One of the many young professionals who worked in the building, he guessed. She must be going to lunch with him.

  Caleb followed the pair out onto the open air plaza, making sure to keep a few people between him and them. From his vantage point, he couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they seemed to be having a good time. At the corner, while waiting to cross the street, the man leaned over and whispered something into Ellie’s ear. She looked up at him and laughed.

  The first time he’d heard that laugh was early in their senior year of high school.

  It had stirred his heart then, and it stirred his heart now. Only this time it was sadness he felt. And loneliness.

  It was he that she should be sharing laughs with, not this . . . this interloper.