by Tim Green
Ryder heard a sudden shriek from the phone that wasn’t Thomas Trent, but someone in the same room.
“Is that him!” The voice was sharp and hysterical.
Ryder heard the phone being covered and muffled talking and a stretch of silence before the phone was uncovered.
“Sorry,” Trent said. “Just meet me there tomorrow at ten. Got that? Pencil Building. Top floor. Leslie Spanko. Okay? I gotta go.”
“What then?” The second shriek was the last thing Ryder heard.
The line went dead and he sat there on the edge of his hotel bed with the phone in his hand and Mr. Starr lay on the other bed, blinking at him.
“Well?” Mr. Starr whispered.
“He’s gonna do it,” Ryder said. “Tomorrow.”
Mr. Starr let out a long breath. “Well, good. This is very good, Ryder.”
“How do you know?” Ryder’s heart thumped against his ribs.
“This man is your father.” Mr. Starr lay like a corpse, but his eyes flickered in the wavering blue light from the TV screen. “They’re going to lock us down, but they’ll give us what we need.”
“Lock us down?” Ryder thought of the shrieking in the background of the phone.
“You’re not going to be able to make any claims against him or his estate, but they’ll give us the money we need for your mom.”
“Mr. Starr, how do you know?” Ryder’s voice trembled at the thought. They were so close, and he could really save his mother.
If Mr. Starr was right, this was it.
“Because I know. We’ll have the money wired to New York and get this operation going. There’s no reason to take chances. Then we’ll catch the train back. Turn the TV off and get some sleep. Tomorrow is a big day.”
Ryder did as he was told and got into bed, pulling the covers up to his chin, even though he knew he wouldn’t sleep.
He could barely breathe.
“I’m Ruby Shoesmith now.” Ryder’s mom smiled at Thomas Trent and the two of them hugged.
“Mom?” Ryder didn’t think they knew he was there.
Trent wore a look of disbelief. “Not him.”
“No,” Ruby said. “Not him.”
“Ryder,” said a strange voice.
They were on the top of a skyscraper, at the edge, but when Ryder looked over he didn’t see streets or buildings or traffic down below. He saw an angry, twisting ocean.
“Not you either.” Thomas Trent was talking to Ryder’s mom now. She wore her yellow puffy coat and her hair looked so black against it, like a traffic sign.
“Ryder,” said the voice again.
Trent took her by the shoulders and threw her over the edge.
The great white shark just like the one from the Animal Planet show broke through the water’s surface like an angry missile, showing nothing but teeth and blood.
Ryder screamed and bolted upright in his bed.
“Ryder?” Mr. Starr said. “Easy. It’s time. You’ve got to help me up and get ready. I let you sleep, but we’ve got to get moving.”
Ryder shook the dream from his mind, but the sick feeling remained. Outside it was cloudy and dark. The clock read 9:07.
Panic flooded Ryder’s brain. “Mr. Starr? Can we make it? Won’t we have to get a connecting bus?”
“Easy, easy. We’re gonna splurge and call a cab. We deserve it. Now help me up.”
Ryder helped Mr. Starr get ready, including wiping down his upper body with a soapy washcloth and helping him put on a clean shirt.
“Should I bring the baseball?” Ryder held it up.
“Absolutely. We need all the luck we can get,” Mr. Starr said.
Ryder fed Mr. Starr some oatmeal and a banana in the dining area, but he could eat nothing himself. His stomach crawled with a strange mixture of excitement and horror. The dream stayed fresh in his mind and he couldn’t shake the heavy, dismal feeling that something would go wrong.
His stomach said so, and so did the dark Atlanta sky as they rode in the wheelchair-accessible Checker Cab into the city of Atlanta. It took a few minutes to get Mr. Starr back out of the cab and loaded into his chair. The driver was as cheerful and friendly to them as some long-lost uncle. Even Mr. Starr lost his grouchiness for a few moments in the face of the driver’s brilliant, grinning teeth.
Ryder looked up at the towering building in front of them as he wheeled Mr. Starr up the reddish-brown granite ramp. He saw why they called it the Pencil—it was tall and thin and pointed, and stood alone, a good mile from the other skyscrapers clustered in the city’s center. They rode the elevator up to the fifty-third floor and asked the woman at a polished wood reception desk for Leslie Spanko. She made a call and Leslie Spanko’s assistant appeared, a young man who introduced himself as Giovanni Castiglione.
“You can call me Gio.” The young man grinned at them and shrugged, then led them to a conference room as if he had no idea what was about to happen.
“Can I get you water or coffee?” Gio treated them the same as the cabdriver, like friends, but Ryder shook his head no. He couldn’t drink anything. Mr. Starr stayed silent.
“I’ll tell Ms. Spanko you’re here,” he said, still smiling.
One wall was all windows and it looked out across the suburbs of Atlanta to a huge low mountain hunkered down all alone in the middle of a flat sea of trees. Ryder parked Mr. Starr at the end of the table and sat down in the black leather chair closest to him.
“What’s that?” Ryder pointed at the mountain.
A serious-looking woman with short red hair and glasses, wearing a dark gray pants suit, walked into the room and looked where Ryder was pointing. “Stone Mountain,” she said. “It’s the biggest single rock on the continent.”
“It’s a rock?”
“One big rock left by a glacier, all by its lonesome. Powerful, right?” The woman held out a long, cool hand for Ryder to shake, surprising him with her grip. “I’m Leslie.”
Leslie turned to Mr. Starr, held out her hand, but retracted after a long moment of Mr. Starr’s silent glare.
“I don’t do handshakes,” Mr. Starr said.
“That’s fine.” Leslie didn’t seem to mind one bit. She sat down across the table from Ryder and set a file down in front of him before slapping down a chubby black-and-gold pen. “So, business.”
“Where’s your client?” Mr. Starr asked. “We’re not doing this without him.”
“Of course, of course.” Leslie looked at her watch. “He tends to run late, but I wanted to explain the terms of the deal to you two anyway . . . in case you need to think about it. Now, are you the boy’s guardian?”
“I am.” Mr. Starr didn’t hesitate to lie, but Ryder supposed that ultimately if Mr. Starr wasn’t his guardian, then he didn’t have one.
Ryder took the baseball out of his pocket and gripped it under the table.
“So, what we’re proposing is a Genetic ID test that will give us 99.99 percent certainty of paternity.” Leslie’s face grew serious and her voice got lower. “However, the results will belong to us and we will sign an agreement stipulating that even though both sides take the test, neither can or will use it in a court of law to assert a paternity claim. In the event that the test does suggest paternity—and I repeat, my choice of words is suggest, we make no warrantees—then, based on that possibility, my client is willing to write you a one-time check for two hundred thousand dollars in exchange for a waiver that prevents any and all claims against him, his family, or his estate now and in the future.”
Leslie stopped talking and looked from Mr. Starr to Ryder and back. “Understood?”
Silence filled the room. Ryder looked out at the enormous mountain of rock, all alone, just like him. This agreement would leave him that way. He had no idea about most of what she’d just said, but only kept thinking that if it meant they’d help his mom get well, he didn’t care about any other parts of his crumbling dream. If he understood it right, it sounded to him as if part of the deal was Ryder being bl
ocked from having anything to do with Thomas Trent, even if he was his son, and that hurt him deeply, more than he’d thought it would. He held the ball so tight, the joints in his fingers began to ache.
If all the mumbo jumbo they were talking about didn’t end up helping his mom, he’d be like that big stone mountain outside the city, alone and lost.
Mr. Starr narrowed his eyes and disgust dripped from his voice. “So, if Ryder isn’t Trent’s son, we agree to go away, like we never existed. But, if he is Ryder’s father, Trent pays for the mother’s operation on the condition Ryder goes back to his own life for good and never tries to even contact Thomas Trent. How very nice.”
“That is the deal.” The lawyer frowned as if asking them not to blame the messenger.
“Ryder?” Mr. Starr asked.
“I . . . just care about my mom,” Ryder said.
“Yes,” Mr. Starr said. “We agree.”
“Ryder?” Leslie’s eyebrows appeared above the rims of her glasses. “Is that a ‘yes’?”
“Yes,” Ryder whispered.
The lawyer picked up the phone on the table and dialed three numbers. “Gio? Yes, can you bring your notary stamp in here?”
Leslie hung up and turned to Mr. Starr. “I’m assuming you have a way to fix your signature.”
“I do,” Mr. Starr said. “Ryder can help me.”
“Very good.” Leslie took out the agreements. Gio came in and sat down beside her without a word. Leslie droned on with a bunch of therefores and whereases; Ryder lost count. When the room went silent again, Leslie Spanko held out the pen for Ryder to sign. He did, and then he helped Mr. Starr sign below where it said “Guardian.”
Leslie tilted her head back and studied the agreements through the bottoms of her glasses before she nodded and looked at Giovanni. “Gio, would you ask Mr. Trent to come in, please.”
Gio got up with a nod and disappeared.
Thomas Trent entered with dark bags under his moist green eyes and needing a shave. He wore a suit, but the shirt had an open collar and the buttons were off so that the collar jutted up on one side toward his ear. He looked at Ryder and nodded, then signed the papers without sitting down.
A nurse came in next with a box that she opened, removing some paperwork, small plastic capsules, and cotton swabs she laid down on a white hand towel beside the box. “Okay, who’s first?”
Leslie Spanko smiled at her client. “Thomas?”
The nurse put on rubber gloves and asked Thomas Trent to open his mouth. She took four swabs and wiped them at the same time on the inside of his cheek, then placed two into one capsule and two in another. Gio pulled out a chair for Thomas Trent. The pitcher sat down and so did Gio.
Instead of swabbing Ryder right away, she sealed Thomas Trent’s capsules with stickers before signing across them, then inserting them into smaller boxes along with paperwork she filled out and had Thomas Trent sign as well.
Finally, she circled the table and swabbed Ryder’s cheeks. It didn’t hurt. Thomas Trent just sat there, staring at Ryder with the sad, eager look of someone studying a jigsaw puzzle that was missing just one piece. The nurse sealed and signed the capsules. Ryder signed the box and the paperwork with Mr. Starr adding his assisted scrawl.
The nurse packed everything back up in the box and looked up at them all. “I’ll ship this out and we’ll know within a day.”
Everyone sat so quiet, Ryder could hear the soft wheeze of Mr. Starr’s breathing.
That’s when the conference room door was flung open, banging the wall, and a tall woman with blond hair and lots of makeup burst into the room.
“You stop right there and give me that box!”
It was the same shriek Ryder had heard over the phone.
The woman didn’t wait, but instead snatched the box from the nurse’s hands before anyone could say a word.
The woman’s pale blue eyes were so red and swollen it looked to Ryder like she’d been in a fight. She wore high heels and tight white pants with a gold jacket over a black silk blouse. Gold and diamonds sparkled from her wrists, neck, and ears. Even with swollen eyes she was so beautiful, there was something unreal about her.
She clutched the box and glared at Thomas Trent. “You’d do this to me? You’d do this to your children?”
Thomas Trent grabbed his lower jaw and sputtered. “I . . . it’s what’s right. If he’s mine, I have to help. Don’t you see that?”
“If he’s yours?” The shriek went up so high Giovanni covered his ears. “Look at him! He’s a street urchin! Look! Look at this monster!”
No one could help following the point of her finger at Mr. Starr.
“This is a circus! A freak show! It’s a scam, Thomas. They want your money. Everyone told you that, but no, you have to be that swell guy. What about your family!”
“Brooke, please.” Thomas Trent sounded desperate.
“Please? Don’t you please me!” Brooke Trent stamped a foot. “Some strumpet from the past and she never tells you? You either come with me and our children or you can start over with this . . . this lost boy and his monster. You won’t have both, Thomas. That I promise you.”
Thomas Trent looked at his wife for a moment, then he turned toward Ryder.
The famous ballplayer stared with trembling lips at Ryder until a single tear slipped down his cheek and dripped from his chin.
“I’m sorry.” Thomas Trent spoke in barely a whisper, and then he was gone, with his wife, and the box.
Leslie Spanko cleared her throat. The nurse and Gio struggled to wipe the horror from their faces.
Mr. Starr exhaled loudly, then clucked his tongue. “Monster.”
Ryder exploded from his seat and raced for the door.
“Ryder!” Mr. Starr yelled, but Ryder kept going.
He burst through the glass doors just as the elevator closed. Ryder punched the down button and paced three times before a ting brought another car. He jumped in and punched the lobby button with his finger, over and over, until the door closed. The elevator swooped down, then stopped at forty and yet again at twenty-three. Ryder fumed and jiggled and told himself if his car stopped, theirs might have too.
The lighted numbers counted down from 10 to L and Ryder positioned himself in front of the doors with the baseball out of his pocket again and held tightly in his hand. The doors started to open. He squeezed through and ran full speed for the set of huge brass-framed glass doors in a great archway just as they swallowed up Thomas Trent and his wife. Ryder jostled several people. A woman screamed. A man yelled and grabbed at his shirt. Ryder slapped his hand away and kept going.
He hit the door at a run and pushed through. He went left, down a set of granite stairs and saw them getting into the Maserati, parked crookedly right there on the street with its hazard lights blinking.
Ryder shouted. “Trent!”
Thomas Trent turned in disbelief.
“You get in this car!” His wife’s shrieking command made everyone around stop and stare.
Ryder held the baseball up in the air so Trent could see it. The big league pitcher seemed hypnotized by the ball, so Ryder kept it up high as he marched toward him, hoping, praying, counting on its magic.
Thomas Trent’s mouth opened and closed without words. Ryder circled the long blue hood of the car that cost more than his mother’s operation.
“Here.” Ryder put the ball right in Thomas Trent’s face.
Trent winced, and grabbed hold of the ball instinctively. He held it in his hand, turning it this way and that, reading the words.
“I read your letter,” Ryder said. “The one you wrote to my mom when you were with her.”
Thomas Trent tilted his head in confusion, then a light went on and Ryder knew he remembered the letter.
Without even knowing that he’d memorized it, Ryder repeated the words Thomas Trent had written thirteen years ago. “Nothing could make me stop loving you, and so I always will.”
Thomas Trent stared, amazed.<
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Ryder’s heart swelled. He felt the magic and knew everything Doyle had said about being positive and everything Mr. Starr said about the luck the ball contained was true. The wife’s ranting in the street was like a crow’s, insistent and annoying, but without any real impact, just empty noise. This man, who he knew was his father, couldn’t resist the truth of it, the truth of the ball, his own words written so carefully, his love for his gem, Ruby, and for the lost boy who belonged to them both.
Thomas Trent heard the cawing of his wife.
Ryder saw his eyes dart past and lock onto her hysterical tirade as she shouted and waved her arms and danced in place.
“No.” Trent handed the ball back to Ryder. “I can’t. It’s yours.”
“No.” Ryder swung his head from left to right and folded his arms, refusing to take it.
“That wasn’t me,” Trent said.
“Liar! You said you loved her! You’re a liar!”
“Take it.” Trent held it out to him, shaking it.
“No!” Ryder screamed.
“Thomas! Right now!” The wife screamed louder.
Trent huffed and sidestepped Ryder with a glare. He wound up and fired the ball, pitching it at the granite wall of the skyscraper.
The ball exploded against the wall, cracking like a rifle shot.
Ryder spun and watched it drop to the concrete, where it lay like roadkill. He heard the car doors slam and the engine whine. Before he could move, the car was gone in a whoosh of hot air.
In a trance, Ryder walked over to the ball and picked it up.
The seam had split open and the brittle leather skin hung limp from the tightly bound wool strands within, brown and dusty and crumbling with rot. Ryder put it in his pocket anyway and walked in a daze, back into the building and up the elevator. He walked right into the law offices and back into the conference room where they all still remained. He sat down, but before anyone could speak, the phone on the conference table rang.