Full Disclosure

by Beverley McLachlin

  “Me,” I whisper.

  “Yes, you,” he says softly.

  I stand in a rush of rage. “Stop, I won’t listen. You seduced my mother, abandoned me,” I yell. “All the foster homes, all the abusive dads. And all you wanted was your yachts and your starlets.” My hand goes back to strike him.

  He catches my arm and holds it. “Let me finish. I told my family of your mother. I will not repeat what they said. It was ugly, racist. I must give the girl up, they said, adopt the child out when it came. I lost my temper—I didn’t need them; I would make my own way. I would quit university and get a job. I went back to the apartment and told your mother. She kissed me and cried.”

  I wrench my arm away. “Good intentions, but you let them win in the end. You didn’t care.”

  “I did care! The next day, I went all over the city searching for a job, but when I returned, the apartment was empty. She was gone. I wandered around in a daze for days, searching for her everywhere—in the streets, in malls—but I did not find her.”

  “You made her leave!”

  “Hildegard made her leave. She was young then but already the family consigliere. As much as I pressed her, she would not tell me where your mother was.”

  “And then you made your deal with the devil,” I say.

  “Yes. I agreed that I would forget about you and your mother and go back to the family firm, but I extracted two concessions. The first was that I be based in Europe—I didn’t want to be anywhere near my family. The second was that I see you when you were born. Six months later, I flew back from Milan, took a cab to Vancouver General Hospital. That’s when I met you. You were four days old—black hair, pink skin, eyes like a doe. I held you in my hands, marveled at you. I asked for your mother, but they told me she didn’t want to see me—keeping her end of the bargain, I suppose, or perhaps just bitter about how it had all come to this. I kissed the top of your head, said goodbye, and a nurse took you away from me.”

  His face softens as he slips into reverie. I feel a tear slip down my cheek, wipe it away with my fingers.

  “Hildegard was waiting for me with a social worker—Edith Hole. She had found a good home for you. Not an adoption—it wasn’t easy to find adoptive parents for Indigenous children then—but at least a foster home. ‘What about a name?’ Edith asked me. ‘The child needs a name.’

  “Hildegard vetoed Trussardi, so I said, ‘Let’s make it Truitt, an Anglo Trussardi.’ And that was it. I flew back to Italy.”

  I sit, head in hands, unable to speak.

  This man—my father—looks at me with fondness in his eyes. “I know this is hard for you, Jilly.”

  “What do you know?” I say. “You can’t know me, how it was for me.”

  He sighs. “Actually, I knew most of what was happening to you. Relations with my family resumed a semblance of civility, except for my sister, who remained bitter. Every six months, I came back to Vancouver. Every six months, I met with Edith. I became fond of her, and we had a relationship of sorts. Through her, I kept track of you. Once, she arranged for me to watch you at a sports event. You were ten or so. I watched you run a race, just a stranger in the crowd of parents. You came in second—I was so proud. When you were thirteen, I got a frantic call. The minister and his wife had passed away within months of each other. Edith had placed you in another home, but things hadn’t worked out. The people called you—what was the terrible phrase?—a ‘disruptive deviant.’ Edith had found another home, and another. But you kept running, and I had to help you. ‘Let me deal with it,’ I told Edith. I met with my old friend from the boat trip so many years before.”

  “Brock Mayne,” I say.

  “Yes, he had married a lovely woman and had children already. ‘I’ll meet all the expenses,’ I said, ‘pay for the best schools, university when the time comes.’

  “ ‘If we do this, she will be our child,’ he told me. The rest you know.”

  “And Edith?” I ask. “You broke her heart.”

  “I suppose I did.”

  I slump back, unable to move. In less than an hour, this man has put the jigsaw puzzle of my life together—my mother, my father, the Maynes. I study him—his dark swept-back hair, his profile defiant against the black of the windows—this man who never took the trouble to be part of my life but now claims me.

  “You’ve been playing with me just like you played with my mother.” I see it all clearly now. “You hired me to defend you for your amusement. You didn’t tell me the truth about the case either. It was you who had me followed; you who wrote that threat on my windshield. You didn’t want me to find out that you were my father—not yet. I would have quit the case and spoiled your final dramatic reveal.”

  His face has gone white. “No, Jilly, you’re wrong. I’ve never had you followed, never threatened you. I could never—”

  “Then who the hell did?” I yell.

  “I don’t know,” he says, quietly.

  I feel my chest thickening, my throat clogging. I will not cry any more. I will not give him that satisfaction.

  Then it hits me. I remember the trial. I remember Laura Trussardi. “Where is my mother?”

  “She is no longer with us.”

  “You mean she’s dead?”

  “Yes,” he whispers.

  “How?”

  “There is no good way to say this. She had started taking drugs. There’s a police record, drug possession—I found it a few months ago. You should know, Jilly, that she loved you very much. It’s all there in the presentence reports I read. She was wracked by guilt over abandoning you. And she was desolate, obsessed by the gnawing absence of you in her life. So she eased the pain with heroin. She was on the street, in the end—her money gone. It was a bad trick that took her. She was good with words, your mother, like you, Jilly. You can find her presentence report—Trilla James was her name—although it will break your heart to read it.” He halts, unable to go on. “It did mine.”

  “That’s what you were doing all those months in the penthouse?” I ask. “Sitting with her photo, brooding? Regretting what you did, or didn’t do?”

  “Yes.”

  He’s holding out on me, still holding out. Then I remember the name, the name on Keltey’s report, the name on this boat.

  A moan rises up from my gut. “No, no!”

  His eyes shine with tears. “Pickton, the pig farm.”

  I hear myself sobbing, and I cannot stop.

  “My dear, my daughter.”

  He moves toward me, tries to cradle me in his arms, but I pull away. I saw the police reports—women shackled, mutilated, killed. I feel sick and run to the head. I kneel over the toilet bowl, weeping.

  * * *

  I WAKE UP IN AN unfamiliar bed. He bends over me, bathing my face with a soft cloth. My father.

  “You must get up now,” he says. “We’re almost back to shore.”

  He helps me up to the railing, where he stands beside me looking across the water at West Vancouver. His face once more is calm, serene. He has the air of a man at last at peace.

  My professional persona surfaces. “I should tell you, as your lawyer—if that’s what I still am—that you have a good chance at a new trial. The judge erred in letting the rebuttal evidence in. Find a new lawyer. He’ll appeal, get you a new trial.”

  “You still don’t understand, Jilly. I’m guilty. Not of Laura’s murder but of letting her die. I failed her.” He turns to look at me. “And I’m tired. There’s nothing more for me here.” A rough laugh. “Who knows, I may have the pleasure of meeting Robert Pickton in prison and performing my duty of revenge.”

  “You won’t get the chance,” I say. “Too many other inmates have the same idea. They keep him in protective custody.”

  “Ah, a disappointment, that.”

  In the dark ahead, I see the ghostly arch of the Lions Gate Bridge. We glide beneath it, nose into the harbor and toward the yacht club.

  “If there’s one thing I can ask of you, Jill
y, it’s to stay away from my sister.”

  My mind races. “She knows I’m your daughter, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, and I would never want her to hurt you.”

  “Did she kill Laura?”

  “No, she loved Laura,” he says wearily. “Laura was kind to her, liked her, but never requited her love. Raquella was upset that Laura and I were back together, livid that Laura was expecting my child. But she wouldn’t have killed Laura. She couldn’t have killed her. My sister is an addict, and the cocaine that Laura received was for her. I should have told you—Raquella was away in rehab after Laura’s death, dealing with her drug addiction.” He pauses. “Laura’s death haunts me, will haunt me forever until I know who killed her.”

  The boat slows and lurches. I clutch the railing, head bent, as my mind sorts the pieces and slots them into place. Trussardi, my father. Raquella, my embittered aunt. My mother, forever gone.

  “You are the only good thing ever to come of my life,” my father says as La Trilla softly bumps against the pier.

  I nod dumbly, stumble to the gangway that the men in white are putting in place.

  “Joseph Quentin will be contacting you,” he calls. “There are some pictures I want you to have. And a trust fund.”

  “Too late to buy me, Father.”

  I hear his laugh, short and harsh, as I jump to the pier. “Then give the money away.” He throws his head back and hurls his words into the night.

  I stagger into the waiting limo, hold myself together as it glides over the bridge, through Stanley Park, and down Georgia Street to Yaletown. Only when the door of my condo shuts behind me do I release the animal howl in my belly.

  CHAPTER 55

  MY PHONES ARE GOING CRAZY. I wrench the landline from the wall, thumb my cell phone to off, and throw it to the floor. I lie on my bed in a fetal curl. Time passes.

  “Jilly, for fuck’s sake.” Jeff is standing over me, yelling.

  “How did you get in? Go away,” I say.

  “I phoned Richard. He knows where you keep your secret fob. Now get your ass out of bed and come with me to court.”

  “I’m not going to court. Not today.”

  He studies me with something between compassion and contempt. “This is not the time to fall apart. Your career is on the line. You know what people will say.” He bends low, spits the words into my face. “Just another woman who can’t take the heat.”

  “You don’t know, Jeff—”

  “No, I don’t know, and I don’t care.” He rips the sheets back. “Now get up, wash your face, put on a suit, and come to court. You’ve got ten minutes.”

  I force myself up, move to the bathroom where I stand under the hot shower and think about my mother. I put on my suit, brush my black hair, and practice my smile before the mirror. How many hours did I study that photo of the girl in a white dress without seeing who she really was? I am her—all that is left of her. I put on my high heels and move to the living room.

  Jeff waits, cappuccino in hand. He thrusts it at me. “ ‘Once more unto the breach.’ ”

  Twenty minutes later, I enter courtroom twenty. Inside, I’m a mess, but outside, I’m fine, shoulders back, head high. I look over to the prisoner’s box, where my father sits. He offers me a weary smile.

  Fuck you, I think. But for now, I’m his lawyer. I give a curt nod.

  The jury files in, Justice Moulton enters. Marion intones the familiar words: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”

  Their faces tell me nothing.

  Our foreman Kasmirsky rises. “We have.”

  “And what is your verdict?”

  “We find the accused guilty as charged.”

  CHAPTER 56

  THE REST IS PRO FORMA. Moulton pronounces the sentence—twenty-five years without parole—thanks the jurors for their service to the state, and dismisses them. Marion cries for order, and Justice Moulton exits through his door. At the prisoner’s box, the sheriff clinks the cuffs around my father’s outstretched hands. He gives me the smallest of smiles before they shove his shoulder and push him toward the prisoner’s door. I do the calculation—he’ll get out when he’s eighty, if he lasts that long.

  Jeff and I pack up, stuffing papers that seemed so precious a day ago into our big leather bags like trash. Jeff hefts two briefcases off the table; I take the third. There is nothing to say—we’ve lost.

  Cy Kenge, magnanimous in victory, waits for us at the back of the empty courtroom. “Well fought, Jilly,” he says, as if his win has miraculously restored our old camaraderie. I ignore his extended hand, stare him in the eye until his gaze falters.

  “You crossed me, Cy. You short-circuited the rules.” And you sent an innocent man to prison—a man who, whether I like it or not, happens to be my father.

  “You were warned, Jilly.”

  “Sure.”

  “Just like you were warned about Damon.”

  “Damon?”

  “Who else?” Cy smirks. “Cops are onto him, Jilly.”

  “About what, Cy?”

  “Who else would want Kellen in a Dumpster?”

  “Plenty of people. Why would you try to ruin an innocent kid?”

  Cy looks at me like I’m a fool. “It’s called justice, Jilly.”

  I cross the glass-sheathed atrium toward the elevator that will take me to the barristers’ lounge where I can shuck my gown and tabs. The earlier rain has ceased, and now the low sun breaks through the clouds, lighting the slate and glinting off the plants that hang tier upon tier from the upper corridors.

  “Jilly.”

  I stop.

  Lois steps out from behind a pillar.

  My briefcase clunks to the floor. “You fucked me, Lois. What an actress, what a performance. You were in it together, you and Cy, weren’t you? I was just a game to you two, just a joke.”

  Her face crumbles. “Jilly, it wasn’t like that; you don’t understand.”

  “I have nothing more to say to you.”

  For a moment, I think she won’t move. Then she turns and walks away.

  I make my way up to the lounge, ditch my court regalia, and stow it in my locker. I find the parking elevators and descend into the bowels of the building where Jeff waits beside his battered van.

  “What took you so long?” he asks.

  “Business,” I say, as I toss my briefcase on the backseat. “Taking care of business.”

  Jeff noses the van out of the garage, waits for a bus to pass, and eases onto the busy street. People are going about their affairs, talking and laughing as if it’s just another day. I see Cy and Lois on the sidewalk ahead. She is crying, shouting, pummeling her tiny fists against his chest. He reaches to grab her wrists, but she pulls away. His body lurches, and Lois falls into the street. The squeal of brakes; the bus halts, too late.

  Jeff stops the van. “Jesus!”

  People run to the crumpled form. From somewhere a police car appears, then an ambulance. Lois’s crushed body is strapped to a stretcher, loaded into the maw of the ambulance. Cy stands on the sidewalk, gazing blankly after the vehicle as it wails its way down the street in a cacophony of accompanying sirens.

  Alone, utterly alone.

  CHAPTER 57

  RAQUELLA TRUSSARDI GLARES UP AT me from her chair. Her face is deeply lined; her black hair, newly streaked with white, sits askew. She’s had a bad night.

  “You promised I wouldn’t have to throw you out a third time,” she rasps.

  It has cost me some effort to find her. It was Richard who said she’d be at Vincent’s condo, Richard who got me in the door on the pretense of a delivery. I look through the wall of glass. Below me the city sprawls toward the sea. But I’m not here for the view.

  “I told you that before this was over I would know everything. I know most of it. There are just a few details I need your help with.”

  She wheels away from me to the window. “So he told you that you’re his daughter.” She gives a harsh
laugh. “All the time you spent with him, you never picked up on it.”

  “On what?”

  “My dear, beloved brother creates his own fantasy worlds. The truth for him is what he wants it to be. It’s not impossible that he had a daughter as a result of one of his brief affairs. Apparently he’s decided you’re the result. Why do you think I tried to warn you off the case?”

  She’s smiling, shaking her head sadly. For a moment I believe her, before my gut kicks in. “I’ve seen delusional people—the courts are full of them. Vincent Trussardi doesn’t fit the mold.”

  “Believe what you want, Miss Truitt. It’s of no consequence to me. Just don’t think you’ll see a penny from his estate.” Her hand presses a button on her chair, and Hildegard, stark in a dark pantsuit, emerges from a doorway, a look of intense dislike twisting her features.

  “Hildegard, see Miss Truitt out.”

  “You’ve done enough damage, Miss Truitt,” Hildegard says. “You’ve lost Vincent’s case. The damage to the family and its business is incalculable.” She catches Raquella’s sharp look. “Raquella, you will be the new CEO. But the fact remains, to lose Vincent—to lose his experience, his judgment—will be a great blow.”

  I smile. Oldest mistake in the book: two allies telling different stories. “Raquella says Vincent is delusional; Hildegard vaunts his judgment. Someone’s lying here.”

  “Just leave,” says Hildegard, drawing a deep breath.

  “Why do you hate me?” My gaze travels between the two women. “If the idea that I’m Vincent’s daughter is a delusional fixation, why would you fear me?” I go out on a limb. “Why would you threaten Edith Hole? Why would you have my birth records removed? If I wanted to be part of this family, if I wanted your money—which I don’t—I’d have to prove it. A simple DNA test would show I’m not his daughter, or that I am.”