Joel remembered the flight as though it were yesterday. He had sat in the window seat. With his head against the partially open shade, he watched the city of St. Louis appear below the clouds. Thousands upon thousands of houses and hundreds of apartment buildings sat on a maze of nameless streets. He would dwell in just one of those residences. He bore a new name, a new birthdate, and a new Social Security number. He’d shaved off his mustache and cut his hair. The chances of anyone finding him here were almost nonexistent. And for a brief moment, he had felt elation.
Toliver had rented a car at the airport and driven Joel to an apartment on the south side of the city. Now the streets had names, the houses were numbered, and the world didn’t seem so large anymore. His sense of elation collapsed, and he knew fear as he’d never known it before.
Toliver and a WITSEC inspector whose name Joel could no longer remember were his only contacts with the legal system. His brother was the only link to his old life, the only contact he was allowed from his past—and that was limited to arranged, secure phone calls and letters exchanged through a blind post office box set up by Toliver. At that point, it hadn’t mattered much to Joel. Tori was dead, and with her his whole world had crumbled.
The Justice Department paid his expenses until he found a job, but they strongly advised against a teaching position. “You cannot be anything that Joseph Bradford was,” Toliver told him. The orientation reinforced the need to remake himself completely. If Difinni and his henchmen learned that Joe Bradford was a handball player, they had the means to circulate Joe’s photograph to every major athletic facility in the States. Joel gave up handball.
If Joe Bradford was a teacher, Joel Ellington could not be. It was a small matter to access NEA membership file photos, or to obtain information from other professional organizations. Besides, according to Toliver, Justice drew the line at providing false references—too easily checked out, too many other people to involve. They would fund a new education or job retraining, but beyond a certain point he was on his own.
Five months after his move to St. Louis, Joel finally began to feel relatively safe in the obscure Midwestern area. He was off WITSEC’s dole and out of touch with the inspectors. He enrolled in classes at a small college, took business courses, and worked at a library at night, trying to decide what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. But the longer he studied, the more he knew what he wanted to do. He was a teacher. It was in his blood. It was his calling. He had taught English and literature and even Sunday school classes in his church—and he was good at it.
One morning as he’d sat in his small St. Louis apartment, poring over the newspaper with his breakfast coffee, a classified ad caught his eye. A church in the suburbs was looking for a Christian education director. The job description said the position involved some teaching. It wasn’t academia, but it was a start.
Joel applied for the job and, after a congenial meeting with the leaders of the church, thankfully found the committee rather uninterested in his references. They had been looking to fill the position for a long time. He later learned that they’d made a requisite call to the first reference he listed—a Tim Bradford, who had vouched that Joel had indeed worked with him at Foxmoor College, and that a finer teacher could not be found. Joel had been hired practically on the spot, and in spite of the deceit, his fortune had seemed to change that very day.
These last twelve months, life had seemed a sweet gift. And then the past had risen to haunt him again. He’d told Melanie things about his past that were lies. But they were lies that had strangely mutated into half-truths. They were Joel Ellington’s truth, designed to save Joe Bradford’s life. Sometimes he wasn’t sure what was truth anymore. And he couldn’t afford guilt. With Melanie in his life, it was almost as though his identity had been handed back to him. Though she knew him only as Joel Ellington, he was the man she had fallen in love with. What she knew of him went deeper than a name. She knew his spirit. And she loved him for it.
Now none of it mattered. He’d lost Melanie and Jerica. Everything that had made it all worthwhile had been taken from him.
Melanie barely slept that night, her thoughts a cacophonous jumble that she couldn’t seem to set aright. Joel was gone. What did it mean? What had gone wrong? She tossed and turned and finally got up and wandered through the house, scarcely aware of what she was doing.
But when Jerica came into the kitchen the next morning, she was waiting.
She stretched out her arms. “Come here, sweetie, Mommy needs to tell you something.”
Jerica climbed up onto Melanie’s lap, still smelling of sleep. Melanie combed her fingers gently through the tangled hair and hugged the little girl close.
“Are you awake?”
Jerica looked up at her and nodded solemnly.
Melanie took a deep breath. “Honey, I have some very sad news.” She pressed her lips together in a futile effort to quell her emotions.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Jerica cupped Melanie’s face in her small hands, and Melanie thought her heart would break.
“Oh, sweetie … Joel … Joel had to go away.”
“Go away? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know, Jer. He sent me a letter to … to tell us good-bye. Joel’s letter said that he loves you very much, and he will always pray for you.”
“But why? I don’t want him to pray for me. I want him to come and see me. Why did he go away?”
“I … I don’t know, Jerica. I truly don’t know.”
“Did Joel go away forever—like my other daddy?”
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m not sure. Maybe … I just don’t know.” A sob caught in her throat and she bit her lip to try to stop the tears, but they came anyway. Jerica wrapped her arms around Melanie’s neck and patted her gently. They sat together that way for a long time.
Finally Jerica climbed down from her lap and went back to her room. When she didn’t return after a few minutes, Melanie went to check on her. She stopped short in the hallway outside of Jerica’s room. Quietly she peered into the room.
The little girl was curled into a ball at the foot of her bed, rocking back and forth, gulping back great hiccupping sobs, whimpering over and over again, “My daddy … my daddy. I want my daddy.”
Melanie went to her and sank to the floor beside the little bed. She wanted to curl up into a ball beside her daughter. Instead, she put a helpless hand on Jerica’s head and sat motionless, her back against the cold bedroom wall as she fought the pain that clawed at her chest.
Eighteen
Matthew Mason pulled into the driveway of his sister’s house in Silver Creek and parked the rental car in front of the garage. It had been a long flight with a two-hour layover. He turned off the ignition and expelled a deep breath, steeling himself to face his sister.
It killed him to think about what had happened to Melanie. Hadn’t she had enough pain in her life?
He rang the doorbell and immediately heard hurried footsteps on the entryway tile inside. The door creaked open an inch, then two. A dark little head appeared in the gap.
“Hey, Miss Jerica! It’s your Uncle Matt.”
Jerica gasped and raced back into the house, leaving him standing outside. He heard her voice echo through the foyer.
“Mommy! Mommy! Uncle Matt’s here!”
The door opened again, and Melanie drew him inside, then threw herself into his arms. After a long minute, she pulled away and looked into his face. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but the twinkle they always held for him was still there, even behind puffy eyelids.
“Oh, Matt.” She gave him a strained smile. “I’m so glad you came. Come in, please. I’ve got a roast in the oven.”
Later they lingered in the dining room over the remains of dinner. Jerica had left the table to play, and for the first time Matt had a chance to talk to his sister alone. He reached across the table and put his hand over hers.
“You honestly don’t have any idea why Joel would have disappeared?”
She shook her head and looked up at him with wounded eyes. “I can’t even make a decent guess.”
“He didn’t give you any clue why he might have … done this?”
“Matt, I have replayed every single conversation we ever had. I’ve tried to read between the lines of his letter. I come up with nothing. I have no idea what brought this on. I thought everything was fine. Now … I’m almost afraid to know.” She looked at the floor. “But I don’t think I can live with not knowing either.”
“May I see the letter?” She’d read most of it to him over the phone that night, but maybe he would see something she hadn’t.
She nodded and rose from the table. Looking as though she were carrying the weight of the world on her slender shoulders, she went down the hallway and came back a few moments later with a worn ivory envelope. Wordlessly she handed it to him.
He read the letter, then folded it carefully and slipped it back into the envelope. “Nothing seemed different between you during the last few days or weeks?” he pressed.
Melanie hesitated. “Maybe … a couple of things. He … Joel didn’t want to put our engagement picture in the papers. He said he didn’t care if I put the story in—or even just my photo. But for some reason he didn’t want his picture used.”
“That didn’t strike you as odd?”
“Of course it did. We argued about it.”
“Why did he agree to have a portrait made if he didn’t want it in the papers?”
“We didn’t go to a professional photographer. A guy from work took that picture of us at an awards banquet, and we liked it so well we had copies made. But when I started talking about using it for the papers, that was when Joel went ballistic.”
“Ballistic? You mean … violent?”
She glared at him. “No, of course not. He barely raised his voice. But he was insistent … He didn’t want his picture in the St. Louis papers.”
“What reason did he give?”
“He never really gave a reason …” She thought for a minute. “Well, he said we didn’t know anyone in St. Louis. But I told him that I knew a lot of people there. Clients and business acquaintances.”
“What did he say to that?”
“That was when he said I could put my picture in if I wanted.”
“But you sent me the clipping, Mel. You were both in that photo. Did you put the picture in against Joel’s wishes?”
She looked at him as though he’d just accused her of grand theft auto. “No. Joel finally relented. In fact, he apologized and said I could put it in any paper I wanted.”
Matt shook his head. “Melanie, how much do you really know about Joel? This … seems extremely strange.”
Melanie ignored his question and ran her hands through her hair. “I … I just want to know that he’s all right, Matt.”
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
He would never have admitted it to Melanie, but he was not altogether sure he wanted to find the man. He had never met his sister’s fiancé, but now he wasn’t sure he trusted himself not to do something foolish when their paths finally crossed. The guy obviously wasn’t on the up and up. Or else he wasn’t playing with a full deck.
Matthew thought back to the only time he had talked to Joel on the telephone. He and Karly had intended to come to Silver Creek a few days before the wedding and spend some time getting to know Joel before the newlyweds left on their honeymoon. They had discussed the plans with Joel on the phone, arranging for Matt and Karly to take Jerica back to New Jersey with them while Joel and Melanie honeymooned. Then Joel and Melanie would fly in to Newark and stay with them for a couple days before they flew on home with Jerica. Matthew had found Joel immensely likeable—and he certainly seemed sane enough. But wasn’t that the way most con artists appeared?
“Melanie,” he said now, deliberately keeping his tone gentle, “I need you to give me some information, if you can. Tell me everything you know about Joel. Anything he ever told you about his past—even if it seemed insignificant at the time. I need a place to start.”
His sister looked up at him with hopeful eyes. “Okay.” She thought for a moment, then recited a litany of facts. “His parents were part-time missionaries, so he moved around a lot when he was young, but mostly they lived on the East Coast … in New York. When Joel was eighteen, his parents were killed in a plane crash on the way back from a mission trip.”
“Do you know their names? His parents?”
“Um … I think his dad’s name was Randall … I think that’s right. And his mom …” She put a hand to her forehead, obviously distressed at her inability to remember. “I don’t know, Matt. I … I know he told me though. I know he did. But I can’t remember. He had a picture of them—in his apartment. And another in his wallet. I could tell you exactly what they looked like, but … I honestly couldn’t be sure about their names.”
“Was he close to them?”
“Yes, very. He was devastated when they died. He was still in high school. It left him completely alone, since his older brother—Tim—was off at college.”
“What else? There has to be something that would give us a hint of what could have happened.”
Melanie opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. Then, she sighed and closed her eyes. “Joel was engaged once before,” she breathed.
“What?” He struggled to keep the anger from his voice. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“There was no reason to say anything before, Matt. It … was in the past.”
“Do you think maybe there’s still something between them?”
“No. She … she’s dead.”
He waited. This was getting stranger by the minute. When Melanie didn’t offer more, he pressed her. “Tell me about her, Melanie. This could be important.”
“Her name was Tori. It … I think it was short for Victoria, but he always called her Tori.”
“He talked about her a lot?”
She shook her head. “Almost never. He … I didn’t even know about her until just before we got engaged. She died in a fire. That’s how Joel got the scar on his cheek”—she brushed the side of her face absently—“trying to rescue her.”
“What was her last name? Maybe we can talk to her family … Maybe they’ll know more about Joel’s past. They might be able to shed some light on all this.”
“I … I don’t know what her name was.” She said it as though she were confessing some unspeakable sin.
“You never asked?”
“He didn’t like to talk about it, Matt.” Her voice took on a defensive whine. “Joel had a lot of tragedy in his life. He didn’t try to hide it, but it was hard for him to talk about it. I respected that.”
“Are you sure this Tori—or whatever her name was—are you sure she’s dead? Are you sure she even existed?” This whole heroic rescue story smelled to high heaven.
For a moment, Melanie’s gaze bored a hole through him. Then she pushed back her chair and started clearing off the table. She carried a stack of dishes into the kitchen. Matt could hear the clatter as she loaded them into the dishwasher. He prayed she wouldn’t break something.
Jerica came in from the family room where she’d been watching a video. Without a word, she climbed onto Matt’s lap and put her arms around his neck. She laid her head on his chest, and he thought his heart would break.
She looked up at him, her deep brown eyes glistening. “Are you gonna help us find Joel, Uncle Matt?” she asked. “He was gonna be my daddy.”
“I know, sweetie.”
As long as he could remember, Jerica had talked about having a daddy the way her cousins, Brock and Jace—Matt’s own sons—did. Matthew wondered what kind of man Joel Ellington was that he would do this—not just to Melanie, but to the precious little girl who sat on his lap now. Melanie had always been a good judge of character. How could she have been so wrong about this man? He decided the man must have been one smooth actor.
Jerica tugged at hi
s sleeve, forcing him from his reverie. “Are you? Are you, Uncle Matt? Are you going to help us find my daddy?”
He bit his lip and nodded. “I’m sure going to try, honey.”
“I admit I am completely baffled,” Pastor Don Steele told Matt the next day. “If I hadn’t seen the letters with my own eyes—in Joel’s handwriting—I’d be utterly convinced there’s been foul play. But those letters make me feel certain that Joel had good reasons for doing what he did.” He tapped a pencil absently on his desk, shaking his head. “But I can’t for the life of me imagine what those reasons might be.”
Matt sat on the other side of the desk in the pastor’s study. He’d barely met Don Steele, but already he trusted the man’s judgment and integrity implicitly.
Once more, he picked up the note Don had shown him. The handwriting was the same as in the letter Melanie had received. Both she and Don Steele had no doubt that the letters were written in Joel Ellington’s hand. Matt read the brief message once more.
Don,
I can’t explain right now, but something has happened that makes it necessary for me to leave immediately. I am deeply sorry for having to tell you in this way and for leaving on such short notice. I can’t say more.
I have broken my engagement to Melanie, and she will need your counsel in the weeks ahead. Please assure her that my reasons for leaving have nothing to do with her. I love her deeply. I wish I could explain, but I simply can’t.
I’ve taken my paycheck. I hope it won’t be a problem if I cash it a few days early.
May God bless you and help you to understand and forgive me.
Joel
“You showed this to the police?” Matt asked.
“Yes. But if anything, it hurt my cause. Like I told you, the officer said that unless he’s committed a crime, they can’t conduct a search for someone who left of his own accord. I … I didn’t make an issue about Joel taking his paycheck. Maybe I should have. Maybe they would have taken some action then. But … well, he had the pay coming. It was rightfully his.”
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