by Lynn Austin
Headlights winked through the trees as the car came closer, and Eleanor ducked down, instinctively trying to hide. When she peered through the trees again, the brake lights lit up the woods behind the car, and she was horrified to see Lorenzo’s house nestled among the trees. Somehow she had ended up on his property. It was his car that was driving toward the lake, heading toward the boat launch.
It stopped behind an older model car that was already parked near the dock, and a moment later Lorenzo stepped out. He quickly walked around to the passenger side and opened the door and hauled a man out of his car, dumping him to the ground. The man was bound hand and foot, and was begging. “Please, Mr. Messina. Please… I’m sorry!”
“Nobody steals from me, Tony. Nobody.”
Lorenzo reached into his jacket, and a moment later Eleanor heard a loud bang as he put the gun to the man’s head and shot him. The sound echoed through the woods like an explosion, and she curled up in a ball in terror. He had killed a man! Charming Lorenzo Messina had just killed a man in cold blood! Eleanor stuffed her fist in her mouth to keep from screaming, fighting hysteria.
A moment later, she heard the engine of the second car start up, the motor revving loudly, as if something heavy was pressing the accelerator to the floor. She forced herself to look up and watched as Lorenzo dragged the dead man to the second car and stuffed him into the trunk. Then he put the car in gear and released the brake, and it shot down the boat ramp and tore into the water with a splash. She saw it faintly in the darkness, slowly sinking to the bottom. The entire scene had taken no more than two or three minutes.
Eleanor huddled in the bushes, scarcely daring to breathe, waiting until Lorenzo’s car drove away. Then she stood on quaking legs and ran blindly through the woods.
Chapter
34
RIVERSIDE, NEW YORK
Kathleen stared at her uncle, astounded by what he had just told her.
Joelle was sitting very close to her, holding onto Kathleen’s arm as if to ground herself from a terrible shock.
“Did she ever tell the police what she’d seen?” Kathleen asked.
Leonard shook his head. “She was scared to death. You have to remember that most of the men she knew were away at war, and the ones who’d stayed behind to serve as police and so forth were pretty old. She didn’t know who to trust. Eleanor knew that Messina was a powerful man, and she was afraid that he’d harm our mother if she told anyone what she’d seen. She didn’t even tell me about it until years later.”
“No wonder she never went back,” Kathleen murmured.
“I don’t know everything that happened to Eleanor here in Riverside during the war,” Uncle Leonard continued, “but when I came home, your mother was a different person from the girl I’d left behind. It came out during the trial that she’d been married and that her husband had been killed in the war, and that explained a lot.”
Kathleen was about to interrupt and tell Leonard that Rick Trent hadn’t died after all, but he continued with his story too quickly.
“She was very depressed. Your father lifted her spirits. Made her laugh again. It was little wonder that she fell in love with him. And poor Donald was smitten from the first moment he met Eleanor. He never stopped loving her.”
“If he loved her so much, then why—?”
“Why did he kill her?” Leonard interrupted. “You’ll never convince me that he did.”
“I was going to ask why he didn’t take better care of her. Why he never got a steady job, why he let her live in squalor.”
“This house was much nicer than the one your father grew up in—but I understand what you’re asking.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead, as if the pain of recalling the past had made his head ache. “Your father made more than a few mistakes, Kathleen. But he’s changed. You’ll see.”
She struggled to recover from the shock of hearing that her mother had witnessed a brutal murder—and to make sense of everything else she had learned in the past two days. “Maybe Lorenzo Messina murdered Mom. He was obviously capable of such a thing.”
“But why would he do that?” Leonard asked. “He didn’t even know she’d been a witness.”
“I don’t know,” Kathleen said with a shrug. “It was just a thought. …
So you and Daddy never knew about her marriage to Rick Trent?”
“No. The police found the letters in her purse, along with the final letter that said he’d been killed in battle. Donald wouldn’t have cared, though. He loved your mother.”
“Her first husband didn’t really die in the war, Uncle Leonard. Cynthia Hayworth told me the story last night. Rick’s father was very wealthy, and when he found out that his son had secretly married Mom during the war, he did a background search. He must have found out that she was illegitimate. He used that, and the fact that Grandma Fiona had been the mistress of a wealthy New York banker, to have the marriage annulled. He accused Mom of being a gold digger, and he abandoned her. That’s why she was so depressed.”
Leonard shook his head sadly. “She never told us. But you don’t suppose she was going back to this man, do you? Is that what the train tickets were for? I’ll never believe that your mother was having an affair. Can you picture Eleanor having an affair? She was too ill, for one thing. If it weren’t for the theater tickets, I would have thought she was going to New York to see a specialist.”
“What do you mean? What was wrong with her?”
“Your mother had a condition called Myasthenia Gravis.”
“What on earth is that?”
“It has something to do with the immune system and causes progressive muscle weakness. It started with slurred speech, trouble swallowing. … That’s why her eyelids drooped the way they did, and why she was always so weary. It got to the point where she was too embarrassed to go out in public, afraid that people would think she was drunk. Besides, the least little thing, like heating up a can of soup, would tire her out. Medication might have helped, but she couldn’t afford it. It was hard enough to feed and clothe four kids, even with public assistance. I helped as much as I could, but I was supporting my mother until she died. She closed the store after Eleanor left home so she could break free from Lorenzo Messina.”
For a long moment, Kathleen couldn’t speak. “W-why didn’t Mom ever tell me she was ill?”
“You were a child, Kathleen. Would you really have understood? And then you left home at such a young age.”
“And I didn’t even come back to go to Daddy’s trial. I feel so bad about that.”
“Don’t. I’m glad you didn’t come back, and so is he. There was no need for you to hear all that ugliness. In fact, we had Connie take Annie and the boys away for about six months to keep them from hearing all about it. They still don’t know the details, and they don’t want to. You had a chance at a new life, and I’m glad you took it.”
“I found all the clippings about the arrest and trial that Connie saved. I read them last night.”
“She didn’t save those. I did.”
“Oh.” Kathleen drew a deep breath to ask the question that had been stewing in her mind all day. “Well, if Daddy didn’t kill her, then who did?
And why?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out the answer to that for thirty-five years.
The police never even considered another suspect.”
Kathleen felt a surge of grief for her mother that was as painful and raw as if she’d died only yesterday. “I feel so guilty for arguing with her the last time I saw her,” she said through her tears. Leonard reached to take her hand, and she felt Joelle’s arm around her shoulder. “I never had a chance to say I was sorry. We argued over money for college, of all things.
She wouldn’t cosign a loan for me. But she swore that she would get the money for me somehow, and I said, ‘How? Are you going to steal it, like Daddy?’Those were my last words to her.”
“I knew she was upset,” Leonard said, “but I didn’t know why. She said,
‘I’ve let Kathleen down, Len, I’ve let her down. I’ve been so bitter toward Mother because of all the ways she failed us, and now I’ve failed my own daughter.’”
“Mom!” Joelle said suddenly, “Maybe the money in Eleanor’s purse was for you.”
Kathleen stared at her, afraid she was right. “But how did she get it?
Where did it come from?”
“I wish I knew,” Uncle Leonard murmured. “We spent it all on lawyers, but it didn’t help. … Our lives certainly got all tangled up, didn’t they?”
“They sure did,” Kathleen agreed. “As Rory Quinn would say, ‘We made a blooming mess of things.’”
They were silent for a moment, and Kathleen heard Connie and Annie and the other women laughing about something in the kitchen. Then a car horn began beeping outside, and a white van pulled to a stop behind Kathleen’s Lexus. It had Gallagher’s TV and Appliances painted on the side.
“He’s home!” Annie squealed, running from the kitchen. “Daddy’s home!” JT hurried through the house from the backyard, his face red with emotion. Kathleen sprang to her feet and offered her hand to Uncle Leonard to help him.
“You go on,” he told her. “I’ve seen your father over the years—you haven’t.”
“What do you mean? Did you go up to Attica to visit him?”
“We all did. But he’s dying to see you. Go on.”
Kathleen couldn’t hold back her tears as she followed the others outside to greet their father. He didn’t look like a convict or a hardened criminal at all as he climbed from the van, just an elderly, white-haired man—thinner than she remembered, but with the same happy-go-lucky smile and freckled arms. He still had a spring in his step as he hurried toward Annie and JT and drew them into his arms. Prison hadn’t beaten him down. Kathleen halted on the porch steps, stunned to realize that he was seventynine years old. A sob escaped from her throat when she saw that his shirt and pants and shoes were brand-new.
“Oh, Daddy,” she cried. He looked up, his face wet with tears as he went to her and hugged her tightly.
“Kathy! My Kathy! I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”
“I’m so sorry, Daddy—”
“Shh… shh…” he soothed. “None of that, now. We’re going to look forward from now on, not back.” He finally released her and held her at arm’s length for a moment to study her. “What a lovely woman you are. As beautiful as your mother.”
As she fell into her father’s arms again, weeping on his shoulder, Kathleen knew with fierce certainty that he was not her mother’s murderer. The knowledge gave her no comfort. Not only had the guilty person gotten away with it, but Daddy had spent thirty-five years in prison—nearly half his lifetime—for a crime he didn’t commit.
“Welcome home, Daddy,” she murmured. She couldn’t think of anything else to say to convey her sense of injustice. “Welcome home.”
He laughed when he released her, as if trying to lighten everyone’s mood. “Wow! Will you look at this place! The house looks better than it did the day we bought it. Who fixed it all up?”
“We all worked on it, Daddy,” Annie replied. “Donny and JT and me.
And a whole group of people from church helped, too. It was our mission project.”
“Well, I’ll be,” he said. “You mean your Uncle Leonard let a pack of Christians run loose on this place?”
Annie laughed. “He bought fried chicken for everyone the day they put the new roof on. Come see what they did inside. … And your grandkids are waiting to see you.”
As Annie took his hand and led him through the front door, Kathleen noticed her brother Poke for the first time. At the hard-to-believe age of fifty, he resembled their father but was stockier, with thick shoulders and arms—probably from lifting TVs. He opened his beefy arms to her. “Hey, Kathy. How you doing?”
“Great. I’m great, Poke.” She started crying all over again as she hugged him.
“Hey! You better not call me that again if you know what’s good for you.”
“Listen, I’m the one who had to hold your hand and drag you to kindergarten every day. Believe me, you earned that name a hundred times over.”
“Gee, it’s good to see you.” His eyes were bright with tears. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”
They went inside, and Kathleen could never remember a time when the little bungalow had been filled with so much laughter and joy. She sat back and watched her family as if viewing strangers, awestruck by the change in all of them.
“If I didn’t see this with my own eyes, I never would have believed it,” she told Joelle. “I’m so glad you talked me into coming.”
“Even with all the other awful things you found out about your family?”
“Yeah, even with all that.”
“Come on, everybody!” Connie finally called above the commotion. “I’ve got the food on the table, and we need to sit down and eat it. This is a celebration, for goodness’sake, and what’s a celebration without food?”
Everybody heaped their paper plates with food, then found places to sit in the living room, on the floor, or around the dining room table. Kathleen sat at the table between her father and Joelle. Uncle Leonard sat across from them.
“Wait! Nobody eats until we say grace,” her father said. He cleared his throat and waited until everyone was quiet. “Lord, I thank you—” He couldn’t finish. He covered his eyes with his hand and gestured to Poke.
“Yes, Lord… we thank you for this food… and for… for Dad—” He shook his head, overwhelmed, and nudged JT with his elbow.
“L-Lord, God…” He couldn’t get any further, either.
Kathleen didn’t care if they all knew she was crying. The sight of her father and brothers with their heads bowed, giving thanks to God, was nothing less than a miracle. “Heavenly Father we all thank you,” she said. “Thank you for bringing Daddy home… and all of us together again. Amen.”
“Amen,” everyone echoed. There was a burst of laughter all around, and they began to eat. Kathleen thought there must be more food on the table and spread out on the kitchen counters than there had been in the house during her entire childhood. She was almost too overwhelmed to eat any of it.
After most people had finished or gone back for seconds, her father rapped on his water glass to quiet everyone down and get their attention.
“I want to say a few words to all of you while I’ve got you all in one place,” he began. His smile faded and his eyes glimmered with tears. “I didn’t kill your mother. But I was guilty of a lot of other things—stealing and teaching you kids to steal, not being a very good father or husband, cheating people out of their money. God knows I deserved to go to jail. I brought shame on myself and on my family because I was a thief and because of the way I made all of you live. I didn’t do right by your mother and you kids. But I didn’t kill her. I would never lay a hand on her.” His voice grew hushed, and it was a moment before he could go on.
“When the justice system declared me guilty of murder, I was pretty angry about it. After all the appeals were exhausted and I realized I was in it for the long haul, well, I figured there was nothing else I could do except appeal to God. I wanted Him to set me free—and He did. But not in the way I expected.” He smiled.
“The chaplain taught me about Jesus—how He was unjustly accused and executed for a crime He didn’t commit. Yet Jesus submitted to God’s will and saved all of us in the bargain. In fact, He took the punishment for my crimes. The chaplain said that our only purpose in life is to glorify God—and I wasn’t doing that. I was doing the opposite, in fact. Never mind that I wasn’t guilty of murder, I was guilty of so many other things— mainly, wasting the life that God had given me. And so, as I got to know God, I came to the conclusion that if I had to go to prison in order to find Him… then it was worth it.”
Kathleen stared at her father in amazement, scarcely believing what she was hearing. Her father—her entire family—had become Christians a
nd turned their lives around, and she’d had nothing to do with it. She professed to be a Christian, yet she had cut herself off from them so completely that she’d never even thought to pray for them. She knew that she would have to ask God to forgive her for that. It didn’t matter how many great things she’d done for God, how many charities she’d contributed to over the years. If she couldn’t even show compassion and love—and forgiveness— to her own family, it meant nothing. It occurred to Kathleen that she had been as much a prisoner as her father, locked away from her family emotionally all these years.
“I didn’t murder your mother,” her father repeated, “but I didn’t help her any, either. And now I want to make sure my accounts are paid with all of you. I want to ask you all to forgive me. Donny…? JT…?
Annie…? ” he asked, looking at each of them in turn. They all nodded, murmuring their assurances. “Leonard and Connie…? And you, Kathleen?”
“Of course, Daddy. Of course I forgive you.”
“Thank you,” he whispered.
The room was quiet for a moment as he wiped his tears on his sleeve. Then JT said, “You probably didn’t know it, Kathleen, but Dad has turned into a fire-and-brimstone preacher.”
“So I see.” She couldn’t hold back a smile. Neither could her father.
“I’m proud to be one, too,” he said. “God gave me a ministry to the other inmates. They saw the change in me and wanted to know why. The chaplain told us we should have a life verse, and mine was 1 Timothy 1:16: ‘I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.’
“Now the funny thing is, if I had been imprisoned as just a common, ordinary thief, none of the others would’ve listened to me. But the fact that I was a convicted murderer—well, that gave my testimony real clout among all the other murderers. So you see? God really does know what He’s doing. He put me in prison to bring Him glory, and I gotta tell you, we had a genuine revival up there in Attica. Got everybody reading the Bible and going to prayer meetings and everything.”