by L. E. Rico
“Helen, you have no idea how grateful we are,” I murmur, giving her arm an affectionate squeeze as Scott and I make our way toward the basement.
And the past.
Scott: Hey, Siri, tell me a story.
Siri: It was a dark and stormy night…no, that’s not it…
Chapter Twenty-Two
Scott
We work side by side in silence, each of us tackling a different year—combing through each and every edition of each and every paper in the months before and after my birth—looking for some elusive clue—the missing piece of the puzzle that is my past. We’ve been at it nearly an hour when she finds something.
“Oh, hey, Scott, come here,” she says excitedly. I leave what I’m reading to go and stand over her shoulder. She points to an article from the year before I was born. “This is all about some big, high-profile case that your father was involved in. A woman accused of killing her abusive husband. She claimed he was trying to make her miscarry their unborn child. Dad was the public defender on this one.”
“So, he defended her?” I ask.
“Exactly! She was found guilty and sent to prison.”
“Okay…” I say, not getting the connection. “What does that have to do with what we’re looking for?”
She pulls another paper in front of her. “Here,” she says, tapping a front-page article with her index finger.
I read the headline splashed across the top of the page.
Woman Convicted of Killing Husband Dies Giving Birth in Prison
“Oh. Oh my God. You don’t think…?”
“I don’t know…maybe. I mean, it could be, right?” Jameson says with more animation than I’ve ever seen in her. “Thing is, they don’t say what happened. To the baby, I mean. Did it live? Did it die? Was it stillborn?”
“And so you’re thinking…”
“Maybe her attorney adopted that baby. Maybe that baby is you.”
I slip down into the seat next to her and read the article carefully. She’s right, there’s no mention of the child. I follow the column down a little further to an inset on the side of the page. It’s a recap of the case and trial, complete with a picture of the woman in question, Mrs. Mary Peridot. She’s seated at the defense table in the courtroom, a considerably younger but unmistakable Winston Clarke Sr, Esq. sitting at her side. They’re leaning in toward one another, like they’re having a little huddle in the middle of the trial. I pick up the paper and pull it closer, examining the grainy, black and white image. There’s something about it…though I’m not sure exactly what.
“So I was thinking…” she’s saying, but I hold up a hand to stop her.
“Hang on, Jameson. Let me see something.”
She watches me silently, intently, as I run a finger along the rows of faces in the background. The people watching the court case unfold. I stop a couple of rows back and just behind my father. There’s just something about the strong jawline, the fine features, the hair. I can almost envision it in its natural red-blond state.
“Oh my God,” I gasp, dropping the page back to the table.
“What?” Jameson asks, sounding suddenly alarmed. “What is it? What did you see?”
“Not what. Who,” I correct her and point to the image. She leans forward, squinting. After a long moment, I hear her breath catch in her chest, and she sits bolt upright. She sees it too.
“Is that…?”
I nod solemnly. “Yeah, I think so. She’s pretty hard to miss.”
Back upstairs, we find Helen at her desk with Jackson in her lap. They’re scribbling on paper with markers.
“Hi, baby!” his mother calls out to him.
The little boy looks up and grins. “What the Helllllllllllen, Mama!”
“Ummm did he just say, ‘What the…Helen?’” I ask, exchanging a bewildered glance with Jameson.
Helen herself looks sheepish. “We’ve been practicing that. He’s such a clever little boy!”
Well, that’s one problem solved.
…
Miss Kelly is kind of legendary around Mayhem. She’s run the bookstore for as long as I can remember, but countless rumors about her past have circulated around town for years. She was a mercenary…and a spy. She lived in a remote village in the rainforest, learning the ways of its people. She sailed a clipper ship. She conducted a major symphony orchestra. She’s a black widow, leaving a trail of dead husbands behind her. The truth is that no one knows the truth about Miss Kelly. I’m not even certain anyone knows her last name.
When the jet-black cat whizzes past me, it makes the most ungodly noise I’ve ever heard. Some cross between a yowl and a groan and a screech.
“Oh, hey, sorry,” I mumble as I open the door to Kelly’s Books.
“Edgar! Stop that right this instant!” a familiar voice yells from somewhere behind a bookcase. “You leave Allan alone!”
“Hello?” I call out. “Miss Kelly?”
“Poe! You, too! Stop clawing that bookshelf. This. Instant!”
“Miss Kelly…?”
I’m about to back up slowly and leave the way I entered when her face peeks out from the stockroom door.
“Who’s there?” she asks, squinting suspiciously in my direction.
“It’s Scott Clarke. Win Clarke’s son?” I offer, hoping she’ll remember that she knows me. She does.
“Scotty? Scotty Clarke? My goodness!” She rushes out of the back excitedly, practically crashing into me as one of the cats—Poe, perhaps?—gets tangled up under her feet. The gray and black striped feline is wearing a red sweater with a black raven knitted on it. He looks up at us with disdain, yowls, coughs up a fur ball, and scampers away.
“Well, that’s a fine ‘how do you do’ isn’t it?” Miss Kelly laughs, straightens up, and puts her hands on my shoulders to get a better look at me. “Look at you. Scotty Clarke. It’s been a long time. How have things been going down in Mexico?”
I follow her as she gestures toward a pair of overstuffed wingbacks in a corner of the store. I gingerly remove a sleeping tabby from one of them. This one has a black sweater with a skull on it. A little macabre, but totally appropriate I suppose, considering his namesake.
“Good. Really, really good. I mean, it’s a tremendous amount of work, but I get to meet so many interesting people from all over the world. And I feel as if I’m really making a difference. You know what I mean?”
The older woman nods. “Yes. Yes, I do. Now, I assume you came home for your father.”
“I did. He’s not out of the woods yet, though.”
She tsks. “Such a shame. But he’s tough as nails, that Winston Clarke. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he just wakes up, right as rain, like nothing ever happened.”
“I hope you’re right, Miss Kelly.”
“Well, tell me what it is that I can do for you, Scott. Because I have a feeling this isn’t a social call.”
“I…I seem to recall my mother saying that the two of you used to work together—way back. Before Win and I were born…”
She smiles at the memory. “Oh yes, she was quite the little ray of sunshine, that Margie. She was so young then—and cute as a bug! And she was a part-time clerk up at the courthouse in Edgerly. I applied for a job there, and we hit it off right away. To this day, I’m certain she pulled some strings to get me that position. We always took our lunch breaks together, and sometimes she and your father would have me over for dinner. Usually it was to try and fix me up with someone or other they thought I’d like. Oh yes, your parents were a lovely couple. Just wonderful.”
And there it is. The door is open—I just need to walk through it.
“Miss Kelly?” I ask, sounding more hesitant than I’d like.
“Yes, dear?”
“Am I their child?”
She looks at me for a long, awkward moment before leaning forward to put a hand on my knee.
“Yes, Scott. Margie and Win are your parents.”
I don’t miss her
very precise choice of words.
“That’s not what I asked, Miss Kelly. I have reason to believe I may have been adopted…and I think you might just be the one person who can confirm that at the moment.”
She tilts her head to the side and considers me. “Son, your poor mother was in labor with you nearly nineteen hours before they finally decided to do a C-section. I brought her a vase full of lilacs when you were just three days old.”
Whoa. That’s way too specific to be a lie. Unless, of course, she’s spinning an incredibly elaborate tale to get me off the trail…
She can tell I’m skeptical. “No, Scott, you were not adopted. You weren’t left in a basket on the steps of the firehouse; they did not find you floating along the Mississippi like baby Moses. I know you know about the birds and the bees, son, but I’m happy to run through the basics with you if you want to know exactly how you came to be in this world.”
I hold up my palms before she can launch into specifics. “Uh, no, no—I get it,” I mumble, the confusion clear on my face and in my voice.
“What’s this all about?” she demands. “Really?”
“I told you. I have reason to believe I’m not their son.”
“And what reason is that?”
I take a long pause, considering whether or not to tell her.
“She told me.”
“Who told you? Margie?”
“Yes. When she was dying. She told me that I wasn’t her son. Their son.”
Miss Kelly sits back in her chair, crosses her arms in front of her chest, and looks down at the floor, seeming to consider this statement. I know what’s coming next. She’s going to tell me that my mother was delirious and just speaking gibberish at the end. But that’s not what she does.
“Did she know it was you she was talking to?”
“Huh?”
“You, Scott. Did she say your name? Are you certain she knew it was you who was with her?”
“Of course…” The two words start out as firm and confidant as any two words could be, but the rest of the sentence, the unsaid words, scream my sudden uncertainty. Had she called me Scott? No. But she’d called me something. When I sat by her bedside and took her hand…
“She called me ‘son,’” I say with renewed conviction. There. That was it. Of course she knew who I was.
But Miss Kelly doesn’t look convinced. In fact, that look on her face right now is a little…what? Sad. Pitying?
“What?” I ask, unable to keep the combination of alarm and irritation out of my voice. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“You know what I am telling you.”
“No,” I maintain, shaking my head. “No, I don’t…”
And then I do. Suddenly I’m standing at the courthouse counter with Dennis.
“A baby boy with your last name, born in the same hospital, the same year does, in fact, have an amended birth certificate.”
“Jesus,” I murmur as the piano falls from the sky and hits me on the head. I’ve been so blind.
“Win…” His name is an exhalation, a breath, a sigh on my lips, just as it was on my mother’s that day. She thought I was Win. I corrected her. She squeezed my hand as if she understood. But she didn’t. She thought I was my brother.
Miss Kelly is watching me intently as all the pieces finally fall into place.
“He’s that woman’s baby, isn’t he?” I ask suddenly. “The one who went to jail?”
“My, my, you have been busy, Scott,” she says quietly. “This is your father’s story to tell. But under the circumstances…” She takes a deep breath, leans forward again, and continues. “Mary Peridot was four months along when that degenerate husband of hers decided he didn’t want to be a daddy after all. He roughed her up pretty badly and told her he was going to beat the child out of her. Luckily for her—unluckily for him—he took a beer break before he could get that far. While he was passed out drunk in front of the television set, she shot him with his own hunting rifle. Then she called nine-one-one just before she collapsed. Doctor Douglas patched her up, and later on, he testified on her behalf, saying her husband was already well on his way to killing her and her unborn child.”
My mind is spinning, whirring…absolutely quaking with this information overload. I start with the most glaring point.
“What was Doc Douglas doing there?”
“You must remember that he was a much younger man then. He was just starting out in his career, really, and his first job after residency was Edgerly Hospital.”
“Okay, so where does my father come into all of this?”
“As you undoubtedly know by now, he was selected as the public defender on that case. What a heartbreak it was for him when the jury found that poor girl guilty. Big Win had made such a powerful case for self-defense. But there wasn’t such a thing as ‘battered woman syndrome’ back then—at least, it wasn’t widely recognized in a tiny rural, Midwestern community like that one. So the judge sentenced her to thirty years.”
“Oh my God,” I whisper under my breath.
“Indeed. Well, your father filed for an appeal immediately…but it was going to take some time. Mary Peridot was permitted to stay in the county jail until she gave birth. Unfortunately, the baby came early. The correctional officers on her cellblock thought she was faking, and they waited to get her help until they saw all the blood. The baby was breech, you see. Mary suffered something awful and, by the time Doc Douglas was called in, she was hemorrhaging. He did an emergency C-Section right there in the infirmary of the county jail. Got the baby out, but Mary didn’t make it.”
I’m shaking my head. My eyes are wide. My mouth is open, and I can’t say a single thing. It’s as if I’m frozen.
“As you can imagine,” Miss Kelly continues, “your father was beside himself. He was threatening to sue anyone and everyone who was within ten miles of the jail that night. The warden—he tried to sweep it under the rug, but Big Win was not about to let him do that. Until…”
“What?” I gasp. “Until what?”
She considers me for what feels like a long time before she resumes the story. “Until they struck a deal.”
“Who? The county and Mary’s family?”
The older woman shakes her head at me.
“No, dear. Your father—Big Win—and the county. You see, Mary had no other family. If he sued on behalf of her estate, it would have all gone to the child. And then you can bet that the husband’s miserable family—the ones who stood by and let that man beat her nearly to death—would’ve taken in that little boy just to get their paws on that settlement.”
“You don’t know that,” I object.
“Oh, but I do! Honey, I was working in the county clerk’s office. I heard everything, I saw everything. Wasn’t a thing happened in that county that I didn’t know about. Same with your mother. Before deciding to sue, he asked the family if they’d have any interest in taking the baby. None. By the grace of God, not one of them was interested.”
I feel as if I’m getting down to the final pages of an edge-of-your-seat thriller. “So did he file suit against the county?”
“No.”
“What? Why?”
“Because he knew it was more important that the child have a loving home than it was for him to squeeze money out of the county that would never benefit the baby. So…he made an under-the-table deal.”
Another gasp from me. This just keeps getting more and more screwy.
“You see, your parents had been married a few years by then, and they’d not been able to get pregnant. Poor Margie was just heartbroken. So, when this situation presented itself, your parents agreed on what had to be done. Big Win offered to quash the gross negligence claim if they could find a way to fast-track an adoption. They agreed…and within a few days, your brother was in your mama’s arms for good.”
“Oh my God.”
“And then, my dearest, came you, exactly eleven months later. Apparently, the good Lord has a wicked sense
of humor because no sooner was that child given the Clarke name than Margie found out she was expecting.”
I stare at her. Something’s not right here. Something other than the bribery, and negligence, and abandonment, and blackmail, that is.
“Okay, so if they kept all this under wraps, how on earth did my parents explain the sudden appearance of an infant?”
“They claimed it was a private adoption—which was true enough. But they didn’t want to take any chances of someone putting two and two together, so they started making plans to move. They’d go just far enough away so that no one would know them well enough, or recently enough to ask too many questions. And the truth is, Big Win was so devastated by the Mary Peridot case that he didn’t want to be a public defender anymore. He just couldn’t take it for another day—defending people who were guilty, seeing innocent people go to jail…it was just too much. So he came to sleepy little Mayhem and hung out his shingle. And did very well for himself, I might add.”
So he did.
“And they kept it a secret all these years…”
“Yes. But you have to understand, Scott, there was a lot of brouhaha surrounding that trial. The last thing they wanted was to drag a child into that mess. Even without the implications of negligence on the part of the county penal system, there was still backlash. Win and Margie were afraid the press would follow up on the story ad nauseam…and that a different attorney might approach the Peridot family about filing a lawsuit. No, your parents wanted to get it done and get out of town as quickly as possible.”
“I-I don’t know what any of this means,” I admit softly.
Miss Kelly reaches across and takes my hand. She gives it a good, hard squeeze. “It means that this is your brother’s history to unearth and process in whatever way he sees fit. It means that your parents are good, kind people with big hearts who would do anything to protect their boys. And, if I’m not mistaken, Scott Winston Clarke, it means you’ve spent the last ten years of your life running from a past that wasn’t even yours.”
The weight of her words is a crushing blow to my psyche. Miss Kelly is absolutely right—I’ve wasted a full third of my life. And it’s time that I can never get back.