“The truly unforgivable is to fail as a parent,” she said.
Once again I was treading in a world I knew nothing about. But I refused to believe in that kind of finality.
“Nothing is unforgivable,” I told her. “It might just take a very long time.”
My words warmed her more than I intended. We talked for a little while about nothing in particular. Soon she slipped back into staring out the sliding door at the expanse on the other side of the glass, and I slipped out the front door without saying goodbye.
My suspicion that Meredith was the anonymous caller no longer felt plausible. She may have inadvertently put her daughter in danger allowing a man like Sami into their household. She may have ignored some of the early signs that Jeanette needed help. She may have done a lot of things that were now coming back to haunt her as only regret can. But I just couldn’t believe she willfully wanted her daughter dead.
That left only one other person.
AN ENDLESS SUNSET
I arrived at the convalescent home after visiting hours. The front desk was empty and I proceeded down the main hallway. I glanced inside the little chapel with the dimly lit, makeshift altar but didn’t expect to find her there. I went up the stairs and stepped out onto the balcony. The taillights from outbound traffic cast the entire area in a reddish glow. A voice called out to me.
“I’m over here,” the old woman said.
Sheila Lansing sat in the same chair under the potted palm and looked out at the passing traffic like she was watching a beautiful sunset from a quiet beach, except this kind of sunset never ended.
“What do you want?” she asked as I stood over her.
“I want to know why.”
“You know why.”
“I want you to say it.”
Sheila fixed her gaze on the void in front of her. I needed her to look at me, to acknowledge my presence, so I moved to my right and cast her face in shadow.
“Because he ruined my life,” replied the voice from the dark.
“Are you aware of what you did?” I asked. “Two people lost their lives. One of them was just a young girl.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with—”
“Neither of them deserved it,” I cut in. I couldn’t let her slough off Morgan’s murder. Without the old woman’s meddling, that girl would be breathing today. I then thought of the Sunday morning that almost got me killed and what the scene could have looked like in that little house if Sami had been successful. I felt something I had never experienced before—a desire to inflict harm on another human being.
“Did you think three million dollars would hurt him?” I asked. “Three billion dollars wouldn’t hurt him.”
“It wasn’t about the money,” she dismissed.
“Then why the ransom?”
“So we could get out of here.”
Sheila clarified the “we” for me—it included her, Jeanette, and the baby. She admitted that the chance encounter with Jeanette wasn’t entirely that. She helped orchestrate the program with Jeanette’s school. And how elated she was when she finally got to meet the young woman. “She is such a sweet girl,” she said without any acknowledgment of how odd it sounded coming from her. “She listened to me. She cared for me. And I cared for her.”
When Sheila found out that Jeanette was pregnant, she and Tala helped get her into the clinic in Alhambra. “You know he turned his back on her when he found out she was pregnant,” she said like an accusation directed at me. “A grandparent doesn’t do that.” That was her one triumph over Valenti—a feeling of superiority in one aspect of life.
Now they had a baby boy and the scheme was cooked up to bleed money out of Valenti so they could all run off together. Her plan was as harebrained as the one Jeanette and Nelson pitched me. I guessed their “home” would be the old one she’d been forced to leave in Pacoima, but when I asked her where she intended to go, she answered, “Anywhere but here.”
The fantasy life she projected didn’t feel genuine. The words were right but the weight behind them was missing. I felt no love for a young girl or her baby. There was only anger.
“Why did you try to have them killed, Mrs. Lansing?” I stared down at the face in shadow but could glean nothing. “You hate him that much?”
“It’s more than just hate,” she whispered.
Sheila tugged at the quilt protecting her from the cool night air. Even in the shadow I could see how thin and brittle her arms were.
“What a great man, with all his success and money and charity,” she said. “The same man who, when he found out I couldn’t have children, tossed me aside like an old dish towel. After all I did for him. The way he looked at me,” she stammered back to some memory from decades past. “At least an old rag has some use.
“Poor Charlie,” she said, “he tried so hard.” It took me a moment to realize her mind had leapfrogged in time to a second marriage and more precious memories that unfortunately weren’t quite precious enough. She shook her head at that sad realization and was jerked back to the memory that haunted her.
“I knew on that day the only thing Carl cared more about, even more than money, was having a child.” A measure of control returned to her voice. “And that one day I would take from him what he took from me.”
“Jeanette is living with him now,” I told her. “By her own choice. She’s happy.”
I had the urge to cause her pain and those two sentences were the best way to do it. I couldn’t see her face but I knew they had their intended effect. But even though I held nothing but contempt for the woman whose phone calls from this nursing home—the heads-up to Gao, the demand for three million, the tip-off to Sami—cascaded a series of events that led to so much suffering, I didn’t feel good about the way I told her about Jeanette and the baby. The words came out too easily for my liking. A second urge overcame me, and that was to get away from this place as soon as possible.
I stepped back and her face was again illuminated by the outbound traffic. She stared as if hypnotized by the red lights. I looked at her exposed arms, thinner than I ever thought arms could be. I felt cold just looking at her.
I took up the quilt and wrapped it around her shoulders, then left her alone on the balcony to join my own set of taillights, heading in the opposite direction.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Walker Phillips is the author of The Silent Second, as well as an executive at a global financial services company who has endured countless PowerPoint decks, offsite visioning sessions, synergies, and synergistically minded cross-functional teams, all in service of his work as a novelist to tell the story of an HR man–turned–moonlighting detective. He holds an MFA in film from Columbia University, and lives in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles with his wife and children.
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