Jennifer’s favorite photo was taken at Sleeping Bear Dunes. She and Patton stared out at the scenic lakeshore at sunset with their arms around one another and the ripple-marked sand dunes at their back. Their fall sweaters rustled in the breeze and their faces appeared rosy, ignited with youthful mirth. Jennifer pulled out the photograph from its plastic slot and examined it closely in the light. She felt a tide of emotion wash over her. This was how she wanted to remember their relationship.
She put away the photo album and headed into the living room, padding softly across the hand-woven Navaho rug she had brought from San Francisco. She loaded a live Dead tape, Atlanta 3/30/94, into the tape deck and adjusted the volume to a comfortable listening level. Picking up Amy Tan’s most recent book from the pine coffee table, she sat down on the couch and started reading.
Before she’d finished a single paragraph, the phone rang. Reaching for the handset, she prayed it wasn’t that pompous asshole Reid Farnsworth Lampert.
“Hello.”
“Jennifer. It’s Ken.”
Oh, no. What do I say?
“I’d like to see you. I’m here in town.”
“How did you get my number? It’s unlisted.” That was stupid. Why did you say that?
“Let’s just say where I work we have access to certain privileged information.”
“Oh, Ken,” she said softly. “I want to see you too.”
“Good. I’ll be there in five minutes. And by the way, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
CHAPTER 35
WHEN HE SAW HER on the front porch of the little Victorian, he felt the same jumble of emotions he had first felt when he had seen her this morning. Relieved of her stiff business suit, she looked more as he remembered her in college. She wore a simple Steal-Your-Face Dead T-shirt, faded jeans, and brown cowboy boots—a casual Western ensemble that he particularly liked. Her long blond hair was pulled up, her face and arms the color of honey from the summer sun, lending her the organic quality that had attracted him to her when they had first started going out.
He crossed the narrow street and climbed the stairs. When he reached the top step, she stepped forward to greet him.
“Hi, Ken,” she said simply, her blue eyes lighting up with a gentle glow.
“Hey, Jenn,” was all he could manage in reply. Suddenly, he felt presumptuous for the six pack of Detroit-brewed Stroh’s, their beverage of choice in college, under his left arm.
“Been a long time,” she said.
“Yes, it has.” To conceal his discomfort, he held up the six pack. “This stuff’s as rare as gold in these parts. I thought you might tip one back with me.”
“I’d like that,” she said. Her eyes lit up again for a moment, but then her expression changed to one of sadness. “Oh, Ken. I’m so sorry for...for everything.”
He saw sincerity in her eyes, but the words still echoed painfully. He looked down, pensively, feeling twelve years of emotion welling up inside him. “Let’s not go there just yet,” he said, unsure if he was ready for all this.
She gave a little nod and gently touched his wrist.
He thought of how the relationship had ended. Though there might be a perfectly logical explanation why she had cast him adrift twelve years ago, he found it difficult to imagine one. He secretly hoped there had been important extenuating circumstances and their relationship hadn’t fallen apart simply because of her goddamned father. Jesus Christ, there had to be more to it than that, right?
She broke through his thoughts. “It really is good to see you. Kind of surreal though, isn’t it?”
“You could say that.”
Neither of them seemed to know what to say next. Looking at her in the porch light, he realized how much he had cared for her.
“Let’s go inside,” she said softly.
He followed her up the stairs to her apartment. While she put the beer in the fridge, he took a moment to glance around the living room, smiling as he noticed her personality in the furnishings. Everything was tasteful, but inexpensive and organic. The couches and chairs were attractive, not garish or overly feminine, and he liked the Native American and Western touches. There were nice, simple wood-framed prints on the walls, one showing tall mountain peaks reaching up through gray clouds, another of a buckskin-clad frontiersman paddling a canoe.
“Like your apartment.”
“Thanks.” She walked up and handed him a beer. “By the way, do you still play a mean blues guitar?”
“You bet. They don’t call me Kenny ‘Guitar’ Patton for nothing. But lately I’ve been playing mostly bluegrass. Got the hillbilly bug, I guess.”
“Good for you, Panama Red,” she said, and both laughed.
He smiled at her as she took a seat on the couch. When she smiled back, her eyes lit up like gemstones and took his breath away. He took a seat in the chair across from her and for a moment just watched her, thinking back to how things had once been.
CHAPTER 36
“IT’S HORRIBLE WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY,” she said finally.
“Yes, it is,” he said quietly.
“Of course I didn’t vote for Kieger, but I’m still mad as hell. And sad.”
“The whole country is.”
They talked about it all for a few more minutes. But no words could adequately convey the sorrow and outrage they felt. It was a national tragedy that tugged at the soul of virtually every American, regardless of one’s age, race, or political beliefs.
“Any new leads on the case?” she asked him.
“A few.” He raised an eyebrow. “But nothing I can tell you about.”
She grinned mischievously, and he remembered how much he had missed that grin. He felt himself relax; it was coming easier between them now.
“Want to hear my theory?”
“Sure. But first, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing working at American Patriots. That’s the last place I’d expect to see you.”
“Maybe I’ve changed.”
“And maybe I’m Pat Robertson’s long lost son. Come on—level with me. What’s this all about?”
She broke into a guilty grin. “Okay, you’ve got me,” she said, discarding all pretense. Over the next ten minutes, she described in detail her double life as a Christian activist and journalist, how she was putting together an unflattering exposé on AMP while at the same time posing as a loyal employee.
“I’m impressed,” he said when she was finished. “I didn’t think there were any true investigative journalists left anymore.”
“Not all of us have gone the way of the Dodo.”
Close to it though. “Okay, so tell me about this theory of yours.”
When she leaned forward to speak, he felt as if time had warped and they were back in college again. “First of all, I don’t think the Green Freedom Brigade has anything to do with the assassination. The only reason their name has come up is to implicate the president and cast suspicion upon the Democrats.”
“Guilt by association.”
“If Osborne and the Dems are damaged goods, that will ensure smooth sailing for Fowler. She already has a lot of goodwill from the American people—in essence, a mandate. And because we’re definitely not talking about a lone gunman here and Fowler’s an Establishment conservative, the group behind it is most likely hard-line too. I’m thinking a radical right-wing group like the Phineas Priesthood, Tea Party Militia, or Red State Confederacy—or maybe a small group of extremists who’ve splintered off from the main group. Whoever it is, they want Fowler in power instead of a progressive like Kieger. That’s why they had him killed.”
Patton was surprised at the breadth of her knowledge; then again, she was a journalist. But what struck him most of all was how quickly she had put together a working theory, even if he thought it was a major reach.
“I see the conspiracy theorist in you is alive and well,” he said, poking fun at her.
“You don’t buy it?”
“Not really. Why would right-wingers k
ill a Republican? Why kill one of their own? And if you’re accusing the religious right, well, that’s just not how they operate. They may whine like fussy children and engage in political blackmail to get what they want, but they don’t kill people. That’s just not their style.”
“What if this group tried blackmail first and it backfired on them?”
“Then I’d say you were onto something.” He took another swig of beer and decided to change the subject. “So how far along are you on this story of yours?”
“I’ve done all of the background research, but I’m still waiting on a few things. With this assassination, there may be a new wrinkle.”
“Come on. You work with these evangelical types every day. They may be out there, but I hardly think they would kill a presidential candidate, especially a conservative one like Kieger.”
“Maybe, but remember what Lyndon Johnson said. He said you don’t have to worry about the left, because they rarely pick up the gun. It’s the right you have to worry about. If they don’t get what they want, they kill.”
“I shouldn’t even be discussing this with you. Not only is this an ongoing FBI investigation, but how can I possibly trust a journalist masquerading as a born-again Christian?”
“Come on, you can talk to me. I may be able to help you.”
He sensed she was making a journalistic play. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Look, I know how the system works. The FBI often uses confidential informants on cases like this. Let’s just say, I too have access to certain privileged information.”
He considered this while taking in her intense blue eyes. Oh no, she has that look—like an insistent child.
“Partners, Ken. Just like old times.”
“This isn’t why I came here tonight, to strike a deal with an informant.”
“Then why did you come?”
“You know why.”
Her face darkened with guilt. “It’s been bothering you all this time, hasn’t it?”
“Let’s just say, I think about it now and again. The same way I think about the time I almost drowned when I was six years old.”
She looked away and, for several seconds, they did not speak. Then she looked him straight in the eye and said, “I fucked up, Ken. I fucked up and now I owe you an explanation.”
CHAPTER 37
IT TOOK HALF AN HOUR, but Jennifer recounted the entire story from start to finish: getting pregnant with Ken’s child just before his graduation; her father coercing her into having the baby, giving it up for adoption, and ending her relationship with Ken; her banishment for eight miserable months to the unwed mother’s home outside Gary, Indiana; giving birth to the baby boy she and Ken had created together; and, most anguishing, having to give the child away to the adoptive parents. She found the retelling painful, yet, at the same time, cathartic.
Patton moved onto the couch next to her. “I don’t know what to say except that I’m sorry.”
Jennifer’s eyes were inky pools, sad and unblinking. “Kenneth Whitney—our son. I named him after you.” She rattled off the vital statistics in her head, as if it had happened yesterday: Twenty-one inches, seven pounds six ounces.
“Where is the boy now?”
“San Francisco. Until my AMP assignment, I had been living in the Bay Area. That’s where I’ve worked and lived the last eleven years. I had to postpone my senior year at Michigan. I transferred the following year to Berkeley, where I finished up.”
“Was moving to San Francisco so you could be closer to the baby?”
“What do you think?”
“Have you seen him since...since giving him up for adoption?”
“I see him on occasion, or at least I did before I moved out here.”
“Without the adoptive parents’ permission?”
She detected a note of disapproval in his voice. “Every few months I just need to see him, that’s all. Always from a distance. Sometimes I see him outside school, other times I go to one of his sports games.”
He said nothing, just stared at her.
“I know it sounds like I’m some kind of stalker, but it isn’t like that at all. He’s my son, Ken. I don’t invade his personal privacy, but that doesn’t mean I can’t live without him altogether. He doesn’t even know I’m there. I’m like a guardian angel. I just like to watch over him, to make sure he’s okay.”
“My God, Jenn, how could this have happened? To you? To us?”
“I just told you how—my father.” She felt the bitterness coagulate in her throat.
“I don’t want to make this any harder on you than it already is. But why couldn’t you have told me what was going on between you and your father? We could have found a way to work it out. After all, it was my baby too.”
“What choice did I have? My father threatened to take away everything important to me unless I did what he wanted. Not only was he prepared to disown me, not only was he never going to allow me to see my mother, brothers, and sisters again, but he was going to tell your parents and force you to capitulate by embarrassing you. He was prepared to do all of these things, if I went through with an abortion, kept the child as my own, or didn’t stop seeing you.”
“But there must have been something we could have done. I couldn’t even be there for you.”
She shook her head ruefully. “It was either the unwed mother’s home in Indiana—or hurting the people I loved. That was the dilemma I faced, and to this day I hate myself for buckling under my father’s will. Because giving into him has cost me more in the long run. I didn’t just lose the man I loved and my son, I lost my whole family, or at least everyone but my older brother.”
She paused a moment, her mind laden with painful remembrance.
“The truth is the rift between my father and I could never heal, and it finally just tore the family apart. I’m the one they blame. I’m the selfish homewrecker who went out and got herself knocked up. I’m the one who turned dear old dad into a bitter old man. That’s why I haven’t seen either of my parents or siblings, except my older brother Jack, in seven years. There’s just too much anger and resentment and it will never go away. Never.”
His head bowed in reflection. Jennifer felt bleak, compromised. For her, the whole conversation underscored just how devastating having your path in life chosen by someone else could later turn out to be. How often had she wished she had the spring of her junior year back, that she had never gotten pregnant and trundled off to Europe with Ken as planned? She felt diminished, a hostage to the nightmare her father had forced upon her: an obsession over a son she could never hope to know.
“Was there a reason you told your parents about being pregnant and your decision to have an abortion? Instead of just keeping things between us?”
“I’d hoped they’d accept my decision. I was twenty years old—old enough to make my own choices in life—for better or worse. I wanted them to accept that, after careful soul-searching, I had made a mature, adult decision not to have the baby. I didn’t want to go behind their back.”
Now his tone carried a note of anger. “But what about me? You made the decision without me. You were going to have the abortion with or without my consent.”
“That’s not true. I was going to talk it over with you once I’d convinced my parents to support my decision. If you had felt strongly about us keeping the baby, if you’d been willing to commit to being a father, I would have agreed to it. But I didn’t want to force you into anything. I didn’t want us to have to elope, or to have some shotgun wedding. And I didn’t want to quit school to raise a child. I was trying to be realistic. It was after my junior year of college. We were so...young.”
“But you left me out of the decision. You let your crazy father determine both our fates and look where it’s gotten us. We could have worked something out. You shouldn’t have told your parents anything !”
Jennifer felt the words pierce her. It was painful to drudge up the bitter memories, to see his anger d
irected at her instead of her father. But the truth is he’s right, she thought, sinking into the couch like a deflated balloon, tears welling in her eyes. In hindsight, it was obvious the decisions she had made were disastrous and far-reaching. But at the time, she had wanted to be forthcoming. She had always dealt with situations head-on instead of furtively going behind people’s backs.
“Tell me, Jenn. Were you trying to get even with your father, to get him to bow to your will?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” she hedged.
He took a long pull from his beer and set it down on the table. “This home for unwed mothers—what was it like?”
“It was called Christian Charities, outside Gary. It wouldn’t have been so bad—if I had made the choice to have the baby on my own. But I was forced into it. I had no choice.”
“What did you do there?”
“Basically, I spent eight months praying with corn-fed Midwestern girls and listening to pasty-faced nuns quoting Scripture. That, by the way, was the good part.”
“And the bad part?”
“When I had to give little Kenny away. That was the worst day of my life.”
The room fell silent. A tear trickled down her cheek and dropped onto her lap. Seeing Ken’s numb, desolate expression, she wondered: Why did this have to happen to us?
“You want to know about the second worst?” she asked, wiping away the trace of the tear.
He gave a gentle nod, and took her hand.
“It’s every time I see my own flesh and blood being raised by others. It’s my own private nightmare. Once that baby came out of my womb, I could never again think of him as anything other than my son. That’s why I have to see him, Ken. That’s why I have to see my child.”
“What about the parents? Are they...are they good parents?”
The Coalition: A Novel of Suspense Page 14