The money is being put into Uncle Finn’s pocket.
And that is Finn’s own hand, doing the putting.
“Finn?”
It comes out of me before I can stop it. A question mark.
Uncle Finn looks up, caught, his hand in the donation jar.
“Oh, hi there. I was just making sure we had all the donations and, uh, I—”
“What are you doing, Uncle Finn?” Suddenly I feel like Little Cindy Lou Who, catching the Grinch.
“Me? Oh, nothing. It’s just I was keeping these safe for you. I was going to take them back to that little inn down the way and—”
“That little inn,” Henry says, his tone flat. “The one with the good breakfast.”
Uncle Finn smiles. “Yes, exactly!”
“How did you know about the breakfast at that inn? You never visited us before. And you said you came straight to our house the minute you found out Mom and Dad had died.”
Uncle Finn chuckles. “Now, buddy, I—”
“And the farm workers’ wages. You said you read about them when you were scolding Terri about her spa expenses. But that was in the paper—” I stop. I can’t believe what I’m about to say—“the same week Mom and Dad died.”
“It was you.” This comes out of Henry.
Uncle Finn stands still, smiling weakly.
“It was you, all along.” Henry has turned to stone now.
“What?” Uncle Finn yelps. “Whattayou, whattayou mean, are you—”
And now it all comes to me, in a kind of memory montage from start to finish, but all things at once.
Uncle Finn showing up in our lives out of nowhere.
Uncle Finn hating Claude with a burning passion.
Uncle Finn having one of his many degrees in chemistry.
Uncle Finn inheriting the house, once Claude is locked up.
Uncle Finn finding that key inside the boathouse.
And, finally, Uncle Finn . . . planting that miniature wooden box in Uncle Claude’s armoire. That’s why it didn’t make sense in the first place. Why on earth, if Claude was the killer, would he keep around that completely incriminating small wooden box? The answer is . . . he wouldn’t. The answer is . . . he didn’t. The answer is . . . Uncle Finn planted it there.
All to get the house.
He pretended to be the coolest guy in the world and our one and only trusted friend and confidant.
When, all along . . .
It was him.
11
BEFORE I KNOW what to do, or say, or why the earth revolves around the sun, Uncle Finn makes a mad dash, out over the green toward the cliffs, out away from the crowd. The black-and-white screen flickers behind him, turning him into a kind of strobe runaway.
Henry bursts out after him, an uncharacteristic show of athleticism, to be honest. I take off after Henry after Uncle Finn. Behind us, twenty-foot Orson Welles wants nothing to do with us.
Uncle Finn must have run track-and-field in high school because we are almost starting to lose him in the marine layer, coming up from the sea, slowly enveloping the cliffs.
Henry and I try to catch up, panting.
What does he think he’s going to do, dash into the sea? The cliff edge is mere feet away.
“Finn! Uncle Finn! Stop!!” I yell it out into the grayish pea soup creeping up over the precipice. “Henry, he’s gonna kill himself! We have to stop him!”
I’m not sure Henry had thought of that. I think he was a little more focused on the fact that our uncle Finn was just caught red-handed stealing money from impoverished starving children and, also, therefore, revealing himself to be the unscrupulous con man who killed both our mother and father.
And the worst kind of con man. The one we believed in. The one we trusted. The one we thought was our friend.
“Uncle Finn, stop! Stooooooppppp!!”
Through the billowing dusty gusts, we can see him, right there, poised over the cliff, teetering!
He turns to us.
“It’s too late. It’s too late, kids. Stay back!”
Henry and I slow down, keeping our distance, not wanting to startle him into a fifty-foot drop.
“It’s not too late! It’s never too late. Please, Uncle Finn,” I beg.
As mad as I am right now, I do not want the death of anyone on my conscience. No way.
Henry has clearly delegated the role of crisis counselor to me. That’s okay. He does tend toward putting his foot in his mouth in intense situations. And this, mind you, is the most intense situation he and I have ever been in.
Uncle Finn is turned to us, barely able to look us in the eye. “I blew it, kids. I blew up my life. I screwed up everything. And then I thought I had this shot, this one shot, and look at you, look at the two of you, you beautiful, kind, generous kids. No. I can’t live with myself. I just can’t.”
He turns back toward the cliffs, his swan song over the sea.
“No! We forgive you. Don’t we, Henry? We forgive you. We really do.” I attempt a truce.
He stops for a second.
“You do?”
“Yes! We do. But if you jump off that cliff, Uncle Finn, you will never get a chance to forgive yourself.”
Uncle Finn squints at us through the fog.
Oh, please God.
Did I say the right thing?
This silence is killing me.
And then.
He steps away from the cliff.
He steps backward and puts his head in his hands, caving in on himself.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Henry and I look at each other.
Our parents taught us. Mercy. And forgiveness.
Henry and I step carefully forward, and then forward again, nearing Uncle Finn.
Now, just a step away, we reach out to embrace this pathetic sight, this grown man sobbing to himself on the edge of the abyss.
And it’s a beautiful moment. A picture-perfect moment. A moment to be proud.
Except.
Uncle Finn swoops up the two of us, like fish on a line, and hangs us, dangling one in each arm, smack-dab over the perilous cliff.
“Oh, you poor, naïve little suckers.”
12
FIFTY FEET BELOW us the waves smash into the side of the cliffs, the salty mist coming up from the treacherous white waves. Looking down, beneath my dangling feet, there is only air now, nothing to shield us from the rocks and the brine.
Henry is yelling out, “Help! Mayday, Mayday!”
But Uncle Finn puts an end to that. “One more word and I drop your sister.”
Henry looks at me, cowed.
“You kids are so dumb. Little Miss Perfect over here, and Nerd of the Century. You have no idea what the world is like. The wolves at the gate.”
I’m saying a prayer in my head right now. It’s not much, but I’m just going impromptu, praying for Henry and me to somehow survive, praying that if we die, we will join Mom and Dad. God, Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh. Any takers. I’m sure Henry is praying to the great programmer in the sky. A kingdom in heaven of ones and zeroes.
“What little fools you are! What a sad little pair of orphans you make! Your parents raised you so very soft. Soft like little-itty baby sheep. Baa. Baa.” And now he is laughing, laughing and bleating, crazed. “Baaaaaa. Ha ha! Baaaaaa!”
Clearly, Uncle Finn is not who we thought he was. Now that I think about it, he’s just plain off his nut.
I turn to my brother. “Henry . . . I love you.”
It’s almost impossible to hear me over the waves below.
“You’re the best kid brother anyone could have.”
My eyes are welling up now. I can’t stop thinking of every moment since they brought him home from the hospital, that blue-and-white baby blanket with little bears on it, his very first steps and how we all cheered him on, the first word he said, how he looked up and said “Meat guy” as we passed a McDonald’s on the freeway. Every little baby step, every little coo,
every little first moment of anything ever, my kid brother, dangling there over the murderous cliff.
“I love you, too, Eva. I love you so much.”
That’s definitely the first time he’s ever said that. Then, this is the first time we’ve ever been dangled over a cliff.
Down below, an especially behemoth wave torpedoes down into the rocks.
“Oh, how sweet. Two little sheep at death’s door. Don’t worry. I’ll pray for your little sheep souls. Baah. Baaah. Ba—”
FWAP!
FWOOP!
FWAP!
Everything goes black.
I’m pretty sure I just died.
13
SO FAR THE afterlife is pretty dark in general. I really thought there was going to be some kind of white-light tunnel involved. And ancestors everywhere.
This? Is very disappointing.
I don’t see my mom and dad anywhere.
Maybe they didn’t know I was coming.
Oh, okay, there’s the glowing white light. I can see it now. Just a pinprick but getting bigger. I’ll just wait here until it gets big enough for me to step through and then shuffle off this mortal coil and get back to business. I have a list of people I’d like to talk to: Nikola Tesla. Amelia Earhart. Martin Luther King Jr. Cleopatra. Also, a list of people I have some follow-up questions for: Thomas Jefferson. Napoleon. Marilyn Monroe. If that light would just get a little bigger now I’ll just break on through to the other side and start my investigating.
But the light really isn’t getting bigger. Not at all. And there’s some kind of noise coming in from the sidelines. Indecipherable. But definitely not the sound of Gabriel’s trumpet. And no pearly gates. Not even a pearly fence.
“Eva? Evaaaa? Can you hear me?”
Somehow the glowing white light is moving around now and getting really large, blinding me.
“Eva, can you see this?”
I open my eyes, which I didn’t necessarily realize were closed, and see an extremely powerful flashlight pointed at my face.
There’s a gasp from somewhere, but I just died, so I’m still figuring it out.
“Eva! Eva! Oh my God! You’re okay! She’s okay! You’re okay!”
And there, above me, is my kid brother, Henry, hugging me and gushing in a way I never knew he could gush.
“Oh, Eva. You’re all right. You’re all right!”
And now I look at the arm holding the flashlight. Yeah, that’s definitely a police officer’s arm. Definitely a police officer’s badge.
But this doesn’t seem like heaven, because, honestly, it’s pretty dark and I can feel the salt air from the ocean on my cheeks.
“We best get these two kids to a hospital, better safe than sorry. They must be freezing.”
Somewhere far in the distance, behind the screen, I see blue and red lights flashing. Whirring around in circle after circle.
“What? What’s that?” I ask.
“That?” Henry follows my eyes. “Oh, that. Well, dear sister. That happens to be our uncle Finn. In handcuffs. In the back of a 2016 Buick LeSabre.”
“Wait. What? What happened?”
The cop and Henry give each other a look. Then they both nod in the same direction. I look over.
And there she is.
Terri.
Oh my God.
Terri the Terrible saved our lives?
“Seriously? How?”
She steps up, almost embarrassed. “I sure don’t know what happened, kids. I was standing there, one minute, gathering up my lassos. And then it was like . . . well, this sounds crazy but . . . it was like someone, some thing, just whoooosh, just turned me around. Like it turned my whole body. And I saw you there, the two of you, with your feet dangling over the cliff and that horrible, hairy man hanging you over the side like urchins. And, well, I thought . . . not on my watch!”
“She lassoed us.” Henry smiles, excited. “Can you imagine? Terri lassoed us by the feet and threw us back, back to safety.”
The cop adds in, “With both hands. Like a real pro.” He smiles at Terri.
“Aw.” Terri blushes.
“And then, Eva. You’re never going to believe it. She lassoed Uncle Finn right off his feet!” Henry exclaims.
The officer nods in agreement. “It was quite a feat. Heck, I couldn’t have done it.”
“So . . . I didn’t die?” I’m still a little foggy.
“Ha! No, of course not, you little duck.” Terri actually hugs me.
I don’t think Terri’s ever hugged me before.
All this warmth is dampened by the fact that I suddenly realize the horrible, unacceptable, unforgivable thing we did to Uncle Claude. In front of everybody.
“Oh my God. What about Uncle Claude? Is he in jail? We have to save him before someone shanks him!”
The policeman chuckles.
“Well, little missy, I’m pretty sure he couldn’t have made it to the station before this got called in. Heck, you may even see him tonight.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. Clearly, that one in the squad car is the problem. Most people don’t go around dangling kids off a cliff. Not in my experience.”
I look at Henry. “God, I feel terrible. We were such idiots!”
“Indeed.” Henry nods.
“No,” Terri tells us, “you kids are the smartest kids I’ve ever known. No one—not anyone—suspected that something had happened to your folks on purpose. But you did. How did you ever figure it out?”
Henry and I look at each other, then turn to the family graveyard up the hill. “Call it a hunch,” Henry says with a shrug.
The blue and red lights circle round on top of the car. Uncle Finn is driven up the driveway, hopefully never to be seen again.
Marisol was right.
Never trust a man who doesn’t do anything.
14
IT’S NEARLY TWO in the morning and Claude still hasn’t returned, but neither Henry nor I have any intention of going to sleep. In fact, Terri, Henry, and I are waiting patiently in the living room, a fire blazing in the fireplace. We’ve even put on music to make it seem like a real warm welcome.
We have a lot to make up for.
“Terri, there’s really no way to thank you for—”
“Oh, kids. Don’t wax poetic. I got it.” She swats away our gratitude.
“Honestly, Terri, we really have to—”
“You want to know what, kids? You may think I saved you and, well, of course, I did. But . . . putting on that show, rehearsing, getting back to the lasso, I realized something.”
Henry and I listen, warmed by the flicker of the fire.
“When I was younger, I just loved the rodeo. And I was good at it. But somewhere along the line, someone decided I was pretty. And then next thing I knew, I was in pageants, doing the lasso for the talent part. And then it was just about pageants. Just about being pretty. And then I was getting older, and less pretty. And then I didn’t know who I was, exactly.”
Even the flames are listening from the fireplace. Not a crackle.
“And that feeling, the feeling I used to have just being in the moment, the tricks, making them better and better . . . I couldn’t get that moment from anything. It was the only time I wasn’t restless. And sad.”
I get closer to Terri, squeeze her hand for comfort. Her eyes are swelling with tears.
“And now I feel that way again. Thank you,” she whispers.
I give Terri a giant hug.
Even Henry comes in for the group embrace.
“I’ll call Marisol tomorrow. Find out how she’s doing.” She dries a lone tear coming down. “She’ll be home again soon. And then, maybe we can start all over.”
She welcomes our embrace.
The warmth of the fire blazes hot on our backs.
The front door latch turns and there is Uncle Claude, standing in the doorway.
“What is this, some kind of hippie convention?!” he jokes, bellowing.
The three of us disentangle ourselves and look up at him. Henry and I come forward, tentative.
“Uncle Claude?” I plead. “Can you ever forgive us? We were such idiots. Uncle Finn just bamboozled us . . . every step of the way.”
Uncle Claude smiles. “Kids, you would not be the first people that my brother has bamboozled. He left our family because he burned every relationship he had—with me, with your dad, with our parents . . . He burned them to the ground. He lied to us all. He took advantage of the fact that we wanted to believe he was telling the truth. Just like you did.”
Henry studies his shoes. “We wanted to believe you were the bad guy,” he admits. And before I can sock him for being a little too honest, Claude speaks again.
“I think I’m more than a little bit to blame for that. My brother died. And here I was, all of a sudden, with you two and this house to look after. I didn’t . . . I didn’t want what happened to my brother and your mom to be true. I just threw myself into my work so I wouldn’t have to think for a second about your mom and my kid brother . . . They were good people.”
There’s a giant lump that’s formed in my throat. As hard as I try to swallow it down, it won’t go away.
Claude continues, “I checked out. And that’s on me. It’s no wonder you thought I was guilty. I clearly was guilty of one thing. Not being here for you kids.”
Terri smiles next to us on the couch. “The kids and I were just talking about new beginnings,” she says.
“Think I can have some of that crunchy huggy stuff over here?” Claude asks. He smiles and the four of us go in for an embrace. “Oh, you’re killing me. I’m suffocating! This is gross!”
“Uncle Claude, if I may . . . I do have some follow-up questions.” Henry looks up at him.
“Go on, shoot.”
“Why were you so strange about that condominium diorama? The one at your office.”
“Well, because, to tell you the truth, I thought you’d be mad at me. See, that condo complex is going down in San Diego, over the cliffs of a beach, and, quite frankly, there’s been a lot of fuss about it. From the bohemian types.”
“And you thought we . . .”
“I thought you’d take the side of the hippies. The uh, naked . . . hippies.”
Henry & Eva and the Castle on the Cliff Page 16