She looked Eddie over, and I wondered if he’d made her suspicious. “Okay,” she said, then headed down the hall.
*
We walked back into Clavin’s room, and he was staring right at us. “It’s… t-time,” he said.
I hurried over to him, “Time for what, Mr. Clavin?”
“For you to g-get it.”
It? He couldn’t possibly mean the secret. He didn’t even know why we were here. Maybe dementia was doing the talking. “Mr. Clavin,” I said. “Tell me about Albert. What do you remember about Albert?”
He closed his eyes, as if severing our connection, and I took that as a call to action. I leaned into his left ear and asked him point-blank, “Did Einstein have a secret?”
Clavin’s eyes instantly opened, and I held my breath. This is it. I waited for him to speak, thinking he was delving into his memories, gathering his thoughts.
But after a minute or so, he closed his eyes again.
“Mr. Clavin?” I said.
He didn’t answer, and his breathing became shallower.
“Mr. Clavin?”
Again, no answer.
Had my window of opportunity passed? Gone forever? I had to make contact with him, again, and get him to click back into his memory of Albert. “Did Einstein have a secret, Mr. Clavin?” I said.
Clavin opened his eyes and looked straight into mine. “It’s g-good to see you again.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” I feared I was talking to dementia, but I pressed on. What else could I do? “Mr. Clavin, do you know if Einstein had a secret?”
“He t-told me to—take it.”
Oh my God. I glanced at Eddie. His eyes were as wide as saucers. We’d struck gold. My pulse quickened.
“Are you talking about the letter he wrote?” I said. “In the hospital?”
Clavin stared at me. His eyes looked distant once more, but this time he seemed to be willing forth an ancient memory, rather than wondering where he was.
“You mean Einstein asked you to take the secret?” I said, hoping to keep him on message.
“To give it to Mr. Va—” He stopped, and licked his dry lips, and I was just about to yell out Who?! To give it to who?! when he said, “… to Mr. Van Doran.”
I was flabbergasted. A real clue. A new fact. Verification. I was rendered speechless and, if there was such a thing, my entire body was rendered dumbstruck. It took Eddie to follow up with the next logical question. “Did you read it?” he said.
Clavin turned his head toward Eddie and, though I would’ve never guessed the old man had the energy for it, anger flashed across his face. Then his breathing became more labored.
“You d-don’t understand,” he said, then turned back to me. His anger was gone. He concentrated on me with all his strength. “You—You’re—” He strained to catch his breath.
I waited, hoping he’d find his voice again and finish his thought. But instead, his taut face grimaced in pain, and he fought to suck in another breath. As I watched, the guilt of treating Henry Clavin as a clue, instead of a frail man clinging to life, suddenly hit me full force. I could see from the awful contortion of Clavin’s face that he was terrified. He was sure that he wouldn’t catch another breath. Ever.
He was going to die. If not now, very soon.
He finally managed to take in a raspy breath, filling his lungs, and after he let it out, his breathing stabilized.
Nurse Andrea stepped back into the room. “Looks like you have another visitor, Mr. Clavin,” she said.
Behind her was a big, broad-shouldered man with thick, dark hair. He was wearing a sports jacket and pressed khaki slacks. The man sized us up before turning his attention to Clavin. The man stepped up to Clavin, and as he did, I realized that he seemed vaguely familiar. Not someone that I’d met, but someone I’d seen in passing somewhere.
Nurse Andrea stepped up to Eddie and me. “Mr. Clavin’s doctor is doing his rounds now, so this might be a good time for you to talk to him. And it works out great since Mr. Clavin has another visitor.”
She headed out.
The last thing I wanted to do was leave Clavin’s side. But we had to keep up the charade of acting like relatives, so Eddie and I both reluctantly headed out to the nurses’ station. Hopefully Clavin’s visitor would be gone when we came back.
*
At the station, while we waited for the doctor, Eddie brought up the visitor. “What if he’s here for the same reason we are?”
“That’s impossible. No one else believes my insane theory.” And that was the absolute truth. No one else gave any legitimacy to the theory that Einstein had written a deathbed confession.
“It’s not so insane anymore, right? Clavin pretty much confirmed it.”
“But it’s still a big leap to think someone else connected Clavin to Einstein’s secret.”
“Why? I did.”
I was about to say, but you’re insane, thus proving my point, which would’ve been one of those jokes with a little truth mixed in, when the doctor arrived. Without questioning whether we were Clavin’s nephews or not, he immediately filled us in on Clavin’s medical history, which he’d gotten from the medical records at the Inn on the Boulevard. It was clear that those records were spotty.
Medical records were hard to come by. As a researcher, this was one of my pet peeves. History was littered with valuable medical records, but rarely were they transferred or copied, so the bulk of them ended up discarded in history’s rubbish pile.
The doctor then gave us a summary of Clavin’s current condition. It was the same diagnosis that Nurse Andrea had given us. Clavin wasn’t faring well, and the doctor was worried enough to ask us to go and fill out a medical directive form, instructions that told the hospital how far doctors should go to save a patient’s life. This was more than I’d bargained for, but Eddie just nodded. He wanted to get back to Clavin.
“Doctor Bremer.” It was Nurse Andrea, and she was heading toward us at a fast clip. “Clavin’s gone into septic shock.”
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” Doctor Bremer hurried toward Clavin’s room.
“You can wait downstairs in the waiting area,” Nurse Andrea told us.
“This isn’t good, is it?” I said.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. We’ll do everything we can.” She headed back to Clavin’s room.
I should’ve been praying for Clavin’s health as I watched her retreat down the hallway. Instead I was asking myself, where had Clavin’s other visitor gone? There was no sign of him in the hallway.
Chapter Seven
Eddie and I went downstairs, but opted to wait in the hospital’s inner courtyard, where there was no one around to overhear us, rather than the waiting area.
“We need to find out if Clavin read the confession,” Eddie said. “And if he didn’t, or can’t remember what it said, we go after this Van Doran lead.”
I was feeling even worse about ignoring Clavin, the man. Treating him as if he were an inanimate clue was cruel. But I didn’t say anything to Eddie, and continued to play the role of a detective investigating the dead annals of history. “If Clavin doesn’t know what Einstein wrote, don’t count on going after Van Doran.”
“You know who he is?”
“Was, unless you’re going to resurrect him, too. Of course, it’s possible he’s still alive. But he’d be in the neighborhood of a hundred and ten, so don’t count on him being too talkative.”
“So in the fifties he was closer to Einstein’s age than Clavin’s.”
“Yep. He was an electrical engineer, a professor at Columbia. But I really don’t know much else about him because I never connected him to the secret. As far as I could tell, Einstein barely knew him. They were both part of a group that met at the Princeton Club in Manhattan to talk about scientific breakthroughs. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t believe that Clavin brought him up.”
“An electrical engineer, huh?” Eddie was trying to add that piece to the puzzle, as w
as I.
“Maybe Einstein had discovered something about electromagnetism,” I said. “But that doesn’t explain why he picked this electrical engineer. He had the pick of the litter. He’d worked with some of the top people in that field.”
“I have a more practical question. Why didn’t Van Doran show the confession to anyone?”
“Maybe he never got it.”
“Or maybe, he kept it to himself and pawned Einstein’s discovery off as his.”
Eddie went to his car, returned with his MacBook Air, and fired it up. He tore through the Internet searching for information about Van Doran. He unearthed both public and private records. It was amazing to watch. Eddie’s hacking skills were at the level of a professional’s, and that, combined with his formidable investigative skills, made for a fast and thorough ride through Van Doran’s life.
I saw something peculiar, but wasn’t sure if Eddie had picked up on it. It had nothing to do with electromagnetism or with Van Doran’s personal or professional life. But it did have to do with Einstein’s death. I didn’t mention it, and Eddie waited about fifteen minutes into his search before mentioning it.
“He disappeared three days after Einstein died.” The excitement in Eddie’s voice said the rest. Conspiracy.
“That’s probably a coincidence,” I said, and immediately regretted using the word “coincidence.” I was beginning to believe that word meant something very different. It meant “connection.” Still, I persisted with my denial. “It’s a stretch to think that has anything to do with the confession. Plus we don’t know if Van Doran ever got that confession. There’s no record of it. All we have is Clavin’s word.”
“We have to go back up there and confirm he got it.” Eddie said, then looked over my shoulder. “We’ve got company.”
I turned around. Nurse Andrea was heading out to the courtyard. “If she wants us to do something more for Clavin,” I said, “say ‘yes’ like you mean it.” Chastising Eddie was my feeble way of treating Clavin like a human being and not a clue.
Andrea stepped up to us and didn’t say a word for a few seconds. A sure sign that she was here to deliver bad news.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a measured tone. “Your uncle is gone. You were very lucky to have had a few words with him before he passed.”
My first thought shouldn’t have been a thought at all. It should’ve been a feeling. A feeling of sorrow. But it wasn’t. My first thought was a question. Who was the man visiting Clavin? He must’ve been in the room when Clavin died.
“Will you two be taking care of the arrangements?” Andrea asked.
“Yes. We’ll take care of everything.” Eddie said this solemnly, as if he meant it, which I appreciated. But then he added, “Do you know who my uncle’s other visitor was?”
“He didn’t introduce himself.”
“And you didn’t pick it up when you were in the room?” Eddie’s solemnness was gone. He was in interrogation mode, and he must’ve realized it because he then tempered his tone. “I mean, it’d be great if we could contact some of his other relatives. It’d mean a lot to us.”
“I didn’t overhear a name.” Andrea didn’t seem annoyed. Not yet.
“The truth is,” Eddie said, “we didn’t know much about our uncle because he was estranged from our side of the family. Maybe this can bring us all back together.”
Andrea glanced toward the interior of the hospital, and at first I thought she was ready to get away from us, but then she lowered her voice. “His name was Greg Van Doran.”
What?! Impossible. This coincidence was the most unnerving one yet until the rational explanation spelled itself out. The visitor must be related to Greg Van Doran, a descendant of his, a Van Doran who’d taken on the same first name. That made sense.
“Did our uncle recognize him?” Eddie said. “Or did he have to introduce himself?”
I had no idea what the point of Eddie’s question was, and it looked like Andrea felt the same way. She looked at her watch and shifted uncomfortably. She was probably thinking that she’d said too much already. “I have to get back to my floor,” she said. “I’m sorry about your uncle and I hope your family comes together. Family is everything.”
Except when you don’t have one, like me, I thought.
Andrea reached out and squeezed my arm, comforting me for losing Clavin. I accepted her gesture as if it were meant to acknowledge the loss of my own parents.
She headed back into the building.
“Gregory Van Doran, huh?” Eddie said.
“He must be a relative of the original one.”
“That’s one explanation.” Eddie raised his eyebrows, which formed a curious and amused expression, one I hadn’t seen before.
“And what’s the other explanation? An impostor, like us?”
“It doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that he’s after the same thing we are.”
If that was true, that would mean that Clavin’s visitor knew as much about this little corner of history as I did. Maybe even more. That just wasn’t possible. Unless he really was a relative of Van Doran’s, and Van Doran was truly connected to Einstein’s secret.
Eddie was already back on his MacBook Air, in search mode. “I’m checking out Van Doran’s relatives.”
While he ripped through hundreds of web pages, Andrea’s words came back to me. Family is everything. Clavin had no family, no living relatives that I knew of, so no one was going to be “making arrangements.” When my mom had died, Aunt Jeannie had “made the arrangements,” and tried to do so much more. Her number one priority had been to shelter me from the blow of losing my mom.
She left her own two kids in the care of her husband so she could live with me while I finished out the school year. Then she stayed through the summer until I left for college. Aunt Jeannie stuck to my every move to make sure I didn’t fall apart.
I was angry at life. My mom had died of breast cancer after guaranteeing me that she’d fight through it. I’d believed her, and I needed her to fight through it. But her decline was fast. Within six months of her diagnosis, she was gone, and I was left with the trifecta of anger, numbness, and loneliness. She had tried to prepare me. She’d told me over and over again that she loved me, and that her love would be there even after she died.
It wasn’t.
Everything was hollow and empty and dead. I walked through the halls of my high school and the rooms of my house with no awareness of where I was. I hardly noticed Aunt Jeannie. She didn’t try to overcompensate for the tragedy by acting overly cheery like some people did, and somewhere in the back of my numb state, I appreciated that.
Some nights, before I turned off the lights to go to sleep, she’d knock on my door, come into my room, and ask me how I was doing. I’d always said the same thing.
Okay.
She didn’t follow up with more questions or with any other kinds of talk. She would stand there for few seconds, both of us quiet, and then she’d close the door and head to her bedroom. Those moments of silence were the only respite from my loneliness.
I owed her.
*
“Van Doran doesn’t have any living relatives,” Eddie said.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“So our visitor was pretending to be related to Van Doran.” Which meant he did know as much about this little corner of history as I did, and, if I was being honest with myself, probably more. After all, he’d connected the confession to Mr. Gregory Van Doran, and I hadn’t.
Eddie looked me in the eye as if he had something to tell me but was reluctant to say it. After a very long three seconds or so, he said, “Let’s check out Van Doran’s disappearance.” But I knew this wasn’t what he’d really wanted to tell me. He was withholding information.
Three minutes later, Eddie was reading from his computer screen, summing up a New York Times article about Van Doran’s disappearance, dated April 23, 1955. “Mrs. Eva Van Doran, his wife, reported
him missing on April twenty-second—three days after Einstein died. She told the police that she was expecting him to return from a trip the night before. The police checked the local hospitals and came up empty. It also says that the police didn’t find any evidence that he was the victim of a crime.”
“What about the trip? Where did he go?”
“It doesn’t say.”
Eddie found a second article, dated May fifteenth, and this one was much more detailed. It seemed that the disappearance of a Columbia professor had garnered some interest. Eddie and I both started reading the article. Apparently, Mrs. Van Doran had pressed the police to do more. She’d said that her husband wouldn’t just run off. He was responsible and met all his obligations. But the police said they had no leads.
Then Eddie and I must’ve hit the same paragraph at the same time, because I looked at him just before he said, “A connection.” According to a Columbia faculty member, Van Doran had been spending a lot of time in Maryland, working on a project.
“Maryland. Clavin,” I said.
“But what does that mean?”
Eddie scrolled further down the page and I saw something that made my heart skip a beat: a photo of the missing Gregory Van Doran accompanied the article.
He looked exactly like the man who’d just visited Clavin.
I leaned back, waiting for Eddie’s reaction. But he stayed hunched over the computer screen. No reaction?
“Look at Van Doran—that visitor has to be related him,” I said.
“He must’ve had relatives.”
“Maybe I was wrong,” Eddie said. But he said it without conviction, and didn’t even glance at me. What was going on with him?
He continued his search and found a couple more articles from a few weeks later. They just repeated the same information while hyping up the unsolved mystery angle of a Columbia professor’s strange disappearance.
Well, at least now I knew why the visitor had looked familiar. He resembled Van Doran, and I must have seen Van Doran’s photo somewhere in my research, back before I dismissed him as being irrelevant. Like thousands of people I’d gone through, he was only tangentially connected to Einstein, and he wasn’t connected to the secret at all.
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