Tom Hubbard Is Dead

by Robert Price

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “I can’t believe I’m telling you all this. When we left home this morning I told myself, ‘Only the gravesite, Carrie, no further. I’ll let him decide when he’s older.’”

  Carrie Phillips was perched on the arm of the stuffed chair closest to Mrs. Hubbard, who sat sideways in her own chair by the fire with an expression of bewilderment on her face. Elizabeth, who had entered the room not five minutes earlier, leaned forward on the couch, mouth hung open, listening with great skepticism to what Carrie Phillips had to tell them: The boy was Tom’s.

  Carrie angled her head toward Mrs. Hubbard as she spoke. “But somehow, meeting you there at Tom’s grave wasn’t enough. So when I heard the priest announce the memorial reception I decided we’d come, if only for a short time. That way, when he is older and wants to know more about his father, I can at least tell him—remind him—about all this, about all of you.”

  “I want to know everything about him, everything. He’s beautiful. A beautiful little boy,” Mrs. Hubbard said, glancing into the next room, where Ezekiel had taken the child. She was ready to be part of something bigger than herself. Bigger than the boxes of junk, the knickknacks and memorabilia, the piles of dishes and newspapers, the unused linens and silverware, all the things she had obsessively collected in the years after Elizabeth and her Tom had moved away. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “So, why not before?” Elizabeth asked, more pragmatic than her mother. “I mean, why now? The boy’s how old? Four and a half, five, you said? Why did you wait so long?” She pushed forward on her toes, slightly rising off the couch. “Besides, I can’t believe my brother would abandon his child. Tom was even conscientious about our children; never forgot a single birthday, always thoughtful at Christmas and Hanukah. And even with you, Mother, that black shawl you’re wearing, he sent that to you before he left. Correct? My brother wasn’t someone who’d just abandon a child.”

  “Your brother wanted to abort this child,” Carrie snapped at Elizabeth. Then, calming herself, she slowly exhaled. She knew better than to act on emotions and continued with a controlled voice: “I was afraid this conversation wouldn’t be easy no matter when it took place. But Tom Hubbard, my son’s father, didn’t want this child, and I apologize but I thought I did what was right by staying away. Yes, now I wish I had done it differently. And I wish I had found a better way to tell you all about Tommy. But I didn’t have time to prepare. I didn’t expect we’d talk today. I had no idea how much my Tommy looked like his father when he was a boy until just now, this afternoon.”

  “That’s it! That’s all?! He looks like my brother?” Elizabeth yelled. “That’s your only proof, his looks? And we’re just supposed to accept that?”

  “Hush yourself, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Hubbard demanded without looking at her daughter.

  Jon charged in from the kitchen and shouted, “You’re here?”

  “Yes, I am here,” Elizabeth curtly replied. “Where have you been?”

  “Looking for you!” He sounded frazzled and out of sorts. The limits of his usually cool demeanor tested, Jon nervously sat down on the couch next to his wife. “I’ve been running around the place like a chicken with my head cut off searching for you.”

  Jon was now completely confused because only moments before, when he was in the living room in the midst of the first enlightening conversation he’d had regarding Tom, he saw his mother-in-law leap off her chair and seize the little blonde boy. He was sure the old woman had finally lost her mind—a complete emotional break down.

  “Wait a minute,” Jon said.

  “You’ve found me, so hush,” Elizabeth said, attention fixed on Carrie.

  “No, please, somebody fill me in. What’s going on? Casey, are you okay?

  “I’m happy, Jon. Happier than I have been in a long, long time,” Mrs. Hubbard almost sang.

  “Well, tell him,” Elizabeth said to Carrie. But before Carrie could respond, Elizabeth, flabbergasted, turned to Jon and blurted out, “The boy is Tom’s. Okay?”

  “You’re kidding,” he said, and quietly added under his breath, “After taking to that black guy, I was sure he was gay.”

  Elizabeth glared at him as if he were crazy.

  Jon swallowed hard, admitting, if only to himself, he was a little afraid of his wife’s anger. Jon adjusted his posture to mimic that of his wife. But he stayed out of the conversation. His thoughts drifted as he looked over Carrie Phillips’s shoulder and out into the living room. were the hefty Neil Bingham stood next to the even larger Ezekiel. The two men were looking down and laughing. The boy must be entertaining them, Jon thought and wondered if they knew they were playing with Tom Hubbard’s son.

  At length, Carrie Phillips, unable to suitably explain herself to Elizabeth, left the sitting room to check on her son. As soon as Carrie was out of earshot, Elizabeth tried to straighten out her mother and husband’s thinking. In her mind, both of them were weaklings who had already unquestionably accepted a strange woman’s claim and a child’s facial features as proof in the matter.

  “That’s not enough, Mother. Just because you recognize Tom in that boy’s face doesn’t make him your grandson,” Elizabeth growled.

  “Elizabeth, stop it,” Mrs. Hubbard replied. She turned to face the glowing embers in the fireplace. “I don’t think your brother was as innocent as you make him out to be.”

  Jon sat silently on the couch next to Elizabeth. From his position he could see the top of Carrie Phillips’s head as she stood next to Ezekiel. They appeared quite friendly. Besides, hadn’t he seen them arrive together? And wasn’t it Ezekiel who had stepped in earlier and grabbed the boy from a crazed Mrs. Hubbard? And isn’t Carrie out there talking with him now? Was this Tom’s family—a little boy, a tall black man and a curly haired woman from Boston?

  “Please, Mother, Tom wouldn’t abandon a child,” Elizabeth defended her brother. “We need to see a birth certificate or make her get a blood test or something. Can’t they check DNA? Something? Jon, you’re a lawyer, tell her—we need her to produce physical proof.”

  “Hush, child,” Mrs. Hubbard said. She was happy to suddenly have a new grandson and wanted to prevent Carrie and the boy from overhearing her angry daughter’s skepticism.

  “Mother,” Elizabeth quipped, then lowered her voice to a snarl, “you know as well as I do that the tract of land sitting out there rotting away is in Tom’s name and that it’s worth well over a million dollars. If you think this pretty little gold digger is going to get it just because her son looks like my dead brother, then you’re nuts.”

  “Elizabeth!”

  “I’m not going to let it happen.”

  “Watch your mouth, Daughter.”

  “Jon, tell her!” Elizabeth demanded.

  But Jon had other things on his mind. He was beginning to see that his brother-in-law had led a more interesting and full life than any of them could have imagined.