Jeff Abbott - Do Unto Others

“They were my private possessions. Mine!” I thought of another letter I’d seen today, belonging to Eula Mae, and I felt suddenly cold. “I kept the letters from your mama in a lockbox, stored in the attic.

Gretchen found them a few years back, but I didn’t know. She drinks because she knows that… someone else mattered more to me than she does. She’s known that for years. She heard me arguing on the phone with Beta; Beta was trying to get me to restart the censorship fight since I’d replaced her on the board. I told her she wasn’t going to do anything to hurt you. Gretchen got mad, and she gave the letters to Beta. Gretchen only knows how to torture herself; she ain’t good at torturing other folks. I guess she figured that Beta could cause me more grief in town than anyone else.” He shook his head. “It was like putting venom in the snake. Beta made my life a living hell.” “I don’t believe this,” I said to him and to myself. I needed to keep saying it to myself. “Beta wanted money from me not to show them to you. I told her to get the hell out of my office, I don’t pay money to goddamned blackmailers.” I steadied myself. “This… this is what you argued about with her Saturday?” He nodded, not wondering how I knew about that. “She said if I didn’t pay, she’d hurt you and your mama. She said y’all would really pay, if I didn’t. But I told her I wasn’t gonna pay no damn extortionist.” “But you did,” I said faintly. “You paid her $25,000.” Bob Don shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t want that bitch having money from me. I saw her the day she died and told her there was no point in keeping the secret.” “No point?”

“Listen to me, Jordy. Listen good. This is the truth. Just think about it. Lloyd-your daddy that raised you-is dead. He was a fine man, but he’s gone. Your mama’s sick. She needs us both. She can’t object to us having a relationship. My marriage with Gretchen has run its course.

And you’ve come home to Mirabeau. There’s no reason you and I can’t have a relationship as father and son now, like I’ve prayed for, like I’ve always wanted-” “What?” I whispered. “You can’t be serious. You lay this on me, with no proof, and want me to hug you and call you Dad? I don’t think so, Bob Don.” I was shaking and something was on my face. The back of my hand told me they were tears. “I mean, what do you even know about me? What do I know about you?” “I know a lot about you,” Bob Don answered, his voice softening like he was speaking to a frightened child. “Your Little League number was seventeen, and you liked to play shortstop. You hit your first home run on June 13, 1975, a little late but it still counts. You hated math from first grade on, and you never liked to study it. Your first girlfriend was a little redhead in the third grade and her name was Leslie Minter. The other boys teased you for being sweet on her but you paid them no heed. You got 1210 on your SATs. Your GPA at Rice was 3.4, and it would’ve been higher except you didn’t do good in economics-you hated it and didn’t want to study it, just like math. Just like your mama, you only wanted to work at what you like.” He paused and took a step toward me. “But I don’t know if you’re a happy person, Jordy. I don’t know if you’ve ever really been in love. I don’t know what you want from your life-”

“Just shut up!” I said. “Just be quiet a minute, please.” I felt sick and dizzy and angry and betrayed. How did he know all that? Was he watching me my whole life, some distant shadow that followed me wherever I went? A lie. My whole life was a fat, ugly lie. “Okay, you need time. This is a shock, I understand that, Jordy.” He wiped the drying blood from his cheek where his wife had scored him. “And proof.

I don’t have that, Beta does. Or did. She had the letters.” “Oh, God,”

I swayed. Shannon, lying shot amidst the wreckage of Beta’s living room. “You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t-” “Didn’t what?” “Someone tore apart Beta’s house today. They shot her niece. In the face. She may not live.” I stared at this man who’d destroyed my world. “Did you do that? Did you kill Beta to keep her from talking and then shoot Shannon when you were looking for those letters? Just what would you have done to get your proof back, Bob Don?” “I didn’t. I didn’t hurt anybody, Jordy!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t!” “I hope you didn’t,” I said. “I’m not worth killing over, I’m not, I’m not.” It was too much, too much said in this room in the past few minutes and too much unsaid the thirty years before. I ran from the room, I ran from the house, hardly hearing Bob Don Goertz calling after me. Emotional autopilot steered me away from home. I couldn’t even look at Mama. I couldn’t ask her if Bob Don was telling the truth and I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing her without asking. How do you ask? “Gosh, Mama, this fellow claims I’m his son. Any truth to that?” Asking Mama anything was as futile as getting a running start to jump across the Colorado. Instinct brought me to the library, where a light still shone inside. The door was locked and the CLOSED sign was up, but I managed to jab my key in the lock and practically fall into the building. I got up, locked the door behind me, and staggered to the checkout counter. Candace was still there, gluing date-due slips into new books. She paled when she saw my face. I tottered, taking deep, hard breaths, trying to get my emotions under control. I failed. I cried in front of her, I cried like a baby, and she came to me, wrapping me in her arms, letting my face dampen her shoulder. When that was over, I turned away from her, suddenly and deeply ashamed.

I’d never wept in front of a woman. The last time I’d cried was when Sister broke the news to me over the phone that the doctors were pretty sure Mama had Alzheimer’s. I’d been alone with my grief, as most men prefer to be. I guess I could have driven down to the river that night, or into the woods, but I needed company. I needed Candace.

I brokenly told her what had happened at Bob Don’s. She steered me to the couch by the coffee table where we kept the daily newspapers. “You don’t have any proof this is true, Jordy,” she said softly. “Then why would he make up such a lie? What’s his reason for telling me this?”

“Okay,” she said softly. “Maybe he did love your mother. But maybe you’re not his, and he always wished that you were.” “Do I even look like Bob Don, Candace?” “No,” she admitted. “Your looks are your mother’s. But your daddy wasn’t a big man, and you are.” She studied my face, as though seeing it for the first time. “Listen, Jordy, looking at profiles isn’t going to resolve this. You need to find those letters he says Beta took.” “I know.” I thought of Beta’s living room. “Maybe the person who shot Shannon, when they were looking for whatever they were, maybe they found the letters and took them-” “Or maybe they’re still in her house,” Candace added. “Hidden there somewhere. Or maybe, someone else has them now and has destroyed them.

To keep Beta’s mischief from hurting anyone else.” “I have to find those letters,” I muttered to myself. “God, it’s even more important now to find who killed Beta.” I shook my head. “Beta, goddamn her! She was going to blackmail Bob Don and maybe even my mother. That must’ve been why she checked out that book on Alzheimer’s. Maybe she wanted to figure out how advanced Mama’s condition was and what she could get out of Mama to keep quiet. To fund that damned church of hers.”

“Listen, Jordy. I know you’re horribly upset right now. But you need to think straight. You need those letters, but they could also be evidence in a murder trial. You need to call Junebug, call your uncle Bid-” “No way,” I interrupted. “I don’t want anyone to know about this who doesn’t have to. For God’s sake, you think I want it going around Mirabeau that Mama might’ve had an affair? That I’m Bob Don’s bastard?