J. Jance - Betrayal of Trust

“Mel told me about the e-mail,” Ralph was saying. “She thought I should try to find out what I could in advance of your making contact with Sally Mathers in case she was somehow trying to scam you. As near as I can tell, she’s not. She seems to be on the level.”

I tried to pay attention to his words, but I couldn’t. All I could do right then was stare in stunned silence at the face of someone who had been absent from my life for more than six decades, from before my birth. My mother and I never discussed my father when I was growing up. It was almost as though he was a ghost who hadn’t ever existed in real life. And now the ghost was here, smiling back at me with a crooked grin and straight teeth. Those could have been my own, too.

For a moment, my eyes blurred with tears. How different all our lives would have been if my father hadn’t died in that motorcycle wreck or if he and my mother had married before I was born. What if he had lived long enough to take us back to Texas with him, back to Beaumont? Would my mother and father have lived happily ever after? Would my mother have been able to make the transition from being a Seattle girl to living in the wilds of East Texas? Would there have been other kids besides me in the family, a sister or a brother, perhaps, or maybe even both?

And what would my life have been like if I had been raised as Jonas Piedmont Mencken, with part of my name coming from my mother’s father and part of it from my father’s father? What would it have been like to grow up as the son of a loving father, as opposed to being a cast-off grandson, disowned twice over by two hard-bitten, hidebound old men who had no truck with a “no-good” woman who had borne a child out of wedlock? How had they justified turning away from that mother and child? After all, I was the result of an “unholy” union, not the cause of it. Why had they chosen to punish me right along with her?

All the while I was growing up, every holiday had served as a bleak reminder of how different our lives were from everyone else’s. Other kids came back to school after Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter with stories of joyous holiday dinners and family celebrations complete with grandparents and cousins, aunts and uncles. For our little family it was always just the two of us-my mother and me and no one else.

I guess that’s part of what was going through my mind right then as I looked at the photos-that whole catalog of what-ifs and might-have-beens as opposed to what was.

When I could talk again, I looked at Ralph. “Tell me about him,” I said.

“Hank was a kid from a well-respected family. They had quite a lot of money-oil money, it turns out-but Hank wasn’t especially studious and he wasn’t drawn to the family business, either. He was a kid who liked to have fun, a little too much fun on occasion. Liked to walk on the wild side and all that. As Ms. Mathers told you in that e-mail, he got in some kind of hot water back home and was given a choice of joining the service or going to jail. He joined the navy. That’s how he ended up in Washington State, where he met your mother.

“I believe that after he died and before you were born, your mother made an effort to contact the family. They thought she was some kind of gold digger who was after the family money, and refused all contact.”

“Which explains why she made up a last name for me rather than using hers or his.”

Ralph nodded. “When your father’s parents, your grandparents, subsequently died, your aunt, your father’s sister, became your grandparents’ sole heir.”

“Sally Mathers’s mother.”

“Yes, Hannah. From what your cousin said in that e-mail, I wouldn’t be surprised if your aunt might want to name you as a beneficiary in her will.”

“That seems unlikely to me, doesn’t it to you?” I asked.

Ralph shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

“I sent Sally an e-mail when we got back to the hotel last night,” I said. “I told her I was involved in a case and that, as soon as it was resolved, I’d get back to her. But I don’t think I ever believed any of this was real. I thought it was some kind of pipe dream.”

“It’s not a pipe dream,” Ralph said. “I’ve checked newspaper records both here in Washington and in Texas. Hank Mencken’s military records show that he died in a motorcycle crash outside Bremerton in the last year of World War II. His body was transported back to Texas, where he was accorded a full military funeral and burial. Because of the family’s status in the community, his death received a good deal of coverage in the local newspaper. The Beaumont Daily Ledger no longer exists, but its archives have been digitized and turned over to the Texas State Historical Association. That’s where I found these two photos.”

The waitress showed up with menus and a carafe of coffee. I picked up the photos and held them out of harm’s way so no inadvertent drips from the pot would mar them.

Mel reached over and touched the back of my hand. “Are you all right?” she asked.

I shook my head. On the one hand, I wasn’t all right. On the other hand, I was. For the first time in my entire life I was a whole person-one with both a mother and a father.

“It’s a little much to take in all at once,” I said.

Ralph nodded. “I’ve made some discreet inquiries,” he said. “If you want to see your father’s sister before she passes, you should probably go to Texas as soon as possible. She’s a cancer patient who has decided to accept no additional treatment.”

“You mean like hospice?” I asked.

Ralph nodded. “Pain meds only. If you use your jet card, you can be there in a matter of hours.”

“I can’t walk away from this case,” I said. “Ross Connors is counting on us.”

And so is Josh Deeson, I thought.

Like me, Josh had been a fatherless kid until Marsha Longmire and Gerry Willis had tried to take him under their wing. Unfortunately, Josh had turned away from everything they’d offered him-a new family, a place in their universe, life itself. He had rejected it all. I didn’t want to make the same mistake.

But on the other hand. .

“Let me pull together a few more documents,” Ralph continued, “so that when you go you’ll have the benefit of the full story insofar as we know it. But don’t go by yourself,” he cautioned. “Take Mel with you.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “She’s my partner. When it comes to family matters, she’s got my back.”

I looked at Mel. I expected her to be smiling; she wasn’t.

“I was worried that I had overstepped by turning Ralph loose on this,” she said. “I wasn’t sure how you would react.”

“I’m still not sure how I’m going to react,” I said. “But I think I needed something to get me off dead center and help me overcome decades of inertia.”

“So it’s all right then?”

I nodded.

The waitress stalked up to our table. “What’ll you have this morning?” she said. “And do you want separate checks?”

“No,” I said. “One check only. This one’s on me.”

We ordered breakfast. I don’t remember what I ate. I don’t remember what was said. I sat there the whole time continuing to stare down at the pair of photographs of the man who had been my father.

It was an odd sensation. Seeing him made me happy and sad. Glad to see who he was and to know he had once existed. Sad to realize that I had never known him; would never know him. And sad, too, to realize that he never knew me or my kids, especially his grandson, Scott, whose face was stamped with the same indelible family features-the Mencken family’s in Hank’s world; the Beaumont family’s in mine.

Hello and good-bye at the same time. It made me happy; it broke my heart.