Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

‘It doesn’t matter.’ The nakedness of the lie nearly made him gasp but instead he just held on tight to his mother. After a moment her hands touched his back, pressed into his flesh, cautiously.

‘Jack, are you all right? Perhaps we should go inside.’ A bit of panic edged her voice.

He pulled back from her and he felt, mixed with the wet air, tears on his face. He felt mortified. She said nothing as he wiped them away with the back of his hand. Her own face was dry, as it always was.

‘Have you come back to turn yourself in to the police?’

She was a diplomat, so he gave the diplomatic answer. ‘Yes. I’m tired of running, I’m tired of hiding. I wanted to see you first. Before I go to the police.’ No, Mom, I came to say goodbye, he wanted to say. Goodbye forever. I shouldn’t have come. It’s too hard.

‘Well come inside, we’ll have some coffee and we’ll call the lawyers.’

She was still briskly efficient, he thought. ‘I just want us to talk first. You and me. Before lawyers, okay?’

His mother hurried him past the doorman and they rode in silence in the elevator, up to the apartment. He wanted to look at her face but instead he watched the umbrella weep leftover rain onto the floor. Jack stepped inside and despite the muggy warmness of the spring day he felt chilled. The apartment was as he remembered: magazine-perfect, accented with her collection of Chinese art on the red walls, along with photos of his mother with presidents, business leaders, diplomats, and other notables. Art from her various postings in the State Department: Hong Kong, Vietnam, South Korea, Peru, Luxembourg. It was as though she’d played magpie around the world, plucking beauty wherever she stopped, decorating a nest where no other birds wished to live. There was a family picture of himself and his father, off in a corner. On the periphery of his mother’s life, the edge of the circle.

‘Would you like some decaf?’ she asked.

‘Do you have any regular coffee? I’m zonked.’

‘Um, no. I now find too much caffeine disruptive.’

Only a food could be disruptive to you, Mom, he thought. Jack felt torn by need and resentment, two ends of the same rope, tugging straight through him. ‘Decaf is great.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘No.’ He followed her into the kitchen, watched her putter with the coffee maker. ‘How are you, Mom?’ I shouldn’t have come here. The sudden temptation to tell her everything, lay out an epic confession of the danger he faced, to ask her for help was overwhelming. Say your goodbyes, and go, and don’t look back, ever. No good will come of anything else.

‘I’m all right.’

‘You still consulting?’

‘Yes, here and there. Thinking of writing another book.’

‘I’m glad.’

She poured water into the coffee maker. ‘Jack, where have you been hiding?’

‘The Netherlands.’

‘I suppose I should have considered that as a possibility. So many young people from around the world, crowding around the canals. You went there for the drugs, I suppose.’

‘No, Mom, I went to grad school. I tried pot but frankly I would rather read a good book or see a movie.’

She blinked. A smile wavered near her mouth. ‘Grad school. On the run from the police, you go back to school.’

‘Well, under an assumed name.’

‘How did you get a new identity? Transcripts? How did you pay for tuition?’ Then she raised her hand, as if warding off a flash of fire. ‘Never mind. Best I don’t know what additional crimes you’ve committed. You can tell the attorney. My God, now the Dutch will be bringing up charges against you.’

Including manslaughter, he thought, maybe. Best not to go there.

‘I would like to see Dad’s grave.’

‘There is no grave. I had him cremated. He’s in the study.’

‘He’s here?’

Now she turned back toward the coffee maker. ‘Of course, did you think I threw him out?’

‘They call it spreading the ashes, Mom.’

‘Well, he’s still here.’

He wandered back into the den. An urn sat atop a large bookshelf, next to a row of volumes on art history. It was very pretty. He felt tears hot inside his face, aching for release. He glanced at the desk, at the carpet, the grief a well in him, deep and dark, and every awful memory rushed back in an unbidden surge.

‘How could you be so thoughtless?’ His father’s voice rising in shock and shame. ‘The police want to arrest you. What you’ve done is a felony.’

‘I know.’

‘A felony! What the hell did your mother and I ever do to you to deserve this? You’ve destroyed your life, do you understand that? Over what? Pranks? Proving that you’re smarter than everyone else? Because all you’ve done, Jack, is prove that you’re stupid beyond compare.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

‘Sorry you did it or that you were caught?’

‘I don’t know. I just did it.’

‘You’re not innocent? It’s not a mistake?’

‘No, sir. I did it all.’

‘Why? Why? Did you sell the information you stole?’

‘No. I don’t know why I did it.’

‘You expect me… ’ his father caught his breath, ‘you expect me to believe that a boy as smart as you is incapable of knowing his own motives?’

‘I just did it, it’s done.’ Jack’s voice broke. ‘I love you, Dad, I’m sorry. I love you.’

‘You love me? Then why do you flush your future down the toilet?’

‘That’s all you care about, my future?’

‘Are you trying to suggest you did this for our attention, Jack? Oh, please. That’s such a shallow reason. Babyish, almost.’

‘I don’t know why. I just don’t.’

The agony in his father’s eyes had cut Jack more deftly than any ax. Then his father had sat down at his desk, pulled a yellow legal pad toward him, picked up a pencil. He began scribbling thoughts on the paper. ‘We have to start considering your options. Your mother… and I… ’

And then his father, bunching up the cloth of his shirt over his chest with a surprised fist, saying ‘That’s not right… ’ and then collapsing to the carpet.

His mother, hurrying in, screaming his father’s name. Jack grabbing the phone, calling 9-1-1, pleading for the ambulance to hurry.

He’d set the phone down and then his mother, very calmly, said: ‘Get out.’

‘The ambulance is coming, Mom.’

‘Get out.’

‘I can’t, I won’t leave him.’

‘You did this. Your selfish stupidity did this to him and I want you gone.’ She knelt by her husband; she didn’t look at her son. ‘You have to go or the police will arrest you.’

‘Mom, I can’t leave Dad.’

‘You know, in jail, there will be no computers. I don’t quite know what you will do.’ Odd, her calm.

‘I don’t care.’

‘He’s dead.’ His mother looked at him with a fierce, burning glare that frightened him, because it was hatred. ‘You’ve taken him away from me. Go. Get out of my sight right now, Jack. I don’t ever want to see you again.’

He had turned and ran and when he went out of the building the ambulance was at the curb, lights flashing, too late.

*

His mother stood in the doorway, watching him stare at the urn. ‘I think, from a legalistic standpoint, Jack, you should surrender to an attorney immediately.’

‘I wanted a night here, Mom. At home first. Please.’

‘Of course.’ But the tension was tight in those two words. As if she was the one who was going to be in trouble. She walked back into the kitchen; he followed her.

‘I’ll stay out of sight. I know what you said before – but if you didn’t want to see me you wouldn’t have let me come up here. Don’t you want to spend time with me?’ She didn’t answer; she upended the precisely measured water into the brewer. The maker began to chug.