Pick Your Poison

Feldman walked briskly to the left, into a formal living area furnished with an expensive-looking modular sofa and heavy white drapes on the picture window with a bay view. A palatial room, one that reminded me of winter.

“What’s this about?” he said curtly.

He sat on the sofa near the fireplace, and I sat opposite him, seemingly a football field away. A heavily varnished coffee table fashioned from the trunk of a redwood filled the U space between us.

“I’m investigating the deaths of a couple named Grayson,” I said. “You may remember the wife. Her name was Cloris, and her children were placed in an adoptive home through your agency many years ago.”

He crossed his legs and leaned back against the white cushions. “Thousands of children came through my agency, and by the way, I don’t own or operate that business any longer.”

Maybe not on paper, I thought. He’d no doubt covered himself there. “Let me refresh your memory. Cloris Grayson caused a bit of trouble in your life... before someone murdered her.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. We know you placed her twins, and we know she tried to find them. If she succeeded, then you would have lost. Big-time. I’d call that motive, sir.”

He shifted his thin frame, paying considerable attention to his fingernails. “I think you’re mistaken. I don’t remember this woman.”

I guess I had expected him to fall on his knees and confess. I should have planned this confrontation better, but I was too distracted by what Sally Jean had told me to even make much sense right now. Still, I couldn’t leave without getting something out of this asshole. Maybe if I threw out a line about the judge, he’d squirm.

“You cooperated with a judge named Eugenia Hayes. We believe you made some shady deals with her, threw a few bribes her way. Is that not a fact, sir?”

“I told you I don’t know anything about your murder, nor about bribery. Frankly, I’d categorize your information as flimsy innuendos. I haven’t been in a courtroom in a long time, and I don’t recall anyone named Hayes.”

“Suffering from selective amnesia, sir?”

He got up. “I won’t be insulted in my own home. Obviously you’re grasping at straws.”

I had forgotten he was a lawyer, a “professional liar,” like Judge Hayes said.

“This isn’t the end, Feldman,” I said, knowing this was true, even if everything else I’d said was a lie.

“If you show up again,” Feldman said, “you’d better have more than speculation.”

He marched ahead of me, and I heard the phone ringing beyond a door across the foyer.

“I’ll find my way out,” I said.

He waited until I was out the front door, but didn’t come too close... almost as if he were afraid of what was out there. He certainly wasn’t afraid of me.

It was raining like God opened the drain, and I hesitated before closing the front door behind me. Just then a gust of wind blew me backward and the door opened, horizontal rain spraying into the foyer. I stepped back inside, deciding to wait a minute or two for the weather to let up.

That was when I realized I could hear Feldman talking in the other room. He said, “When do you think you’ll be here?”

Silence followed. I moved closer to the half-open door.

Feldman said, “I’ve had a visitor. Houston Police.”

His voice drifted closer, as if he might be walking toward me.

Damn.

I hurried across the foyer and crouched behind a large statue of some naked Greek god. I sneaked a peek and saw Feldman step out, his attention on the open front door. He maneuvered around the puddle on the floor, shut the door, and practically jumped away after doing so. As he went back into the other room, I heard him say, “Stupid woman left the door open.”

Taking a path close to the wall, I tiptoed back, stopping outside the room just in time to hear him say, “I understand. But they’re putting things together.”

Another pause before he said, “I know they don’t have any evidence, but she mentioned Eugenia Hayes, and she was one of the judges. If they dig deep enough, they’ll find out Rose made her step down and—Hold on; I’ve got another call.”

My knees almost gave way, and I steadied myself against the wall. Then, not caring whether Feldman knew I’d been listening in, I opened the door and ran out into the stinging rain. I didn’t remember starting the car or navigating through the downpour, but soon I found myself on P Street.

I parked in the driveway and sat there in the Camry, not bothering to even turn off the air-conditioning, my soaked clothing molded to my cold, shivering body. Rain still poured in unrelenting intensity from the swirling slate sky.

I clutched the steering wheel, my knuckles protruding white and sharp through the stretched skin of my hands. The truth, the thing that was supposed to set you free and all that crap, ricocheted between the confines of my skull, cruel and punishing.

Then tears began sliding down my cheeks and under my chin.

23

The rain let up minutes later, but rivulets continued to trail down the windshield. I watched one and then another and another meander and disappear. I could have easily run to the Victorian during this temporary reprieve, but I remained paralyzed in my car.

Those words, Rose made her step down, kept replaying in my head like a broken car alarm, over and over and over.

I don’t know how much time passed, but my tears had dried. I was left feeling numb and more alone than I could remember. That was when another man’s words came back. Jeff Kline’s words. Ben Grayson was living on your property because he wanted to be there. Yes, indeed. Ben had come to find Daddy, to find Kate and me.

“How very clever of you, Daddy,” I whispered. Was anything he’d told us true? Had there even been a fatal plane crash right before Kate and I were born? I doubted it.

And did he have any idea how much this truth would hurt when it came pouncing out from the past? How did I reevaluate a lifetime founded on deception? Where did I begin?

I felt overwhelmed and unequipped to deal with any of this. I wanted none of such a messy past. But having made the first vital connection, my synapses continued to fire. My father made Hayes step down because someone threatened to expose the judge as corrupt, had threatened to reclaim her children.

Cloris. Also known as Connie. Also known as my mother.

I shook my head, sprinkling the windshield with water from my drenched hair. Don’t think about that part, Abby. Not now.

Rain pummeled my car anew, and for some silly reason—maybe denial was kicking in—I entertained the notion that Daddy could have been honoring a friend’s request when he forced Hayes to resign—simply been helping some friend protect their adopted children, not his own. After all, he had powerful business connections and measurable influence in political circles.

But I knew the truth, and the more I tried to push it away with implausible explanations, the more its presence grew. But that voice in my head came back with, You don’t have solid proof. All you have is an overheard sentence spoken by a cruel old man.

And I had to be one hundred percent sure.

Eugenia Hayes knew everything. At least, she used to know. Could I drag the truth from the cloud of confusion fogging her mind? Maybe if I could hear the words from her, from the woman who sealed the deal, I could accept that I was raised by a man who then spent a generation lying to my sister and me.

The same curly-haired woman sat filing her nails at the information desk at the nursing home. When I marched past her, she spotted me and called out, “You can’t go up there!”