The strangest thing happened, though. Maybe because I had been looking at pictures of Katy and Todd Ducane all morning, I could see why Warren Ducane had mistaken him for his brother’s child. I decided to keep that to myself.
“Max, if you think about it, all of us have made-up names. So you got this one in a courtroom. You’re hardly the first person to legally change his name. Unless you don’t like the name?”
“No, it’s fine. In fact…do you know who I was named after? When I was Kyle, I mean?”
“No,” I admitted.
“It was my uncle’s middle name. Adam Kyle Yeager. A man who died in prison. Now, there’s a hero. It wasn’t even anything glorious like civil rights or civil disobedience. He was a felon. A thief, among other things. From all I’ve heard, he was a local gangster.”
“He must have meant something to somebody, for you to be named after him.”
“Oh, my father thought the world of him.” He caught himself and said, “Mitch, I mean.” He looked away for a moment, then said, “For the most part, not knowing who my birth parents were hasn’t bothered me. After Mom- Estelle-died, I really wanted to know who they were, and every now and then I wondered about them. But on the upside, by the time I was ten or so, if I saw Mitch Yeager acting like a jerk, I knew he wasn’t my father. I was always free of him-I hadn’t inherited anything from him.”
“I can see both sides of it, I suppose. I think curiosity would have gotten the best of me by now.”
“That’s really all it is for me at this point-curiosity. I’ve met people who can trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower, or farther back than that, but whose own lives haven’t been worth much of anything at all. So I told myself that what mattered was what I did with my life. Who I am, what I made of myself.”
“I agree.”
“And I’ve had incredible advantages. I don’t deny that. Estelle Yeager loved me. I didn’t grow up in poverty, or being discriminated against for the color of my skin. I’ve never had health problems. Hell, just being born in this country is something to be thankful for. There are plenty of horror stories about what can happen to orphans, so for a bastard, I’d say I’ve done really well. Mitch Yeager might not love me, and maybe he’s always planned to use me for his own purposes, but he has spent a lot of money on me.”
“I know what you mean about the advantages,” I said, “and maybe you were better off than some other orphans, but didn’t you feel kind of bad about being shipped off to boarding school?”
“If I hadn’t gone to boarding school, I would have been raised by Mitch, and I don’t think that would have been so great. As it is, the headmaster of my school sort of took me under his wing, became a better adoptive father than Mitch was. So I was lucky there, too.”
“Back up a second. You said Mitch wanted to use you. How?”
He toyed with his steak, then said, “Sonya, his new wife? She’s nice. But not too bright. The kids he’s had with her take after their mother, according to Mitch. I hardly know them, so I couldn’t say. Anyway, he wanted me to be a kind of caretaker of his businesses, along with my cousins-Eric and Ian. We’d see to it that his kids died wealthier than he did.”
“And would you have been compensated for that? Or were you supposed to just be grateful to have a chance to repay him for adopting you?”
“No, I would have been compensated. And generously.”
I studied him for a moment. “But you turned him down by accepting Warren’s offer.”
“Oh yes. Mitch is furious with me. I don’t blame him. I even offered to pay back what he spent on my upbringing and education. I’d be embarrassed to repeat what he said to me, but he ended by telling me he didn’t want the money because I was his responsibility, and he had never backed down on one yet.”
“Ouch. I grew up Catholic, so I recognize that weapon. Guilt.”
“Yes. But to be honest, I don’t feel guilty about Mitch. Maybe I should, but I don’t. I hated the way he treated Mom. I’ve even wondered if…well, never mind that. I haven’t ever been close to him, but that’s not the problem. It’s just that he…how can I describe it? He ensnares people.”
“So Warren Ducane and Auburn Sheffield gave you a way out of his trap.”
“Exactly.”
“You know, I can’t help but think there was more to it than that. Auburn said you had turned them down.”
“Believe it or not, Lillian convinced me.”
“How?”
He was silent. I waited. I concentrated on my lunch for a while. He hadn’t been eating much, and still didn’t. That made me feel a little self-conscious, so I stopped and looked up at him.
“That night,” he said, “at the dinner party? After you left?”
I turned crimson, but said, “Don’t tell me… you threw something, too?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No. I meant, after everyone else left, Lillian and I talked. I can’t explain it, really, but I feel comfortable around her.”
“I know what you mean, or at least-I went over there with a chip on my shoulder, totally expecting her to look down her nose at me, but ended up liking her in spite of myself.”
“Same here. I thought she might want me to be some kind of replacement grandson or something.”
“That would have been pretty creepy.”
“Creepy. Yes. This whole thing has lots of creepy aspects to it.”
“But she didn’t pressure you?”
“Not openly,” he said, amused, “but subtly? Maybe she did. She got me to talk about school and my plans to work for Mitch. Like I said, it was easy to talk to her. She also said that whether I called myself Kyle or Max, she’d like to get to know me, because she had known my mom, and liked her.”
“She meant Estelle?”
“Yes. Then she asked Hastings-her butler-to bring out some photos. They were of Mom when she was young, maybe nineteen or so. I guess Mom had been dating a friend of Lillian’s then, because the man she was with in the photos wasn’t Mitch. She looked… so beautiful, so happy. I don’t remember her that way. I guess she was sadder, more fearful, when I was a kid. She drank a lot, and it made her look older than she was. Even her posture had changed from that of the girl in the photos. Maybe because she was always cowering around Mitch.”
“With reason?”
He hesitated, then said, “Yes. Anyway, Lillian said that she didn’t think she could ever forgive Mitch for what he did to my mother. She said that if I wouldn’t take Auburn’s offer, she’d like to know how she could help me to become free of Mitch, because she would never believe that Estelle would have wanted me to live my life always doing just what he wanted me to do.”
“So you decided to take Warren’s offer?”
“Yes. As for Mitch and all his schemes-I haven’t ever seen them do anyone any good. Not even Mitch, really.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Invent things,” he said, then blushed. “I mean, I have some ideas, and know some people I’d like to work with, guys from school.”
“Like the GPS thing you were talking about the other night?”
“Yes. I want to be part of what’s happening with that.” He paused, then said, “At least, that was my plan until yesterday.”
“Do you lose the money now that they know the real-well, I mean, the original Max Ducane is dead?”
“No, it’s mine,” he said, without much enthusiasm.
“Okay, you have an idea, some people to work with, and the funds to try it. So what’s the problem?”
“Max Ducane,” he said quietly.
“But you just said-”
“I’m using his money. I’m using his inheritance. He’s a murder victim.”
I thought about that for a moment, then said, “He was a murder victim twenty years ago, Max. You didn’t cause that to happen by agreeing to Warren’s plan.”
“No, but it wouldn’t be right to just-let me put it this way. Maybe someone else could say, ‘Too bad, that’s just the past.’ But I can’t. For one thing, well-not many people know this, but I’m living at Lillian’s house.”
I must have raised a brow or something, because he quickly added, “Just for a few weeks. Then-well, never
