treasure. What’s past is past. There was no undoing it. All that mattered was what lay ahead.
“A strange attitude from a man who took the beating you took,” Nelle said. “Your Pulitzer Prize could be restored. Your credibility regained. You wouldn’t have to ghostwrite novels anymore.”
He shrugged. “It’s not so bad. Pays good, and there’s no pressure.”
“So what are you going to do?” the ambassador asked.
After he and Alle had recrossed the lake and climbed from the cave, the Maroon, Frank Clarke, had waited for them. They’d watched as Bene Rowe and two other men led Simon across the river and back up to the road.
He hadn’t answered Clarke because he truly did not know.
And he could not answer the woman now staring at him, either. So he simply said, “I’ll let you know what I decide.”
“You understand,” the ambassador said, “that no one will ever know the truth about you, unless you work with us.”
Her threat infuriated him, but anger was also a thing of the past. “You see, that’s the thing. It only matters that one person knows the truth.” He paused. “And you just told her.”
Alle stepped from the kitchen, where he’d sent her on seeing who his visitors were. He hadn’t known how far they would go with their comments, but he’d hoped.
“My father didn’t lie, did he?” she asked.
Neither woman said a word.
But their silence was more than enough of an answer.
They seemed to sense that the conversation was over and both headed for the door.
Before leaving, the ambassador turned back and said, “Be kind to us, Mr. Sagan. Think what those treasures would mean.”
Her plea did not impress him. “And you think about what almost happened, because of them.”
Tom and Alle stepped from the car and entered the cemetery outside Mount Dora. They’d driven from Orlando just after the two women left his house. The day was late, nearly five o’clock, the burial ground empty. A late- winter sun warmed chilly March air. Together they walked to his parents’ graves. For the first time in a long while he did not feel like he was intruding.
He stared at the two
“You did good on his marker,” he told her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He faced her.
“I’m so sorry for everything I ever did to you.”
Her words shook him.
“I was a fool,” she said. “I thought you were selfish. That you cared nothing for me or Mother. I thought you were a fraud. A cheat. An adulterer. I thought everything bad I could about you. And I was wrong.”
They’d said little since leaving Jamaica, and nothing after the women left the house. What was there to say? That was the thing about the truth. It silenced everything to the contrary.
“I lied to Mother,” she said. “You were right in Vienna. I’m a hypocrite. I knew how she felt about Judaism. How you converted for her. But I did it anyway, then lied right to her face, up until the day she died.”
He understood her agony.
“What’s worse,” she said, “my converting made what you did in leaving the Temple so unnecessary. The thing Mother didn’t want to happen, did. All the battles between you and your father came to nothing. He died before either of you could resolve anything. And it’s all my fault.”
She sobbed and he allowed her to release the pain.
“I wasn’t the best husband or father,” he said. “I was selfish. I
“You saved my life in Jamaica. You dove into the water after me. You got me across the lake. You kept Simon from killing me.”
“As I recall, you saved mine, too.” She’d told him how she’d aimed a light in Rocha’s face and yelled.
“You’re not a lying reporter.”
Her statement carried the tone of a declaration.
“You’re a journalist. A Pulitzer Prize winner. You deserve all that you earned. Did you mean what you said to them? You don’t want anyone to know the truth about you?”
“It’s not important anymore that people know that. You know. That’s all I care about.”
He meant every word.
