Two If by Sea (31 page)

“She's okay. She's still got half her workout to do.”

“I want her to rest for today, okay?” Frank turned back to the friendly father. “My friend Patrick likes her, your daughter. I think he's visited her school. I know they were together at the Mistingay.” He didn't say he had himself met Linnet, like the bird, at the Mistingay.

“Really?”

“Long drive from here. To her school. For Patrick. Long drive for you.”

“Yep.”

“Do you go see her much?”

“We do sometimes.”

“You and your wife?”

“Hmm. She's an only child.”

“Must be difficult, having only one and her in Kentucky. Kentucky, right?”

“Kentucky, yes. You get used to it.”

“Well, unless you want to talk about something else, Glory Bee's not for sale. She's training right now with a rider for the U.S. team.”

“She's that good. Mind if I watch?”

Frank bared his teeth and made huffing noises he hoped resembled a laugh. “Oh, well, if you know much about show jumping, you know we can't afford to let out those trade secrets, can we?” He said then, “You like Volvos?”

The man said, “They're the best. Lynette calls it a grandma car. But I get a new one every three years.”

Linnet. Like the bird. Clearly, neither name was her real name.

“I might get one.”

“Sure,” the man said, in a hurry now, his voice just a quarter note flatter, like an iron bell struck while someone was holding the side of it with one hand. “I'll be going, then.”

How bad a bad guy could he be and be this shitty stupid? He dressed very well, too. On the other hand, Frank had met some really ignorant bad guys who did very well for themselves.

Without further ado, or any handshakes, the man got into his spotless car and took off.

“Pat!” Frank called. “Did you ever actually see that girl Linnet ride a horse?”

“No,” Patrick said. “She didn't come to the talks I gave because she said it was her practice time and they were very tight about that.”

“And the college was in Indiana, Patrick, not Kentucky. Right?”

“All those flats run over each other for me, guv. But I would have remembered Kentucky. I used to look at the pictures of the farms when I was a lad. Indiana sounds right.”

“Did you know she was coming to Chicago?”

Patrick blushed. “I never asked her to. I just saw her at the school until then. How I found out about her school, I wrote a letter once, I was a kid, twelve, to ‘the Jockey,' a fanboy sort of a thing. They had a story about schools. So I asked, could I come see the place? Place to work if this didn't work out here maybe. Which it did, Frank.”

“And?”

“And she was a pretty little bird.” For a moment, Frank thought Patrick was referring to a bird, to the girl's name. Then he recognized old Brit slang.

“So you . . .”

“A bit. Then she showed up inside by the barns in Chicago. That's her dad, huh? Toff.”

Frank said, “A bit.”

Almost idly, Frank called in the tags on the car. Minnesota plates. Memorizing plate numbers was a skill he'd mastered long ago.

The guy who looked up the plates was Eden's age. His name was Shane Baker, and their mothers were acquainted.

“This is unremarkable, Frank,” he said, after they exchanged pleasantries, and Shane offered Frank condolences for the loss of his wife, and congratulations for the marriage of his sister. “This car is registered to Patricia Roe, of Minnetonka, Minnesota. No arrests, no violations, not even a parking ticket.”

“She didn't live in Chicago?”

“No. Nothing here seems to suggest anything such as that. She was an ordinary citizen, according to these records. An exemplary citizen.”

Frank wanted to laugh. Like many people without much of an education, Shane Baker spoke with a formality that verged on parody. It reminded Frank of the horse race gamblers in
Guys and Dolls.
He glanced down at his watch. Ian's bus would come soon. The guy in the black car hadn't been gone for two full minutes. What if the guy simply waited, out of sight, as Ian descended from the bus? That's all he would need to do. Sally, who could hear Ian's school bus two miles off, gave up herding Hope's newest project, five milking goats, and began racing toward the end of the drive, where she would lie in wait for Ian with her muzzle on her paws. As Frank watched, she then followed Ian, running out and then back to circle Ian's legs as he made his slow, digressive journey up the drive—stopping to pick up stones and examine them for veins of gold, to prod coyote scat with a stick to find mouse skeletons, to search the gully where he'd once found, and proudly left untouched, a nest of tawny-flecked quail eggs. He was still so small and skinny, his favorite green necktie askew, blond hair spangling red strands in the bright sun.

When he got to the dooryard, Frank lifted him up. “Would you like to move to England?” he said.

“I don't know,” Ian told him, warily. “Where is it? I'd like to go bowling.”

Ian had his birthday party planned. It would be all bowling, including the cake. He and Frank had scouted the location. Ian had gone over the guest list. He'd written down the triplets, a quiet little boy named Ted, and a talkative girl named Mai Lin.

“Can you help me put the saddle on Sultana?”

“You look beat today, buddy.”

“She likes a ride every day. Just a little ride.”

“Okay, son. Here we go.” Frank brushed Sultana and laid her red saddle pad across her back, and then buckled her into her saddle, finally setting Ian astride her. As he did, Ian reached out and brushed the back of Frank's neck with his small hand, a tiny gesture between a pat and a hug.

Frank thought, I would shoot them. I would shoot them all.

As Ian circled the paddock, Frank heard his phone buzzing. Shane Baker was calling back.

He said, “About that car. This is rather interesting, Frank. Patricia Roe is deceased. She had not committed a crime, but it may be that she was the victim of one. She died two years ago, of a fall, in her house. She simply fell down a staircase. But there was an investigation. There was a suspicion of foul play, for some things were missing from her house. Some jewelry. An expensive oil painting of museum quality.”

“Not this car?”

“No, that car is not a stolen vehicle. The registration is current.”

“Who has it? Who are her relatives? Her children?”

“She had no relatives, no children or spouse. She was a marathon runner. Her possessions went to the library in her town and to a scholarship fund for female athletes.”

“But who has the car? It's a new car. Newer. Two years old.”

“Well, Frank, it says here that she does,” Shane said. “I'm going to pass this along.”

Frank was willing to bet that the driver of that crisp Volvo had already decided on an early trade-in.

F
OR ONE OF
the two psychology classes he took in college, Frank had to submit to experiments devised by professors and carried out by graduate students. One was built on the scaffolding of the old conundrum: I have some good news and some bad news, which would you like first? Like almost everyone else—eighty percent of people—Frank wanted the bad news first. The bitter pill was easier to sweeten. Frank also learned that the huge majority of people had a stubborn belief that a cycle of bad tidings would be followed by a cycle of good luck, and half of those thought that the break meant that happy days were here again for good. This was notwithstanding all past evidence to the contrary, whether they suffered under corrupt government leaders or suffered chronic migraines or their children were addicted to drugs or they ran a Korean grocery that was robbed every three months like clockwork or thugs in nice clothes who didn't know their daughters' own names and drove cars registered to dead people pulled up to their houses. Human beings were hardwired to be optimistic.

So when Brian Donovan called, Frank expected bad news. Receiving news that was instead not only good but miraculous, he could not, he later thought, blame himself for believing that the clouds had rolled away and that days thereafter would be fair.

Frank came in one night late, after waiting while the vet cleaned up a cut on the little paint's hock.

Hope said, “Your . . . your brother-in-law called. Brian Donovan. He asked if you'd gotten an envelope from him. You did. It's in your room. He also said to call him back, that it was urgent you call him the minute you got it.”

“I will,” Frank said.

“He said
the minute
,” Hope repeated.

Frank dawdled. He called Claudia, who was at her apartment, preparing for an interview the next morning that could lead to a lucrative, prestigious series of lectures the following year. “How bad could it be?” Frank said. “Everything bad has already happened.”

“The answer's in the question, Frank,” Claudia said, sounding distracted to the point of impatience. “Maybe it's good news about his brother and the wife who were never found.”

Just a week before, Frank received the copy of the documentary special Brian had made,
We Were the Donovans
, that had aired across Australia and other parts of the world. Dutifully, Frank had popped it into the international player he still had, but the third or fourth image was Natalie throwing her cap into the air at her college graduation, and Frank couldn't watch anymore. Was that what this urgent call was about?

Was it more likely that someone who'd seen the documentary had been in touch with Brian—someone who'd nearly given up hope, who'd been desperately searching for a child?

Frank ripped the thick parcel open at the back.

Legal papers with little pink Post-it notes attached marking places to sign tumbled out. When he was able to settle his heart's thudding, he saw that these were documents pertaining to his and Natalie's will, drawn up just when she'd learned she was pregnant, mere weeks before she died—a million five each on each other, hers now augmented because of the accidental death provision. Her directives included a small bequest for each of her brothers, and half was to be kept in trust for her minor children, should they outlive her. Frank signed the documents and put them back in the big stamped envelope. There was another, separate envelope—the check with the payout on the destruction of his house. He'd got the value out of the condominium they'd owned, and was glad, if you could be glad about such a thing, that they'd purchased flood insurance when they moved to Carson Place. There was a third envelope—little, with a waxy coating, the kind parents made kids use to write thank-you notes.

Who knew how long Brian had held on to these documents or, for that matter, how long they'd taken to reach Brian? Frank left Brisbane leaving no forwarding address but this one, and Brian, it seemed, had been consumed for a long while with his documentary. Sadly, Frank wondered what would fill Brian's hours now.

He slit open the little envelope, and out fell a folded single sheet, a couple of newspaper clippings, both old, one with a headline about a child called “Moses” . . . and a photo of Ian. Except . . . it wasn't Ian. The child in the picture, squinting into the sun, was older, thinner, taller, with a square chin. Frank grabbed up the newspaper page. It was the picture of him carrying a child crushed against him.

The white sheet was a letter from Brian.

Dear Frank,

This is a picture I took last week, after I visited a convent that houses a Red Cross foundling center near Byron Bay. The telephone number of Sister Elizabeth Gray, the nun who called me, is written on the back of this letter. She said the boy lives there with a dozen other children who have no families and that he saw the documentary I made, which you have by now,
We Were the Donovans.
The boy spoke to her the next day and showed her the newspaper picture of you. I went to visit him last week. He's a likely boy, and I don't remember the looks of the boy you adopted, but he insists this is his brother. His name is Colin McTeague. He seems convinced that you have his brother, Ian. She would like you to call her, but perhaps call me first. I'm a bit at loose ends.

With best regards,

Brian Donovan

Frank read no more.

It was 5:23 a.m. in Brisbane.

He picked up the telephone.

“God grant you peace, and good morning,” said the soft voice.

“I need to speak with Sister Elizabeth Gray.”

“Mother.”

“Mother Elizabeth Gray.”

“She's at her prayers. I can take your number and ask her to call you back after breakfast. No more than an hour or two.”

“Could I wait?”

“I don't know.”

“It's urgent. It's about a child. It's about Colin.”

“I'll go get her now,” the soft voice replied.

A minute passed, then two and then three. Twice, Frank heard the clicking of shoes approaching the phone and the soft birdsong of voices, but they died away. Five minutes. Six.

“This is Elizabeth Gray.”

“Hello. This is Frank Mercy. I'm calling from the United States. I apologize for the hour.”

“It's quite all right. We are up early.”

“I heard about a boy called Colin, and I thought, I hoped that perhaps it was the same Colin.”

“Ah. Good morning. This is the American uncle?”

“Yes.”

“You left Australia.” There was the slightest hint of accusation.

“I saw the car go over, Sister. I saw it disappear under the floodwater. I didn't believe he could have survived. I followed up, diligently. I checked the shelters and the newspapers.”

“Not diligently enough. For here he is, asleep upstairs.” There was an ancientness of Irish in her speech. She paused. “But never mind. This has happened a hundred times since that night, all over Queensland.”