He sat back in his chair, the letter fluttering in his shaking hand, knowing he needed to take a big gulp of the Scotch in order to calm the thudding in his chest, but being unable to reach for it. His eyes roamed over the letter again, his lawyer’s brain trying to pick it apart, to figure out if it was a fake, for any evidence that would allow him to dismiss it, to defuse the bomb that had just gone off in his life. What was that phrase she’d used? “Blown me down.” Yeah, that’s what he felt like. Blown down.
Where to begin? There was the fact that the entire letter was written in block letters. In pencil. In poor grammar. The ridiculous declarations of eternal love. The excessive use of “always.” The reminder of his infantile name for her, Mam. The absurd declarations of prescience, as if it were a fait accompli that he would grow up to be the man he’d become were it not for his parents. The claims she was still making on him. The calling him by that old childhood nickname, the one he’d forgotten about: Baby Boy. How dare she call him that, and how patronizing it sounded, how it reduced him to being nine again, trapped in that shabby little apartment. With her. Without her.
But then he located the locus of his anger, and the rest of it fell away. He reread the sentence: “You done the right thing by choosing that white family over me, Anton.” You did the right thing? He chose the white family? He was a child, for Pete’s sake, with no agency. For the almost three years that he lived with the Colemans before his adoption, he had held some part of himself aloof. It hadn’t been easy—David and Delores had been attentive, loving, kind, thoughtful, caring. Never once had he felt unsafe with them, never once had they disappeared for a week and left him to fend for himself. There were so many times when he almost slipped and called David Dad, so many times he saw the hopeful light leap up in David’s eyes only to be snuffed out a second later. Anton had been ashamed of himself then, had known he was being unkind, but he had never wavered. He had been saving himself for his reunion with her. His mom. Whom, in those wild days when his life was turned upside down, only he seemed to understand and love. When the police, the social workers, even David seemed to judge her, he did not. All he could think in those days was his mam had made a mistake, just like he made spelling and grammar mistakes. Together, they would correct those mistakes. Of this he had no doubt.
Until the day a grim-faced David had sat him down and told him what had transpired. How she had decided to give him up. Because she believed he would be happier with his new family. Because she was weak, and needed to get strong, and couldn’t take care of a twelve-year-old boy while she got healthy again.
What he had felt then, he couldn’t bear to remember now. Anton shoved the feeling down, much as he had all those years ago, the sob in his throat that he had tried to swallow because it was choking him, the scream that rose from his very toes and almost escaped before he clamped down on it, the feeling of utter abandonment, so much more powerful than anything he’d felt in that hot apartment where he’d waited for his mother to return.
Anton rested his forehead on his desk. For a second, he weighed the price that young boy had paid for the loneliness that he had spent a lifetime running away from. But then he dismissed it. There was no room for sentimentality now. This was a time for action. This woman—he could no longer think of her as his mother, he had a new mother now, thank you very much—was a threat, a cancer that had resurfaced, that had to be irradiated. This woman with her false accusations, her insinuation that he had chosen David’s wealth, his white privilege, over her poverty and blackness, had to be stopped from spouting her falsehoods. Because next thing you knew, this story was going to hit the press.
Anton rose swiftly from his desk, crossed the hallway into the bedroom, and slipped on his sneakers. He folded the letter, shoved it into the pocket of his pants, and grabbed his car keys.
Ten minutes later, he was knocking on Bradley’s door, and when Brad answered, he entered without being invited in.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The two men stared wordlessly at each other for a minute before Brad exhaled. “I gotta tell you, man. I don’t see it,” he said.
“Don’t see what?”
Brad frowned. “What you’re seeing. There’s no threat here. No blackmail. Just a mom trying to reconnect . . .”
Anton looked incredulous. “I don’t believe it. Don’t you see? How she’s trying to frame the issue? That I chose to abandon her rather than the other way around?”
“Dude. People believe what they want to believe. Okay? Maybe this is the story she needs to believe.”
“Yeah. Because otherwise she has to live with the truth—that she sold out her only child so she could get high.” Anton’s voice was savage, and he knew his eyes were bloodshot.
There was another silence, and when Anton looked up, Brad was staring at him, a new understanding in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I can’t imagine how you feel.”
Anton didn’t want pity. He didn’t want sympathy. He wanted blood. “No, you can’t,” he said curtly. He sprang to his feet and began to pace the room, picking up a silver candleholder and setting it down, lifting a photograph frame and turning it unseeingly in his hands.
“Anton. Sit the fuck down. You’re making me dizzy,” Brad said after a few moments.
He couldn’t sit, but he stopped pacing, standing a few feet away from his friend. “Listen,” Brad continued. “We have a goddamn election coming up in a few months. You need to put this behind you. After you’re governor, we can . . . do something. Maybe fly her out here or something. But for now you need to ignore this. I’m telling you, there’s no threat here.”
Anton sat back down on the couch with a thud, tapping his left foot on the hardwood floor. “I can’t. I know myself. I won’t be able to focus.” His head shot up as the thought hit him. “I’ll go see her. See what she wants. Explain to her that we can’t have this—any of this drama—before the election.” As he spoke, the feeling of agitation that had gripped him since he’d slit open the letter receded a bit.
Brad looked aghast. “And how do you propose to leave town without the entire press corps knowing? Have you lost your mind, Anton?”
He caught himself shaking his leg and stopped. “Get me a private plane,” he said quietly. “I’ll pay out of pocket. I’ll be back in town before anyone will notice. If anyone asks, you can tell them I’m felled by a cold. Anything.” He pulled out his phone to check his calendar. “I can take Friday off. And I should be back the same night. Or Saturday at the latest. Depending on how it goes with her.”
Brad shook his head. “Anton. You know better. It’s too risky. Lying to the press? If they catch on, they’ll think you’re doing a Mark Sanford.”
Anton focused on Brad. “I’m asking you to help me, Brad. Don’t fucking make me beg.”