“When she was twelve years old.”
“Indeed. It was around that time that she overheard a terrible quarrel between her parents. Sally-Anne learned that her father was having an affair, the first of many mistresses he would accrue over the years. In his defense, Robert was still a handsome man at the time and had long been neglected by Hanna, who was incapable of forgiving all he had done. As humans are wont to do, he sought to love and be loved. On the day in question, insults were hurled from both sides, and the fight escalated. Hanna at last revealed that Girl by the Window, the very painting he had taken from the hunting lodge in France, had been locked up for eleven years in Robert’s own safe, before also confronting him about his treachery. In the course of one evening, Sally-Anne learned her father was unfaithful and that he was not at all the hero she thought him to be. She saw him for the first time for what he truly was: a man who had done the unthinkable to save himself. Much less could have ignited the fiery rage of adolescence, and this triggered a veritable Molotov cocktail of emotion. Her fury and hatred rippled throughout the entire family.
“Hanna was the enemy for fostering the lie for the worst of reasons. Robert was pure scum, irredeemable. And she hated Edward, too, for being the loved and cherished son, while she was nothing but the black sheep who would never measure up. Hanna feared her daughter would, out of a simple thirst for vengeance, expose the family’s shame to anyone who would listen. To prevent this from happening, Hanna had Sally-Anne sent to boarding school in England, where she stayed through early adulthood.”
The professor downed the rest of his drink and carefully set the glass down on the tablecloth. “I must say this has been a particularly fine meal. I will leave you now to take care of the bill. We can do this again whenever you like; there’s a Chilean sea bass with truffle emulsion that I’d jump at the chance to try. Revisiting the Stanfield story certainly has whetted my appetite to at last complete the definitive family saga. I just hope you will keep your end of the bargain and grant me consent to publish. It was a true honor meeting the last of the Stanfields.”
With that, the professor stood, shook our hands, and left.
Back at the hotel, I lay sleeplessly in bed, consumed by the flood of revelations from dinner with the professor.
Strangely, I felt closer to my mother than ever before, closer than we had ever been when she was alive. At last, I had a real sense of what she had endured during her forced exile. To experience such abandonment twice over—first by her real parents and then by her adoptive family—was completely unfathomable. In a way, she had been telling the truth when she described herself as an orphan, or very nearly the truth. But over the course of that long, sleepless night, I understood why she never told us more, and why my father had kept silent as well. It was to protect us. Despite all of that, I still wished she had shared her secret past with us. I would like to think I would have showered her with endless love to make up for all she had missed out on in her youth. And, what now? Did I tell Maggie and Michel the truth, even if doing so would be betraying my mother’s memory?
These questions and others weighed heavily on my mind and kept me from getting even an hour of sleep. Had Professor Morrison exaggerated parts of the tale to get the consent he craved so badly for his book? Could he have known my true identity before we met? After all, if the professor wasn’t the poison-pen, then who could it be? The worst part was that I felt no closer to grasping just what it was the anonymous puppeteer had been after from the very start.
I vowed I would fulfill my promise starting the next day. It was time to help George-Harrison find the identity of his father.
35
ELEANOR-RIGBY
October 2016, Baltimore
There was a bitter chill in the air the next morning. The city seemed almost gray in the wan light, as puddles of dirty rain gathered on the sidewalks. I can’t stand those days in late autumn when the streets are so wind battered, they seem to wither in front of your very eyes.
George-Harrison was waiting for me in front of his pickup truck. He wore an old denim shirt, a leather jacket, and a baseball hat, like a grizzled ballplayer past his prime. Most of all, he seemed to have got out of the wrong side of the bed. He studied my face for a long moment, then sighed and climbed into the driver’s seat without a word. As I got into the vehicle, I asked where we were headed.
“You can go wherever you like, I’m going home. Money doesn’t grow on trees, and speaking of trees, I have to get back to my work.”