“Why go to such trouble?”
“To bring together all the puzzle pieces! Years of correspondence, you said. Let’s say he already has all of Mum’s letters and wants to get his hands on his mother’s, too. The poison-pen encouraged us to find proof of his claims, didn’t he? There you have it!”
“I don’t buy it. If you’d seen how dumbstruck he looked at the sight of that photo in Sailor’s Hideaway . . . not to mention, he received an anonymous letter of his own.”
“Which he could have absolutely written himself. And why was he so shocked at the picture if he knew about all the letter writing?”
“He didn’t know about that; I learned about it from Michel. And you have to make sure not to tell him any of this. I promised I would keep it a secret. I’ve been trying to get in touch with him—I’ve called him at least ten times since I got here. I want him to send me the rest of those letters.”
“Jesus. Why are there so many bloody secrets in this family, and why am I always the last to know? Dad tells you about Mum’s newspaper, Michel tells you about these letters, and no one tells me anything. Do I have the plague or something?”
“Dad didn’t mean to tell me a thing. We were out for ice cream and he just sort of ended up with his foot in his mouth.”
“Ice cream? Unbelievable,” my sister sulked. “If you say it was Ben & Jerry’s, I am hanging up, I swear.”
“As for Michel, I went to see him the night before I left. I don’t even know why he slipped the letter into my jacket pocket.”
“Great. You run over to say goodbye to Michel in person, and you say goodbye to me through Dad . . . Isn’t that sweet! I’m surprised you even bothered calling me for help.”
“Come on. You’ve already helped a ton by telling me to keep my guard up with George-Harrison.”
“Damn right you should! If our mothers really do have some buried treasure out there, you’d better find it before that clown does. Especially considering that my bank won’t budge on the overdraft thing.”
“If you want to make sure you have money in the bank, you could just try getting a job.”
“I can’t do everything! I’m going back to college.”
“At thirty-five?”
“Excuse me? Thirty-four! Anyway. Are you going to see him again, or what?”
“Tomorrow morning, for breakfast.”
“Oh, no . . .” she groaned. “Elby, don’t you dare fall in love with this guy!”
“Hang on. First off, he’s not my type. Second, I don’t trust him one bit. Not yet.”
“First off, I don’t believe you. Second, you trust everyone. So, for the last time, do not get involved, at least not until we’ve got to the bottom of this whole mess.”
Maggie made me promise to call every day to keep her up to speed, and she in return promised not to say anything to Michel. After we hung up, it took a long time for me to fall asleep. I tossed and turned late into the night.
When I went downstairs the next morning, George-Harrison was already there, waiting for me in the hotel lobby. The dining area in the hotel looked especially grim, so I hopped into George-Harrison’s pickup and we went out for breakfast.
“What type of carpenter are you?” I asked to break the ice.
“Type? It’s not like there are that many to choose from.”
“Sure there are. Some build houses, some make furniture, or maybe . . .”
“When you talk about building houses, it’s more construction than carpentry . . . You know, maybe I just don’t have a father at all.”
“What’s that got to do with carpentry?”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing. But I stayed up all night thinking about my mother’s letter. She calls your mom ‘my love.’ What if my father was an anonymous donor—or not anonymous, who’s to say?—and the tragedy they keep mentioning was me being born?”
“Tragedy might be pushing it. Tragically dramatic, maybe. And while it’s true that you’re . . . easy enough on the eyes, a ‘treasure’ that must be brought back into the light? Don’t flatter yourself.”
I burst out laughing at my own joke and instantly felt bad about it. The whole thing seemed to really bother him. At the next red light, George-Harrison turned to face me, his face pale and serious.
“It doesn’t bother you at all to think of our mothers being . . . so close?”
“How ‘close’ they were doesn’t seem to be what’s eating at you, since you’re so carefully avoiding saying what you really mean. And if the thought of them as more than friends bugs you so much, maybe you need to think about why that is. Not to mention . . . it might not even be true! By the time your mum wrote that letter . . . she was already, you know . . .”
“Batshit crazy?”