Cynthia started to open her mouth, but before she could speak, I said, “We’d like you to continue.”
“All right,” he said. “Why don’t I stay on this for another couple of days? I don’t need another check at this time. I think another forty-eight hours will really determine whether I can make significant progress.”
“Of course,” I said.
“I think I want to look further into this Vince Fleming character. Mrs. Archer, what do you think? Could this man-well, he would have been a very young man back in 1983-have been capable of bringing harm to your family?”
She thought about that for a moment. “After all this time, I guess I have to consider that anything is possible.”
“Yes, it’s good to keep an open mind. Thank you for the coffee.”
Before leaving, Abagnall returned Cynthia’s shoebox of mementos. Cynthia closed the door as he left, then turned to me and asked, “Who was my father? Who the hell was my father?”
And I thought of Jane Scavullo’s creative writing assignment. How we’re all strangers to one another, how we often know the least about those we’re closest to.
For twenty-five years, Cynthia had endured the pain and anxiety associated with her family’s disappearance without a hint of what might have happened to them. And while we still didn’t have the answer to that question, strands of information were floating to the surface, like bits of planking from a ship sunk long ago. These revelations that Cynthia’s father might be living under an assumed name, that Vince Fleming’s past might be much darker than originally thought. The strange phone call, the mysterious appearance of what was purported to be Clayton Bigge’s hat. The man watching our house late at night. The news from Tess that for a period of time envelopes stuffed with cash from an anonymous source had been entrusted to her to look after Cynthia.
It was this last one I felt Cynthia was now entitled to know about. And I thought it would be better for her to learn about it from Tess herself.
We struggled through dinner not to discuss the questions that Abagnall’s visit had raised. We were both feeling that we’d already exposed Grace to too much of this. She had her radar out all the time, picking up one bit of information one day, matching it up with something else she might hear the next. We were worried that discussing Cynthia’s history, the opportunistic psychic, Abagnall’s investigation, all of those things, might be contributing to Grace’s anxiety, her fear that one night we’d all be wiped out by an object from outer space.
But try as we might to avoid the subject, it was often Grace who brought it up.
“Where’s the hat?” she asked after a spoonful of mashed potatoes.
“What?” Cynthia said.
“The hat. Your dad’s hat. The one that got left here. Where is it?”
“I put it up in the closet,” she said.
“Can I see it?”
“No,” Cynthia said. “It’s not to be played with.”
“I wasn’t going to play with it. I just wanted to look at it.”
“I don’t want you playing with it or looking at it or touching it!” Cynthia snapped.
Grace retreated, went back to her mashed potatoes.
Cynthia was preoccupied and on edge all through dinner. Who wouldn’t be, having learned only an hour earlier that the man she’d known her entire life as Clayton Bigge might not be Clayton Bigge at all?
“I think,” I said, “that we should go visit Tess tonight.”
“Yeah,” said Grace. “Let’s see Aunt Tess.”
Cynthia, as though coming out of a dream, said, “Tomorrow. I thought you said we should go see her tomorrow.”
“I know. But I think it might be good to see her tonight. There’s a lot to talk about. I think you should tell her what Mr. Abagnall said.”
“What did he say?” Grace asked.
I gave her a look that silenced her.
“I called earlier,” Cynthia said. “I left her a message. She must be out doing something. She’ll call us when she gets the message.”
“Let me make a call,” I said, and reached for the phone. I let it ring half a dozen times before her voicemail cut in. Given that Cynthia had already left a message, I couldn’t see the point in leaving another.
“I told you,” Cynthia said.
I looked at the wall clock. It was nearly seven. Whatever Tess might be out doing, chances were she wouldn’t be out doing it much longer. “Why don’t we go for a drive, head up to her place, maybe she’ll be there by the time we arrive, or we can wait around for a little while until she shows up. You still have a key, right?”
Cynthia nodded.
“You don’t think this can all wait till tomorrow?” she asked.
“I think, not only would she want to hear about what Mr. Abagnall found out, there might be some things she might want to share with you.”
“What do you mean, she might have something to share with me?” Cynthia asked. Grace was eyeing me pretty curiously, too, but had the sense not to say anything this time.
“I don’t know. This new information, it might trigger something with her, prompt her to remember things she hasn’t thought about in years. You know, if we tell her your father might have had some other, I don’t know, identity, then she might go, oh yeah, that explains such and such.”
“You’re acting like you already know what it is she’s going to tell me.”
My mouth was dry. I got up, ran some water from the tap until it was cold, filled a glass, drank it down, turned around and leaned against the counter.
“Okay,” I said. “Grace, your mother and I need some privacy here.”
“I haven’t finished my dinner.”
“Take your plate with you and go watch some TV.”
She took her plate and left the room, a sour expression on her face. I knew she was thinking that she missed all the good stuff.
To Cynthia, I said, “Before she got those last test results, Tess thought she was dying.”
Cynthia was very still. “You knew this.”
“Yes. She told me she thought she only had a limited amount of time left.”
“You kept this from me.”
“Please. Just let me tell you this. You can get mad later.” I felt Cynthia’s eyes go into me like icicles. “But you were under a lot of stress at the time, and Tess told me because she wasn’t sure you’d be able to deal with that kind of news. And just as well she didn’t tell you, because as it turned out, she’s okay. That’s the thing we can’t lose sight of.”
Cynthia said nothing.
“Anyway, at the time, when she thought she was terminal, there was something else she felt she had to tell me, something that she felt you needed to know when the time was right. She wasn’t sure she’d get the chance again.”
And so I told Cynthia. Everything. The anonymous note, the cash, how it could show up anywhere, anytime. How it helped get her through school. How Tess, taking the author of the note at his or her word, that if she breathed a word of this the cash would stop coming, kept this to herself all these years.
She listened, only interrupting me a couple of times with questions, let me spell it all out for her.
When I was done, she looked numb. She said something I didn’t hear very often from her. “I could use a drink,” she said.
I got down a bottle of scotch from a shelf high in the pantry, poured her a small glass. She drank it down in one long gulp, and I poured her about half as much again. She drank that down, too.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s go and see Tess.”