Marlinchen glanced at the garage, but only quickly.
“None of those cover-up methods was particularly adept,” I said, “but they didn’t have to be. As long as Hugh didn’t sell the house or the car, no one would ever get a close look at what evidence remained.” Until now, I thought. “Hugh replaced Aidan with his sister-in-law’s son,” I went on. “I don’t know how he persuaded her. Maybe he played on her concern for her grieving sister. Maybe he paid her off; Brigitte was poor, and a single mother. It could be that she thought Jacob would have a better life with her older sister and Hugh. But if she hadn’t gone along with it, imagine the consequences. Hugh’s career would have been terribly compromised. Your mother might have been labeled unfit along with him. You and Liam might have been taken away by Family Services, for who knew how long?”
“Okay, okay,” Marlinchen said, holding up her hands for me to stop. “I see where you got your theory, but it’s all impossible. He couldn’t have just been switched. I was four years old. I would have known.”
“You weren’t quite four. Kids are susceptible at that age, and their parents’ word is like God’s word,” I told her. “Hugh brainwashed you. He told you that Aidan was away. He stalled for weeks. Then he brought home Jacob and said ‘This is Aidan,’ until you and Jacob both accepted it.”
“But Mother…” Her voice was very soft.
“Your mother was in on it,” I said. “I suspect it wasn’t her idea, but she went along with it.”
That had been the difficult part for me, too, acknowledging the complicity of the woman who slept under the marble angel in the cemetery. Elisabeth had also borne a share of guilt in Jacob’s fate. But where guilt had poisoned Hugh, it had softened Elisabeth. She had adored her sister’s son, sharing with him a bond between two wronged souls.
“It wouldn’t have worked at all, except that the two of you weren’t in school yet,” I said. “Aidan had no teachers, no playmates that came to the house, and no older siblings. There was no one else to trick. J. D. Campion was the only other person who’d seen both Aidan Hennessy and Jacob Candeleur. Later that year, your father inexplicably and flatly refused him entry to your home.”
Marlinchen’s lips parted very slightly, and I thought perhaps that last detail, which her own knowledge of her parents’ lives confirmed, had convinced her. Then she straightened, as if relieved. “Aidan’s missing finger,” she said, the three words like a syllogism. “If there was no attack by a dog, how do you explain that?”
“There was a dog,” I said. “His neighbors in Illinois raised pit bulls, and there was a shoddy fence in between the two properties. Jacob really did lose the finger to one of the pit bulls, which is why he’s scared of dogs to this day.”
Below us, Colm took Liam down with a hard tackle. Marlinchen appeared to watch, but I doubted she was really seeing it.
“There’s more.” I said. “This birth certificate is all the paper there is on Jacob. He never registered for school. There’s no death certificate. No adoption papers. He just drops off the grid. Because he was in Minnesota.”
“So you’ve got a piece of paper. It doesn’t prove anything,” Marlinchen said. Then her eyes lit with a new idea. “Did it occur to you that maybe Jacob was the one who died young? Maybe our aunt Brigitte let him drown or something. She was always drunk, or stoned-”
“Don’t do that,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t let your father think for you all your life. You never met your aunt Brigitte, but you never questioned your father’s account of her. You’re more willing to think ill of her, a stranger, than of your father, whom you saw firsthand hurting Aidan physically and psychologically.”
Despite all her denial, the truth of these words hit home, and she was silent.
“I’m not saying your father is a monster,” I said. “He made a mistake, probably in haste, in the hospital parking lot, and it snowballed and ruined his life. By the time he realized that guilt and grief were destroying your mother from the inside out, it was too late to fix it. Imagine how it would have looked to the world, months or years later: burying his own son in an unmarked grave on his own land? Taking someone else’s child and erasing his identity? Hugh’s esteem and career might have survived his son’s accidental death, but his behavior after that crossed all moral and legal lines.”
I wondered if I’d spoken too frankly; but honesty was overdue here. The Hennessys’ world had been short on it for too long.
The boys were still playing below us. If they’d noticed my presence, they hadn’t read the body language. They probably thought Marlinchen and I were having a civil conversation.
“Your father’s guilt, first over Aidan and then your mother, ate him up inside. Literally, in a way.” I didn’t need to remind Marlinchen of her father’s ulcer. “Did you ever wonder why the photo of your mother and Aidan bothered your father so much?” I asked her. “It was the real Aidan, at age two. Jacob didn’t know it, but your father did. It incensed him to have to see it every time he looked in that bedroom. It reminded him of how his plan worked out. Your mother never recovered from her guilt over it. She died of it, either by accident-” I cut myself off.
Too late. Outrage was heating Marlinchen’s delicate skin. “Or what, on purpose? Are you suggesting she killed herself?”
I was, but of course it was too much for Marlinchen to handle at this point. “No,” I said quickly, appeasing her. “No, I’m not saying that.”
Still too late. “I think you should leave now,” she said.
“Think what you asked me to do, when we first met,” I said, getting desperate. “You asked me to find your brother. That’s what I’m trying to do. You’re the legal head of the household now. If you won’t let me talk to your father, give me permission to dig under the tree and look for your brother. Like you wanted.”
“My brothers,” she said, pointing, “are all home. My father is home and getting better. We’re coming together and healing our wounds. That’s hard for someone like you to watch.”
“Someone like me?” I repeated.
“You were kicked out of your home by your father and raised by a virtual stranger. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be part of a real family.”
“I’m sorry?” I said, though I’d heard her clearly.
But if Marlinchen saw that she’d stung me, she didn’t ease up. “That’s why you can’t accept that we’re happy now,” she went on. “You’d rather my brother be dead, my mother a suicide, and my father in prison.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“Go away,” she snapped. “I’m tired of your morbid mind and your sick theories.”
There was nothing left for me to do here. She wasn’t going to cool off. I headed down the steps.
“Don’t come back.” Marlinchen threw the words after me. “I’ll call the cops if you come around here again.”
I wanted to say, I can come back with a warrant, but the truth was, I probably couldn’t. I didn’t have enough hard evidence. Besides, sometimes you have to relinquish the last word. I understood the root of Marlinchen’s anger. It was fear. If she hadn’t heard a glimmer of truth in my words, they wouldn’t have poured acid onto a vulnerable spot in her mind. Stiff-limbed, I climbed into my car and headed down the drive.
The top of the little rise at the end of the Hennessy driveway afforded me a good view of the field where the boys were playing, and I paused there before pulling out onto the road. I looked back.
Aidan, as I couldn’t stop thinking of him, stood conferring with Liam, holding the football in his hands. Exertion had raised a fine sweat on his bare chest and his face. The boys got into position, and Liam threw the ball to Aidan. Aidan caught it easily and started to run. His blond ponytail swung crazily in the afternoon sunlight as he ran. Colm, determined, raced to intercept him, but Aidan dodged easily and poured on the speed, outpacing his brother, heading for the unmarked end zone.