Chapter Twenty-Four

Jude

I sat at my desk looking at the card in my hand. I turned it around in my fingers, thinking about the few marks that were on it. It was just a name and a phone number, and yet it felt so imposing in its weight. Those little pieces of information held the power to completely change my life. They were enough to take everything that I thought that I knew and turn it upside down. They could crack my life open and force me to face what I had for so long kept at just enough of a distance that I didn't have to experience the reality of it.

I had done everything that I could to not give it that weight and to deny it that power. Now I was trying to bring myself up to the ledge and daring myself to go another step further.

Finally, I picked up the phone and pulled up a blank text message. I stared at it for several seconds before I typed in a message. I erased it and then typed again. I rethought the message and then typed a final time, forcing myself to send it before I could erase it again. I put the phone down and stood up. I had taken only a few steps away from the desk before I heard the phone chime. My eyes fell on it, but I hesitated. It chimed again and I picked it up, my breath seeming to catch in my chest when I looked at the screen.

There was no turning back now.

The doorbell rang just as the clock turned to the time that I expected him and I wondered if Michael had been standing on the porch waiting for the time to change so that he could announce his presence. The house was empty except for me. I knew that this was something that I needed to do on my own.

I opened the door and looked at him. It was the closest that I had been to him other than when I confronted him in the bar. In the dim light and through the veil of fury that blurred my focus I hadn't been able to see him clearly, but now that I was looking at him from only a few feet away, I could truly see him. I felt like I was looking at myself. I felt like I was looking at his mother. Though I had been watching him for years, it was surreal to be seeing him and to have him so close, almost as though it hadn't been real until right then. Finally, I stepped back and gestured into the house.

"Do you want to come in?"

He stepped over the threshold into the foyer and I got the sudden flash that he should have been carried through that door two decades ago. He was in the strange position of being in a strange, completely unknown place and being in his home. Michael stood in the middle of the foyer and looked around, taking in his surroundings. I couldn't tell if he was impressed or overwhelmed. Maybe both. When he looked at me again I gestured toward the living room. We walked in and settled onto chairs facing one another across the coffee table spread with snacks.

It felt odd to lay out the little bowls and plates of cheese and crackers, fruit and vegetables, cookies and chocolate. In a way, I was entertaining a guest, so it was only appropriate that I offer refreshments, and yet it seemed like he shouldn't feel like a guest. With each plate that I put out, I realized that I didn't know what he actually liked or if anything would appeal to him. The result was a spread that covered nearly every inch of the table and almost crowded the pots of coffee and tea and pitcher of water from the end.

"Can I offer you something?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"No. Thank you."

"I appreciate you coming out here. Is this alright? I didn't know if you would be OK coming here. Would you rather have met somewhere else?"

Michael shook his head.

"No. This is fine. I -- I like seeing where you live."

I nodded and we sat in silence for a few seconds longer.

"Did you know?" I finally asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Before Veronica found you. Did you know...about me? About yourself?"

"Yes," Michael said matter-of-factly. "I found out a while ago."

"I knew that it was you. I just wanted you to know that. I never stopped looking for you."

"How long have you known?"

"A few years."

"Why didn't you ever say anything or approach me or anything?"

"I wanted to. You have no idea how much I just wanted to run up to you and tell you who I was and bring you home. But I couldn't. You had a life, Michael. When I saw you, you looked happy and healthy. It didn't look like there was anything horrible happening to you. Being without you was like cutting out my heart, but you never felt that. You didn't know that there was anything different about your life. I didn't want to take that from you. There wasn't much that I could have done for you in your life, but I could offer that."

"I had a good life," he said, seeming to reassure me. He glanced around. "Nothing like this," he said with a laugh under his breath. "But good. He took care of me and did everything that he could for me."

"He?"

I knew little about the family Michael had grown up with. That hadn't mattered as much to me as finding him and knowing that he was alright.

"My…" he hesitated. "The man who raised me."

"It's alright to call him your father, Michael. He's all you knew in that role. I understand that."

Even as I said it, I felt my heart breaking a little. I had held a tiny baby in my heart for so many years and now I was looking at the full-grown adult that had grown up not knowing that he was so loved and so missed by someone he didn't even know existed.

Michael nodded. He hesitated for just a second before easing closer to the edge of his chair and leaning closer to me.

"Do you know what happened?" he asked.

"No," I said. "When I was looking for you, all I cared about was finding you. Once I did, I stopped searching. I knew that you were alive and I knew that you were doing well. I didn't need to know how it happened."

"Do you want to know?"

I didn't. I didn't want to think about that day again. But his eyes, his mother's eyes, stared back at me filled with a need to tell me.

"Yes," I said. "Tell me."

"My father was dating a woman at the time. They had been together for a while and he said that things started really well between them, but over time it just started to fall apart. They were close to breaking up when she told him that she was pregnant. He was really excited. The only problem was, she wasn't actually pregnant. Or maybe she was for a time. He didn't know. By the time that she was supposed to give birth, she was certainly not pregnant, but he didn't realize it. She knew that she needed to do something. If she didn't give him a child, she knew that their relationship would be over. She had to find a baby."

"So, she went to the hospital."

Michael nodded.

"She pretended to be a volunteer and went to the nursery. She found me and took me. It didn't take long for my father to realize, though, to find out that I wasn't actually his child. When the doctor told him that my mother hadn't given birth, he ended his relationship with her, took me, and left."

"Why didn't he bring you back?" I asked. "He must have seen the news. He knew that there was a baby missing and that we were looking for you. If he was going to leave her, why did he keep you?"

Michael's eyes didn't drift away from me.

"How did you feel when you first saw me?" he asked.

I felt like the question had taken all the breath from me. I wasn't expecting it and I struggled to bring myself back to a place where I felt like I could speak.

"I loved you," I said. "I was prouder than I had ever been. I thought you were the most amazing thing that I had ever seen."

"I guess he felt the same way."

"But he knew that he wasn't your father."

"If someone told you that I wasn't yours even after you had held me and taken care of me for days, would you have just handed me back over?"

"No," I admitted.

He nodded.

"He knew that it wasn't right and that I belonged to someone else, but he loved me. He had been waiting for a baby for months and when he saw me, he thought that I was that baby. He bonded with me the first time he saw me and he wasn't willing to give me up. I'm not saying that it was the right thing to do, but I think that if you were honest with yourself you would know that you would do the same thing."

I almost smiled despite the pain that was cutting through me. There was so much of me in him. I was looking at an incredible blend of my wife and me, hearing my voice from decades before.

"When the investigator found you, he told me that the man who -- your father is in prison."

Michael nodded.

"That's how I found out about you," he said. "At least, that's how I found out that I was taken when I was born. He was arrested for something else and right before he surrendered himself he gave me a letter. He asked me not to read it unless he was sentenced to more than five years."

"And he was."

I remembered the day that the investigator told me that he had found my son but that the man who had been raising him was already in prison. I knew then that I would never have justice for my baby being stolen from me, not that there could ever really be justice for losing him or for losing my wife.

"Yes. It took me a while to read the letter, but when I did it told me the whole story. He included as many details as he knew so that I could try to find you if I wanted to. He didn't know who you were. Truly he didn't. I don't want you to hate him."

"I don't hate him," I said without hesitation. "He took care of you. He loved you. A long time ago I learned that if I was going to survive everything that I went through that I couldn't hold on to that hatred. I had to not think about the fact that he kept you and think about the fact that he took care of you. I would rather have been able to raise you. I would rather have been able to raise you with your mother. But I couldn't do that and I had to be thankful for the fact that you survived and that you were kept safe, healthy, and happy. That you were loved."

"What happened to my mother?"

My heart sank as I realized that Veronica had never told him. Whether she hadn't been able to bring herself to tell him or she had thought that it would be better left to me, she had spent these months getting to know my son without sharing with him this integral detail about the past that was at once his and not.

Michael seemed to notice the pained expression on my face and started to stumble over his words, reassuring me that I didn't need to answer him, but I shook my head.

"It's alright," I said. "It's fine. You should know." I drew in a breath. "She died. She killed herself shortly after they found a body that they thought was you."

Michael's face went pale and I saw a sheen of tears cover his bright green eyes.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry that that happened. It's my fault."

"Don't say that."

"But it is. If it hadn't been for me, she wouldn't have died."

"Michael, you are not responsible. You didn't do anything wrong. Your mother was hurting in a way that no one could see and that no one could change. Never for an instant think that you brought anything to her but the greatest joy that she ever experienced."

"Can I ask you something that I've wanted to know since I found out?"

"Of course."

"What was my name?" he asked.

"Owen," I said.

It had been so many years since I said the name that I wondered if I could even form it. But it fell off my tongue and Michael smiled.

"Thank you."

"Thank you for caring."

"I started looking for you as soon as I found out," he said. "I didn't know for sure that I had actually found you until Ronnie found me, too. She searched for me because she knew how much it would mean to you."

"I was amazed when you came back here," I said. "I couldn't understand how there could be such an incredible coincidence that I would find you and then years later you would find your way back to this town of all places."

"It's because I had found you. I wanted to be near you and to find out more before I said anything. When Ronnie sought me out, it just felt like everything was coming together. Like the universe wanted us to find each other."

"I'm sorry for the way that I treated you in the bar," I said. "I had seen you with her a few times and I didn't realize that she knew who you were. She never told me."

"I know. She said that she wasn't ready yet. I don't know what she was waiting for. I guess she wanted to get to know me better. Why did it make you so angry to see her with me, though?"

"The thought of her with anyone made me angry. The thought of her with my son…" My voice trailed off and I felt something come over me. "I feel much too strongly about her to be able to handle that."

In that moment there were no questions left. There was no hesitation. I knew with a certainty that filled every facet of me that I loved Veronica and I was ready to have a life with her. At least I was ready to try.

"He's incredible, Elle. Absolutely nothing like what I thought he would be." I laughed and reached out to brush my hand across the top of the casket sitting on the platform in the center of the mausoleum. "I wish that you could meet him. You'd be so proud of him. We've only seen each other a few times, but it's really starting to feel like we have a relationship. I'm so grateful to have him back. I wish that I had talked to him sooner." I smiled. "I know that you would have told me that I was being crazy just watching him. If you were here, the second that I found him, you would be at his door. You never would have stood for me just watching him go about his life. I hope that you can understand why I did it, though. He didn't do anything wrong. I didn't want to cause him any pain. It sounds ridiculous, but part of me didn't want to hurt the man who raised him, either.

“I remembered what it was like for him to be gone and he had taken good care of Michael. For that alone, I didn't think he deserved the kind of pain that we went through. That's his name. Michael. I guess it fits him." I let out a breath. "I'm not going to pretend that it was easy for me to not want that man to be hurt. There were plenty of days when I planned crimes that I could commit that would get me put into prison with him just so that I could tear him to pieces myself. I figured that would save the courts some time and effort. I would already be there. But then I made myself get through those days. And then the ones that followed. And the ones after them. I tried to think about what he must have gone through that might make him want to do what he did. I didn't know then that he wasn't the one who took our baby. Maybe if I had it would have been different. Maybe it wouldn't have. I don't know. But I worked my way to the point that I could try to see something good about him.

“I must have gotten that from you. I don't think that you ever met a person who you couldn't find at least one good thing about. That was the amazing thing about you. One of the amazing things." I rested my hand on the casket again and felt a flash of anger and pain. "Dammit, Ellery. Why did you do it? Why didn't you tell me how much pain you were in? I knew you were hurting. I was, too. But I didn't think…" I hung my head for a moment and then lifted my eyes to her again. "Why didn't you lean on me? On someone. Something. Why couldn't you have let someone help you?"

I walked around to the other side of the casket and sat down on the metal chair that I had placed inside the mausoleum years before so that I could visit with her. I hadn't been able to bear the thought of burying her and keeping her this way ensured that I could spend time with her in the only way that was left.

"I need to talk to you, Elle. There's something that I've been meaning to tell you. I met someone. Her name is Veronica. She was one of my students. I know what you're thinking, but she's different. There's something about her that's so much more than the other students on campus. I'm in love with her, Elle. I know that you wanted me to find someone to take care of me, but I never thought that I would. Thank you for wanting what was best for me even when I didn't know what that was and for knowing me far better than I have ever known myself. You will always be precious to me. You will always be my first love and the woman who helped me find who I really am. But I'm ready to finally do what you asked and not be alone. I only hope that she will be willing to love me, too. I'm going to do everything I can to try."

I stood up and rested my hand on the top of the casket again. I leaned forward and kissed it a final time.

"Goodbye, beautiful girl. Thank you."

I walked out of the mausoleum and closed the door, securing the lock in place. I drew in a breath of the warm summer air and the scent of freshly cut grass that it brought with it. Walking away, I felt lighter, like I had finally released Ellery and was ready for the next step of my life.