Words Unspoken (52 page)
“Brian and I have probably written a hundred thank-you notes to that lady through the years, addressed to that Chicago post office box. I’ve sent gifts! Chocolates, nougats, books on France.”
Annie was smiling. “We received them all. Your father knew about every kind gesture.”
“But why wouldn’t he tell us?” Janelle looked as if she was going to cry.
“How would he be able to explain where the money came from? You knew we weren’t making much with the driving school.” Annie shrugged. “Perhaps we were wrong. We were trying to do what was best. And as for the foundation, your father uses it to support a number of missions and literary endeavors. But his biggest contribution is to Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Center. He helped start it back in the early seventies.”
“You’re kidding! The rehab center you all visited every month?” Katy Lynn asked.
“Yeah, I remember going there with him when I was in high school,” Janelle said.
I went by there with him last week.
“That’s cool—Granddad helped start a rehab center. What’s it for?”
“Para- and quadriplegics—mainly victims of accidents. Many of the patients are quite young.”
Gina seemed delighted with this news. “Wow! My grandfather is cool. He does all this stuff in secret. I mean, how cool is that? It’s radical!”
Annie nodded. “Yes, Gina. That’s the right word for him, stubborn old man.” She stood up again and walked over to a vending machine. “The rehab center was just one more part of his dream. The foundation provides a large part of its budget.”
“So does Granddad feel a lot of pressure to write so he can keep up the money in the foundation?”
“No, Gina, he writes because he was born to write, because he is at his best when he is creating stories. That he’s made a lot of money from doing what he was gifted to do is a continual surprise to him. He gets a kick out of it. And he gets an even bigger kick out of giving most of his money away.”
Gina accepted that information as if she’d just been told that the sum total of the foundation was being given to her. “That is so cool. And we have to keep the secret—Granddad told me—no one knows he’s S. A. Green. Right, Grandmom?”
“No one except those of us in this room. Even Eddy Clouse, the publisher, thinks that Stella—that’s me—pens these tales. It was complicated. We wanted to leave our past behind and let the Lord direct. Granddad told you that part of the story.
“But another part of it was that Ev was born with a weak heart. Two scares when he was quite young were enough to convince both of us that he didn’t need any of the business pressure. So I became his voice for the books. I answered the phone, talked with the publisher, and generally became a royal pain in the bottom to anyone who tried to get information out of me. I refused interviews. So the mystery of S. A. Green was born and nourished throughout the years.
“No one has ever traced S. A. Green back to the young author Ashton Mack, who was such a hit in 1948. And no one guessed the real identity of S. A. Green. At least not until this man Silvano sent me that disturbing letter. And now, unfortunately, it looks like he’s gotten what he wanted. The truth.”
Katy Lynn asked, “What else do you know about this man, Lissa?”
Lissa sat up, startled to be addressed. “Um, he’s an assistant editor with your publisher—Youngblood. We met several years ago at a bookstore in Atlanta, and then I ran into him again about a month ago, and we started seeing each other.” She shrugged. “I kinda liked him. But it was stupid of me to trust him. He’s an opportunist. He was determined to figure out the mystery of S. A. Green.”
She fiddled with a button on her cardigan. “It’s my fault that he succeeded. I swear I didn’t mean to tell him things. It was just so weird, so unbelievably weird that I happened to be taking driving lessons from the man he was looking for.” Lissa looked over at Annie. “It’s like you and Mr. MacAllister have been saying—that things aren’t random.”
Annie smiled back. There was no accusation in her eyes.
“He even took pictures of you, Annie, and tape-recorded your meeting with the publisher. And he came to the house today while you were out and questioned Mr. MacAllister.” Lissa ran her fingers through her hair. “It’s all my fault, but I didn’t know! I was coming this morning to warn you about Silvano, but everything happened at once. Now he has the information, and he’s going to write the article and sell it to a magazine.” Lissa let out a little sob. “And he caused Mr. MacAllister to have a heart attack!”
Annie took Lissa firmly by her good shoulder. “This is not your fault, Lissa. And it’s not that Italian’s fault either. Ev was born with a weak heart, and he’s known for a long time that it was giving out. There have been many, many circumstances lately that have added stress to his life. We’re not here to throw around blame. You understand me?”
Lissa nodded reluctantly.
Annie addressed her daughters. “I’m also having questions about my new stockbroker. Jerry Steinman has been a faithful friend and astute broker for almost thirty years. He recently retired and placed my account with a young man named Ted Draper. I met this man, and he seemed very competent and bright, but I’m afraid he’s gotten into something way over his head. Somehow the foundation has lost quite a bit of money. Mr. Draper says it’s related to Black Monday, but my most recent statements show a lot of strange trading. I’m meeting with Jerry on Monday. If these considerable losses are legit, I don’t know what this means for the rehab center.”
Katy Lynn suddenly perked up and seemed ready for a fight. “Mom, you need to get a lawyer. In fact, I know someone who could be just right. Get your statements together, and he’ll dig up all the dirt on both of these men.”
“Mom’s right, Grandmom. Let her help you. She knows lots of good lawyers.”
Lissa had to ask the next question. “What will happen if Silvano writes that article?”
“We’ll just have to deal with it.” Annie was pure practicality again.
But Lissa was not convinced. “And when Mr. MacAllister finds out that the world knows who he is?”
Annie looked away and shrugged, biting her lip. Finally she turned around. One tear slid down her cheek. “It’ll kill him. If the heart attack doesn’t take him first, that would do it. I’m really afraid it would.”
Lissa gritted her teeth.
Then I’ve got to make sure that Silvano never writes that article.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7
EVENING
He had done it, told Lin Su the whole sordid tale in one fifteen-minute monologue after they put Sammy and LeeAnne to bed. At first she had been speechless, but as the details continued, her lovely Asian face hardened, her eyes narrowed, and then she started yelling.
“Stop it! I don’t want to hear any more. What have you done, Ted?” She grabbed his shirt, yanked him hard several times. “Here I was thinking you were honestly working hard to provide, and I find out I’m married to a criminal! A thief! I don’t know what to say!”
“Honey, you’re going to wake the kids.”
“Let them wake up! Our lives are collapsing! They might as well know it.” She stalked out of the house at eight thirty, and an hour later she had not returned.
Ted walked into LeeAnne’s room and placed his hand on her back as she slept. Then he went across the hall and sat on the foot of Sammy’s bed and stared numbly at his son. What would keep Lin Su from throwing him out of the house, demanding that he leave and never come back?
Dear God, please. I don’t want to lose my wife and kids.
Ted dozed off with his head resting on the wall beside Sammy’s bed. He awoke with a jerk to the sound of the front door opening and slamming shut. This was going to be even worse than he’d imagined.
He came out of Sammy’s room into the den and wondered if Lin Su could see how much his hands were shaking.
Her eyes were red from crying, but they were also smoldering. “How could you do this, Ted? You’re going to be fired! They’ll put you in jail!”
She marched into the kitchen and leaned over the sink, threw water on her face, and looked up at him. “They’ll put you in jail, Ted, because that is exactly where you deserve to be.”
Her hands began to shake slightly, then she brushed them over her face. “This is a nightmare. We’re going to lose everything!”
“We’ll still have each other.”
It was absolutely the wrong thing to say, but it slipped out of his mouth. He waited for her to crush him with her words. He waited for her to storm out of the house again and never come back.
Instead, she just stared at him, looking almost, but not quite, fragile.
She shook her head. “No, Ted. I don’t have you. You’re someone I don’t know, a stranger … a, a thief.”
Ted’s shoulders sagged, and he felt tears behind his eyes. Trembling, he reached for Lin Su. She backed away, and the distrust in her eyes momentarily took his breath away. He had to say something. “I’m so sorry, Lin Su. I wanted so much to give you the best. I was wrong—horribly wrong, but I swear it was because I love you. I love you and the kids.” His whole body began to shake and then came real gut-wrenching sobs, something that had never in his life happened before.
Lin Su looked surprised, then almost sympathetic, and then hard.
Her face held that same grit and determination that had attracted and scared him all those years ago.
“I don’t know, Ted. I don’t know what to do. I need time. We need time.”
He understood.
He went into their bedroom and began to place his clothes in a suitcase. Again and again, he went from the closet to his suitcase and back to the closet. His life was on remote control. He took his things into the hall, stopped, and went into LeeAnne’s room. He lowered the side of her crib so he could lean over and kiss her on the cheek. “Daddy loves you, LeeAnne.”
Then he entered Sammy’s room. He leaned over the bars and tousled his son’s hair. Sammy squirmed, opened one eye halfway, and then flopped over on his back.
“See ya soon, big guy,” Ted whispered.
He left the house, carrying the suitcase, and turned to see Lin Su watching him from the front porch. He raised his hand to wave, then let it fall to his side. He climbed into the Mercedes and drove out of the driveway and down Tuxedo Road, watching his life disappear in the rearview mirror.
________
In the chapel on the second floor of the hospital, Lissa found Annie on her knees, staring up at the stained-glass window depicting Christ on the cross, arms outstretched, head turned down. Annie was looking up at the colored window, and from the back of the room it seemed to Lissa that this feisty woman had had the life sucked out of her. She was speaking out loud, petitioning or pleading in a voice Lissa had never heard her use.
“Please, Lord, not yet. Not yet.”
Lissa wanted to hug the woman, wanted to throw herself on her knees right beside her and promise the world to Almighty God if He would only let Ev MacAllister live. Instead, she stood in the back of the chapel and remembered the voice that had whispered to her as she sat in the Camaro on Highway 157 and her own spontaneous prayer on her knees beside Mr. MacAllister’s bed earlier in the day. She wondered if he was right. He had said that God was not surprised by the turn of events, even tragedy. He called God the director, the one who orchestrated life. Exhausted by worry and fear, Lissa did not have the mental capacity at the moment to dig deep into spiritual mysteries. But some day she would.
She tiptoed out of the chapel and rode the elevator down to the cafeteria. She bought a hot chocolate and sat alone at a table. For the first time in hours, she thought about Caleb. Monday morning this new family would load the gelding into a trailer and drive off to Virginia. Then she thought of her father, her cruel words to him and the way she had driven away, recklessly, in anger.
Now, strangely, her anger against him was gone. She saw the horrified look on his face as she had yelled at him and then left him standing in the hall. He had looked afraid. For her.
Lissa, it’s dangerous… . Lissa, I don’t want you riding. It isn’t safe.
The thought whispered somewhere in her subconscious:
I need to let him know that I’m okay.
________
Silvano had drunk way too many cups of coffee in the hospital cafeteria. Each time he had inquired about Mr. MacAllister, the reply had been the same: “Still in surgery.” It was time to go home. He would not intrude on the women in the waiting room.
He was surprised to see Lissa come into the cafeteria. He watched her for a full five minutes before deciding to go over to her. When he did, she looked shocked and then furious.
“You really don’t have an ounce of inhibition, do you? You force an interview on a man who’s having a heart attack, and then you show up at the hospital! Why? Are you hoping he’s already dead? Or would that mess up your precious story?”
“You’re right. I followed his wife here. But when I realized how bad a shape he was in, I decided against finding the family.”
“Oh, you are so gallant.”
“Look, Lissa, we’ve already established the fact that you hate me. I was only going to ask you how Mr. MacAllister is doing. Then I’ll go.”