Sins of the Father (15 page)

I waited for the officer to beckon me
forward where I would announce my name, who I wanted to visit and
fill out the requisite forms.

Dammit.

Handwriting. It was virtually impossible to
do this without leaving some kind of evidence that could be used to
prove I was here. Even though the closed circuit monitors were
recording my face for posterity, I looked nothing like Helen
Eriksson. Or Helen Eriksson Orion.

I won’t be her for much longer
.

Desperation weighed heavily with each
footstep. I took a gamble when I reached the officer.

“Identification and name of the prisoner
you’re here to see.”

I pulled the FBI credentials out of my
pocket and flipped the leather case open. “Special Agent Thomas
Peterson.”

“Hell, sir. You’re not supposed to come
through here to access prisoners. Who are you here to see?”

“It’s a personal visit,” I said, gave a
small tight smile. “This is my own time, Officer…” Badge read
Timmons. “Officer Timmons.”

“Personal, huh?”

“When I was a young boy, this man saved my
life. I lost track of him naturally, I was just a kid. Recently, I
was reminded of what he did for me and thought I’d try to find him.
Imagine my shock, learning that he’s been here nearly twenty
years.”

“Old timer, eh? Who is he?”

“Wendell Eriksson.”

Timmons’s eyes widened. “Would this good
deed have taken place when he was still a cop?”

“It did,” I said. “Regardless of what he
became after that night, I wouldn’t be standing here today, or had
the good life I’ve had if he hadn’t saved me.”

“Well, that complicates things a bit,” he
said. “See, Eriksson’s in segregation, on account of his history on
the job. Lotta guys up here would love nothing more than to shove a
shank in his kidney.”

I struggled to suppress the cringe.

“So it violates protocol to put him in the
general visiting area. Only a handful of people have ever showed up
to see him. They were cops, if you can imagine. We put ‘em in one
of the private rooms, but that was more of a case of official
versus personal business.”

If he only knew. I glossed right over the
other cops, assuming it was David Levine or someone else from the
real bureau looking into why my husband visited my father.

“I understand.”

“Let me make a phone call and see how they
wanna handle this,” Timmons said. He gestured back to the chairs.
“Wait over there, Agent Peterson. At the very least, we can find
out if ol’ Wendell even wants another visitor. Hard to tell with
that guy.”

I crossed fingers and toes and all my
internal organs in the hope that Dad would at least be spurred by
curiosity when he heard the name Thomas Peterson.

Five minutes felt like five weeks. Timmons
beckoned again. “Gonna have to have you check your weapon, agent.
Eriksson agreed to see you, and we’re gonna put you in a private
room.”

“I left my sidearm at the hotel,” I said.
Forced a smile. “This isn’t my first visit to a penitentiary,
officer.”

“Oh, right. This way.” The electronic lock
on the door hummed. I stepped through and followed with a brisk
step. Moment of truth.

How would Dad react?

Timmons pointed to the door marked
Private Interview
. “Right through there, sir.”

“Interview room?”

“Yeah, the guys with appeals meet their
lawyers in there. Or one like it. Don’t worry. We won’t record this
– unless there’s something you’d like on an official record.”

“No, as I said, this is completely
personal.” It was the single truthful statement I made all day.
“Thank you so much, Officer Timmons. When I’m done…?”

“Buzz from inside the door. Someone will
come and escort you out of the facility. Good luck. Prison changes
a man. I doubt Eriksson is quite what you remember.”

Of that, I had no doubt. I swung the door
open and stepped inside.

My father, my strong, proud father, stood
before me in prison garb, shoulders slumped, hair ragged,
overgrowth of gray whiskers jutting from his chin.

His eyes fixed on me, narrowed. “You are not
Thomas Peterson.”

I didn’t speak, couldn’t find the words, but
the waterworks were certainly rushing to the surface.

“Thomas Peterson was an African American
boy. Unless things have
really
changed on the outside, I’m
pretty confident that you’ve come looking for the wrong man.”

“No,” I said, “I’m not, Dad.”

His jaw dropped with the gasp that escaped.
“What have you done?”

“Daddy, it’s me, it’s Helen.”

“You’re… you look ridiculous. You’re
fat.”

“It’s just a disguise.”

His eyes narrowed. “What have you done,
Helen, to necessitate an extreme disguise like this? Why are you
impersonating an FBI agent?”

I suddenly felt like I was thirteen again,
being scolded for trying to pick the lock on the liquor cabinet.
“Daddy, aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Christ,” he hissed. “That buffoon couldn’t
even follow a simple plan, could he? That’s why you’re in disguise,
on the run. He fucked everything up and the FBI is still harassing
you –”

“Daddy, no. Johnny took care of all that.
The FBI ruled Rick’s death a suicide.”

His eyes impaled me. I fidgeted under the
probing gaze.

“Was that the way of it? He killed
himself?”

So not how I imagined our first meeting in
almost two decades. I was the one with the questions. So far, he
slipped into interrogator mode and hadn’t answered the single one I
asked.

“Ah shit,” he said. “Come here, and give
your father a proper hug.”

I nearly stumbled across the room until his
strong arms wrapped around me. “Baby girl, why? The feds had him.
Why would you do something so reckless? I taught you better than
that.”

“I know, Daddy. You told me that it could
never be personal.”

He pulled away and thumbed the tears from my
whiskered cheeks. “I was talking about the job, not killing
suspects.”

“He tried to blackmail me.”

“I surmised as much. I’m so sorry, honey. I
never wanted any of this for you. What happened to medical
school?”

I shrugged.

“This Orion character says you became an FBI
profiler.”

“I got a doctorate in psychology instead of
going to med school, put my skills to work in the family
business.”

“How I hope that isn’t true.”

“Daddy, I need to ask you some questions,
and you’ve got to tell me the truth. No matter how painful this is,
the answers are safe with me. I would never betray you, no matter
what.”

My father gestured toward the table and
chairs. “Please, let’s sit.”

He waited until I had the additional bulk of
my fat suit situated. “All right, what are these questions you’ve
got for me?”

“I need you to tell me about the day I was
born, Dad.”

“That old tale? I’ve told you that story a
hundred –”

“The truth this time. Please. Don’t leave
out the painful parts, Dad. I… I need to know all of it.”

“All right,” he nodded. “But before I say
anything else, I want you to know that I have loved you like no one
else, and I have never regretted having you, Helen. You’re correct
that there’s an ugly side to the story. Sometimes there are things
in life that blindside us, things that we believe are mistakes that
turn into something quite… opposite.”

Preachin’ to the choir on that one. I wished
my hand could burrow through the bulky padding and caress the
babies growing inside me.

“You’re talking about when you found out
Marie was pregnant with me.”

“Yes,” he said. “You see, she led me to
believe that even if she wanted children, which she claimed she did
not, that they weren’t possible. We’d been married a few years, not
particularly the happiest of my life, when suddenly your mother
inexplicably began to gain weight.”

“She was pregnant with me.”

“Yes, though she didn’t gain like a pregnant
woman. She gained like a bulimic who suddenly began binging without
a purge. There is no kind way to describe it. The mother you
remember was svelte by comparison to what happened over about a
five to six month period when she was pregnant with you.

“I thought something was wrong with her.
Perhaps a thyroid condition. It was unacceptable to me that without
cause, she would suddenly gain almost a hundred pounds. I dragged
her kicking and screaming to my personal physician. Even then, I
didn’t trust her.”

“And you learned she was pregnant.”

Dad nodded. “I’m ashamed of how I reacted,
Helen, and I’d rather not get into the specifics.”

“And I need to know all of it.”

“Explain why any of this matters now,
Sprout. I don’t understand.”

“I’ll tell you when you finish. How did you
react?”

He cleared his throat and stared at the
table. “I believe I requested that the doctor terminate the
pregnancy immediately. He explained that wasn’t possible, as Marie
was nearing her third trimester.

“Frankly, I wanted to kill her. Instead, I
kicked her out of the house.”

My heart rate accelerated. “Where did she
go?”

He snorted. “To her parent’s home in
Poughkeepsie of course. She knew that even if I had a change of
heart I would never come for her there.”

“You did, though, did you?”

“No,” he said. “I was free again, and
thought that I had a new lease on life. She’d call periodically and
try to elicit some kind of sympathy from me, and frankly, I didn’t
care. But…”

“Yeah,” I said softly.

“I started thinking about you, though I
didn’t think of you in terms of who you are, darling. You were sort
of this abstract concept to me. I thought about your mother and
what a… well, pardon me for being blunt, but she was a very fucked
up individual. I didn’t love her, Helen, and I’m ashamed to say
that. I had almost no desire to be married, but she was somewhat
attractive and took care of the home so I didn’t have to split my
focus between there and work. It was comfortable and convenient,
some might even say it was expected that a man my age marry. I had
zero desire to be a father.”

“Yet you have a soft spot for children.
Thomas Peterson.”

“I can’t believe you remembered that name,
Helen.”

“What happened next?”

“I worried about Marie’s screwed up family
having any sort of influence on
my
child. It ate at me. To
the point that I finally told Marie that I thought she should
consider moving back home. We had a bit of back and forth, then a
whole lot of silence. Out of the blue, she called the sergeant at
my precinct looking for me.”

“Because she was in labor?”

“Not exactly. That was part of the story
that I embellished for your benefit. I thought it made me look more
heroic and less the cad if I was working some important case and
couldn’t get to the hospital until after you were born.”

“So… when she called?”

“You were already born. She was just letting
me know where you were.”

“She traveled all the way from Poughkeepsie
to the city to deliver me?”

Dad snorted softly. “That boneheaded
stepfather of hers refused to take her to the hospital. She
delivered you at home, and the next morning, he drove her down to
the city for medical care.”

My heart slammed into my ribs. “Dad, are you
sure that’s how it happened?”

“Of course I am. I knew she wasn’t in the
hospital for several days before you were born. Sarge had an alert
at all the city hospitals. If she checked in to deliver a baby, we
were getting a call.”

“But because she showed up after I was born,
you never got the call until she was ready to make it.”

“That’s right.”

“So you went to the hospital.”

He nodded. “They put you in my arms, and
that was it. You were the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen. And
when I saw that little tuft of russet fuzz on top of your head, I
couldn’t help but see nothing of Marie and everything that was good
from my family.”

“You have red highlights in your hair.”
Sadly, I knew that it was merely coincidence.

“Marie told me your name.”

“She gave it to me? I thought –”

“No,” Dad chuckled. “Absolutely not. I told
her I’d break her neck if she named you Cailín.”

“I remember this. You named me after Grandma
Eriksson.”

“That’s right. She pitched a fit of course,
but I told the hospital that under no circumstances were they to
file your birth certificate until I approved it. So there you were.
Helen Eriksson. My beautiful baby girl.”

“Daddy, this is going to sound like a
strange question. When you told Johnny what to do to fix my little…
problem, were you trying to get me out of Darkwater Bay?”

His face hardened to stone. “Helen, don’t
tell me your still living out there!”

“Was it because my mother came from
Darkwater Bay?”

“No,” he growled. “She was born in New York,
just like you were. Her son of a bitch stepfather, now he’s a
different story.”

My heart sank lower than ever. “I think this
is something I really need to hear.”

Chapter 14

My dad isn’t a stupid man. I knew that
asking for information about Marie’s family would send red flags
flying all over the place.

“I think the less you know about Lyle, the
better. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.”

“Do you know what time Marie checked into
the hospital the day I was born?”

“Sometime that morning. Helen, where are you
going with all of these questions?”

“What time did she call you?”

“Around noon, I think. This was almost 40
years ago. Why are such minor details important –?”

My mind tuned him out. I was taken from
Saint Mary’s so soon after birth that neither one of my parents had
the opportunity to hold me. If Marie, or whoever stole me, zipped
immediately out of the city, they could’ve been on the ground in
New York City by early to mid-morning. Show up at the hospital.
Claim home birth. Call Wendell. It fit. I’d have been such a new
newborn that nobody at the hospital could’ve conceived that I’d
been snatched from the west coast and flown across the country.