Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
FORREST
I found my mother in the kitchen, doing something with a cutting board piled with fragrant herbs. The spicy green scents of thyme and oregano filled the kitchen. She turned, her hair floating out around her slender frame in a cloud of gray and pink.
Her chin came up, but her eyes were cautious as they met mine. “What did you find?” she asked.
“We found what we were looking for,” Sterling said gently. “There was another clue in Forrest’s copy of Treasure Island .”
My mother was silent, but her eyebrow raised in question.
“The clue,” I said, “was Rumi. We think it means?—”
“—the poet,” my mother finished for me. She let out a long sigh, seeming to deflate, her shoulders rounding forward, her chin dropping. Setting the knife on the cutting board, she turned, heading for the hallway that led to the bedroom she shared with Jerry. The space was bright and open, the ceiling a tall slant, no more than my height on one end, soaring to twenty feet on the other side of the room. Tall, plate glass windows made up the wall that faced the ocean, the deep navy spreading across the distant horizon.
Sunlight flooded the room, but as my mother entered, she brought darkness, her sadness clinging to her like a fog. I expected her to head to her closet or the bookshelf, but she went to the neatly made bed, sat on the side, and pulled open a bedside drawer. She rifled through it and, from the bottom, pulled a slim volume. The cover was the deep yellow-gold linen I remembered. Down the spine in gold-pressed letters, I could see Love Poems of Rumi .
“He gave this to me,” she said. “On our fifth anniversary. He always loved Rumi.” She rubbed her thumb over the words on the spine. “I always thought it was odd. He could be so unsentimental, so logical and orderly. Not the kind of man you’d think would be into love poems.” She let out a huff of breath and wiped at the bottom of her eye, her fingers coming away wet. “But he was a romantic at heart.” She flipped through the book. “I don’t see anything.” Shaking her head, she looked to me. “I haven’t read this in years. Not since, well.” She shrugged, cut off in a choke, and she swallowed. “But I don’t?—”
Sterling laid a soft hand on my mother’s arm. “May I?” She reached for the book, and my mother slid it toward her, her eyes squeezing shut.
Sitting beside my mom, Sterling opened the book in her lap, carefully leafing through. With a glance at me, she shook her head. But as she opened the cover and closed the book again, something jumped out at me.
“Sterling—” I held out my hand, and silently, she passed me the thin volume. I opened the front cover all the way and looked at the endpapers, the sheets of paper that were glued to the inside of the hardcover of the book and served as the very first and last pages. They didn’t match the rest of the book, and they didn’t match the cover. Instead of a plain paper or some fanciful design that would go with a volume of poetry, these endpapers looked like pencil sketches of vintage maps. Were they printed maps or actual pencil sketches? I used my phone as a flashlight and studied the endpapers, but I couldn’t tell. I ran my fingers along the edge of the front cover.
Sterling’s breath drew in sharply, her eyes bright as they met mine over the book. Taking the volume from my hands, she caught her finger beneath the last page and turned the book, so instead of the front, we were looking at the last page and the inside of the back cover. Immediately, I saw what we’d missed. The endpapers in the back were the same vintage maps as the front, but here, the edge was raised, almost lumpy.
“Mom,” I said. She drew her attention from her memories and focused on the book in my hands. “Look at this.” I flipped the pages from the flat, clean endpapers of the front cover to the raised, uneven endpapers in the back.
“I don’t remember there being maps in the book,” my mother said slowly. “It was…” She closed her eyes as if trying to think. “It was a weird, swirly paisley.”
Taking the book from my hands, she turned it in her lap and wedged her fingernail under the edge where the glue had begun to give way. Slowly, she worked the endpapers free of the glue, up around the corner and down one side. When she’d freed almost half, she lifted the endpaper and tilted the book. A small, folded packet of paper slid out, landing in her lap. She let out a gasp, her eyes wide with wonder.
Shoving the book into my hands, she picked up the packet of papers, unfolding them slowly. There were two, the first a sheet of notepaper that read ALAN BUCKLEY at the top. My chest squeezed as I recognized it from his desk at our old house. The second page was almost translucent, a printed receipt with the logo of a travel agency at the top. The lines of the receipt were filled with notes and dates—an itinerary from almost two decades ago.
The trip to Europe Emmett Blake had discovered. Before I could think too much, my mother shoved my father’s note at me, her eyes full of tears.
“Read it,” my mother whispered.
Sterling moved to look over my shoulder, and together, we read my father’s final words.
To Forrest and Emily, my dearest, truest loves,
Congratulations on solving the final clue. I always hoped my obsessions would pay off. I promised you riches, success, and adventure, and I can finally say I’ve delivered on all three.
This trip is just the beginning for the three of us. It’s time to start a new chapter in our lives.
I love you both so much. Thank you for your faith in me. I hope you’ll feel it’s been rewarded.
Love,
Alan
Sterling looked up at me, tears streaming down her face. “He never meant to leave you,” she said. “He was going to start a new adventure—” Her words cut off, and her shoulders hitched. “I’m sorry. It’s just, I’m so sorry.”
I knew without her having to explain that she was thinking of her father and his role in what I now knew was certainly my father’s murder.
Because the man who wrote this letter, the man who’d planned this trip, day by day, with the travel agent—that man had not taken his own life.
My mother reached out, her fingers closing around mine. “He didn’t leave us,” she said, her voice filled with grief and wonder.
“No,” I agreed, feeling the wet heat on my own face to mirror hers. I moved to sit beside her on the bed, Sterling on my other side.
“I misunderstood everything. I got it all wrong, and I kept him from you. Kept his memory locked away out of anger, and he—” She choked on a sob, and I hugged her, pulling her damp cheek to my shoulder.
“You didn’t know,” I said, wishing I had the right words to comfort her. It was easy to look back and say she should have known, and so impossible when things had seemed so clear. He’d lost his company to Prentice Sawyer. The police were certain he’d taken his own life. Everything seemed to add up, and she’d been in so much pain.
“You only knew what you knew,” Sterling said, reaching out to take my mom’s hand in hers. “I’m so sorry, my father—” Sterling choked on the word, her eyes squeezing shut.
“Oh, Sterling, no,” my mother said as I wrapped my arm around Sterling, holding her close. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Your father was a monster,” I said, brushing my lips across the top of her head. “And you grew up to be you despite him.”
“I have part of him inside me,” she whispered, turning her head into my shoulder and letting out a ragged breath.
“Barely anything,” I said. “Griffen isn’t a monster. Neither are Tenn and Royal, or Quinn, Parker, Finn, Avery…”
Sterling gave a watery laugh. “I noticed you didn’t mention Ford or Brax.”
“I haven’t decided about Ford,” I said, honestly. “But Brax definitely takes after your father.”
Sterling straightened, wiping her eyes. “I’d understand if you blamed me,” she said.
My mother simply said, “We don’t. And I don’t want you worrying over it, understand? His sins are his own.”
Sterling nodded and gave her a weak smile, her eyes drifting down to the papers in my mother’s hand.
We sat there, the three of us, rereading my father’s letter, studying the itinerary for the European tour that had never happened. My mother traced her finger across the letterhead on the thin paper. “They probably called after he died. I would have assumed it was a sales call.” She let out a ragged breath. “I’m so sorry, Forrest.” She looked to me, her eyes filled with remorse.
“Don’t be sorry, Mom. You did the best you could,” I said, wishing I had better comfort than that.
“I should have known. Because your father never gave up.” She reread the letter. “We fought about how much he was working,” she murmured, “and he kept promising. ‘Soon,’ he said. So many times. ‘Soon.’ But there was always one more hurdle, one more goal. And soon never came.” She let out another long sigh. “I’ll be right back.”
My mother pushed to her feet, her legs a little wobbly as she walked into her bathroom. Through the open door, I saw her turn on the water and splash her face.
“You okay?” Sterling asked.
“Yeah,” I said, looking down at the letter in my father’s strong, distinctive hand. “I think I am. I’ve been so angry at him for leaving us. For so long, I wondered why, what I did to make him leave. Wondered if I could have changed his mind, done something to make him want to stay.”
Sterling’s hand closed around mine. “Forrest, no.”
I let out a laugh I didn’t feel. “I know it wasn’t about me. Kids always blame themselves. I get all the psychology of it, and still…still, I’ve never been able to stop myself from wondering if I’d been just a little better. But there wasn’t anything I could have done because he didn’t choose what happened to him. He didn’t leave us.”
I looked up to see my mother standing in front of me.
“It’s going to take a while for that to get through my head,” she said, her face and eyes red from her tears.
Sitting back down on the side of the bed, she picked up the book and leafed through it, studying the endpapers at the back where the note and the itinerary had been hidden.
“What are you looking for?” I asked, watching as she peeled back the endpaper all the way and ran her fingertips over the exposed cover.
“I’m looking for some clue about what happened to all the money,” she said, one eyebrow raised as if surprised I’d ask.
Sterling and I looked at each other in shock. After all this time chasing the big payday, it seemed both of us had forgotten that was what we’d expected to find at the end. To me, learning my father hadn’t killed himself was priceless. I didn’t care about the money, but Sterling…
She smiled across at me, shaking her head. “I don’t care about the money,” she said in a whisper.
“But it’s odd, isn’t it?” my mother said. “We all assumed that ugly little statue had the key to Alan’s missing fortune. And while this is a lovely…” She drew in a ragged breath and pushed it out, straightening her shoulders as if she could throw off these ugly, raw emotions and get back to practicalities. “He sold his company, the one he started before the VoIP business Prentice stole from him. He was paid for it. I know that much. If the code on the statue of Vitellius wasn’t hiding the money, where is it?”
Sterling took the letter from my mother’s hand and reread it, turned it over, looked again at the itinerary. “I don’t see anything we missed,” she said. “It’s just a letter. Maybe this really wasn’t ever about the money at all. The money could be a completely different thing. And…” Sterling handed the papers back to my mother. “Maybe my father screwed Alan out of what he owed him, and there was never any money to find.” She gave my mother an apologetic glance. “Knowing my father, that seems like the most likely answer. If he had something to do with Alan’s death, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d somehow arranged to steal the money.”
“All this work,” I said, “and there’s no payday.”
A small, secret smile curved across Sterling’s mouth, and she shook her head. “Oh, I think we got our payday. This is better than the money.”
My mother smoothed her fingertip over the indentations of my father’s writing. “Well done, you two. I’m proud of you,” she said, gaze on Sterling.
My heart squeezed as a flush hit Sterling’s cheeks, her eyes shining at my mother’s praise.
My mom shifted her gaze to me. “I may not have approved of all the decisions you made on this journey of yours, but I’m so proud of you for taking on the challenge your father set in front of you. And proud of you for seeing it to the end. If you hadn’t, we never would have known the truth.” She stood, brushing her hair back from her tear-damp face. “Why don’t you two go for a walk? Forrest, you haven’t shown Sterling the cliffs. I need to share this with Jerry. He’ll want to see it.”
“Of course,” Sterling said, popping to her feet. She looked at me and then at my mother. “I need to wash my face.” She disappeared down the hall, leaving us alone.
My mother caught my hand as I stood. “Forrest, I’m sorry about this past year. I’m sorry for being so hard on you. You did the right thing.”
“I didn’t… I messed everything up,” I said, not sure how she could call anything about the past year the right thing .
“Oh, honey,” she said, shaking her head, “I forgive you. I know I’ve been blinded by hurt and anger at your father. I couldn’t see clearly, but now I understand. And it’s okay. Maybe now you can forgive yourself.”
She raised an eyebrow, and I shook my head. “I don’t know how to make it up to her,” I said. “How to make it up to both of you.”
“You don’t need to.” She held out the letter. “Alan had plans and hope. We would have had so much fun.” A tear ran down her cheek. “Life is short, sweetheart. We know better than anyone. Don’t waste any more of it blaming yourself. You’ve done right, and you’ve done wrong. You’ve done a whole lot more right than wrong, so forgive yourself.”
Her words spread through me, a healing balm. “I wish I could have done things differently,” I said.
Her arms slid around my shoulders. “Well, you can’t. You can only go forward from here. I love you so much, Forrest. I’ve missed your father every day he’s been gone. But I’ll always have a piece of him in you, and that’s the greatest gift he ever gave me.”
I soaked in her love, her forgiveness.
“I have something for you,” she said. “Stay there.”
She disappeared into her closet, and what she held in her hand when she returned caught the light in a blaze of color. “You don’t have to use it, but that’s the ring your father gave me. And when you get around to proposing to Sterling, if you want…” She set it in my palm—a circle of gold topped by an emerald-cut diamond faceted so that it burned like fire.
I picked up the ring and held it to the light, hope surging in my heart. I looked at my mom over the ring. “We’re not there yet. I’m not sure she’s forgiven me.”
My mother smiled. “You worry too much. She’s a smart girl, and I’ve seen the way she looks at you. She’s not going to let a good thing get away. And you, my sweet boy, are the best. You don’t have to use it if you had something else in mind.”
All at once, I knew she was right. This was right. “Sterling will love it. Thanks.” I wrapped my arms around my mom in a tight hug, feeling so lucky. We’d lost my dad, cruelly and before his time, but all these years we’d had each other. And maybe, if I could pull it off, I’d have a future with the woman I loved.
I let my mom go and tucked the ring in my pocket.
“Go on,” she said. “Take your girl for a romantic walk. Who knows, maybe you’ll put that thing to use.”