27. Erica #2
Inside the case is a leather-bound diary, the cover gone soft and dark with age. He lifts it out slowly and gingerly, and sets it on the desk between us.
“Read it,” I say. “The Lincoln letter. Out loud.”
His hands aren’t steady when he lifts the top page. He clears his throat twice before anything comes out, and when it does, his voice shakes on every third word.
My Dearest Eleanor,
Pau, France
the 12th day of March, 1877
In these last quiet seasons of exile, I have come to think that certain beauties in this world are not meant to console, but to remind.
The necklace Her Majesty pressed upon me so many years ago, one widow’s offering to another, in the black spring after Mr. Lincoln was taken from me, was once a solace.
Now it burns against my breast as a memory of all that cannot be undone.
You have been to me a steadfast friend when friendship was scarce and dearly bought.
In my son’s prudence I find only cold accounting; in your company, the gentler arithmetic of mercy.
I will not leave this jewel to family hands that would weigh it in dollars, nor to statesmen who would mount it behind glass and call it legacy.
Know then, Eleanor, that I give this necklace to you. Not to hold for me, not to mind until I ask for it back. It is yours now, as surely as if I had placed it in your hands myself and said so aloud. I can think of no one else I would trust with something that has cost me so much to carry.
Wear it if it pleases you, or don’t. Only let it be worn for love, the way I have never once been permitted to wear my own grief. That is all I ask of it, and all I ask of you.
With the affection of one who has learned that beauty is not madness,
— Mary Lincoln
“Close it,” I say, when he’s done. “Slide it over.”
He does.
Then it hits me. The weight of my family’s legacy written on a frail piece of paper. The historical significance of it. I almost feel like I’m dreaming. Like this can’t be real.
I delicately wrap the diary in a scarf I’d brought and place it carefully in my bag. The same bag that caused a scene in a CityCenterDC dress shop.
I take a deep breath and get up from Hobbs's desk chair. “I’d say it was a pleasure doing business with you but I don’t think I’ll be back. Zero stars.”
I go for my grand exit, but something inside me makes me stop. It’s like an itch I’ve had for six whole years, and I just need to finally scratch it.
“One more thing.” I don’t turn around right away. “Why’d you set up my dad as your fall guy?”
“I didn’t set your father up.” His voice pitches high, wrong. “You’re… you’re out of your mind. Crazy woman, coming in here with your accusations and your fake footage.”
I turn around now.
“Don’t lie. I know the truth. I sat in that courtroom. Poured over every law book I could get my hands on. I could recite it to you backwards. So tell me, Dennis. Why. Did. You. Set. Up. My. Dad?”
Something in him just gives out. He drops back into the chair, hands over his face, shoulders slumped.
“Why?” he says, muffled behind his own fingers. “Why are you making me do this?”
“Because you owe me this.” I don’t dress it up any prettier than that. “That’s all. I just need to know for my own peace of mind.”
He looks up fast, eyes red rimmed. “You’re not recording this.”
I point at the camera mounted above his door, a small black eye in the corner of the ceiling.
“It’s temporarily disabled.”
He lunges for his computer, taps the keyboard hard enough that the plastic might break, and the security feed on his monitor dissolves into a wall of gray static.
The blackout is just on his terminal, though, while the rest of the building hums along without noticing a thing. That man is so dumb he doesn’t even stop to think that if the security cameras were really offline, this whole museum would be on lockdown. Alarms galore.
Seriously, his browsing footprint is so predictable, Zoe didn’t even try hard to take control of his computer. It’s just static.
And as for the real security cameras, she’ll scrub every frame of me walking through this building the second I’m out the door.
“Tell me how you did it,” I say. “All of it. Slow.”
He tells it to me in pieces. How he fed my father security details that were never true, watching him build a plan around information that was rigged from the start, then stepping forward at exactly the right moment to look like the hero who caught him.
“I saw an opportunity… during the pandemic. There were no visitors at the museum at that time. Night watch was a skeleton crew. It was easy pickings. I couldn't pass it up. But when things got hairy, and I knew there was no way we’d get away with it, I made Ben the fall guy. To save my job. I didn’t even rat on the rest of the crew, and I could have. Remember that.”
“And your testimony.” I keep my voice level. “At the trial. I know you exaggerated so the judge would give him the maximum sentence. Why?”
“He was a liability. So what if I made some… embellishments? Attempted theft of an object of cultural heritage from a museum is a federal crime. But it’s still just an attempt.
But possession of the blueprints of Bellenden’s laser grids, reckless disregard for public safety?
Maybe a… tiny inflated valuation of the Friendship Jewel.
That easily stacked six and a half years to his sentence.
And that’s six and a half more years I needed to become too powerful for him to touch me once he got out. ”
I take a moment to soak in his confession.
I already had a good idea of what he would say.
This was just confirmation. I thought it would make me feel better.
But it doesn’t. My father is still in prison when he might have been sentenced for only three and a half years.
He’d have served less than three years for good conduct.
But they threw the book at him, and the man sitting in front of me orchestrated it.
I’m not saying my dad is a saint. He was a little reckless. He got caught. I don’t have a problem with the justice system.
What I do have a problem with are weasely little men who step on other people to get ahead in life.
And I’ve decided I’m done. If this were a hockey game, Dennis Hobbs would be in that little box they put guys in when they do penalties or whatever.
I don’t know the terms. I’m still learning the game.
I adjust the strap of my bag on my shoulder, turn, and walk out.
A few steps down the hall, I press two fingers to my ear.
“Did you get all that?”
Zoe’s voice comes back warm and a little smug, exactly the way I like it.
“Oh, I got it. I got it all. Dennis Hobbs is going down.”
As I walk away from Hobbs's office, I picture myself in one of those action movies, completely unbothered by the bright orange explosion directly behind me.
My Wonder Woman boots hit the marble floor in a slow motion victory strut, fireballs shooting off in every direction, the whole building going up in flames.
The force of it blowing wind in my hair with a cinematic blast.
And I have a little smirk on my face and don’t look back because I just completed Mission Impossible.