‘Okay,’ Jack muttered, putting pen to paper. Dear Margaret, This is probably the last time you’ll hear from me. Dad’s dead. There was a big fire on Christmas Eve—our place is now a pile of ash and Mom and my sister are living with a neighbor. They blame me, so I’m staying with a friend from college. He’s lending me everything—I have nothing left. The truth is out, it’s all over. I don’t know what to do. Except I need to leave town. I hope you have a good life, Margaret and maybe one day we’ll meet again. Yours, Jack xx
Jack folded the letter into an envelope and tucked it into the rucksack that was packed and waiting by his feet. Pretty well everything that he owned now fitted into that one bag.
Taking a final, lingering look around the room that he had called his bedroom for the past week, Jack stood up, picked up the rucksack and made for the door. He picked up his only other possession, the box containing his grandfather’s war memorabilia, and slowly descended the stairs. A waft of cooking smells—coffee and bacon, he thought, drifted up to greet him.
Downstairs, he entered the kitchen. The conversation taking place at the table stopped and Mr Chipman, Michael and Laura all looked at him. He saw the same pity in their eyes as he had seen there every day since the fire.
Laura smiled. ‘Do you want some breakfast before we go?’
‘No, I’ll be okay—I’ll get something at the station,’ Jack replied.
‘Are you sure you want to go, Jack?’ Mr Chipman asked. ‘You know you’re welcome to stay here for as long as you need.’
‘I know that, Mr Chipman, and thank you very much, but this is something I need to do.’
‘I understand, son.’
Michael cleared his throat. ‘The funeral is on the eighth of January…’
Jack nodded. ‘Alice said. I won’t be going, though.’
A long silence lingered in the room before Laura spoke. ‘Okay, do you want to get going?’
‘Yeah, I think so—don’t want to miss my bus.’
Mr Chipman and Michael rose from their chairs, meeting Jack part way across the kitchen. Michael pulled Jack into an embrace. ‘You take care out there. I’ll be over to see you in the next break.’
Jack held his best friend tightly, not wanting to let him go. He knew that he would never return to Cape Cod and only hoped that Michael was good to his word and came to see him. He broke away and moved into Mr Chipman’s outstretched arms.
‘It’s been real good having you around, Jack. It’s been a pleasure working with you and if you ever change your mind—your job will always be here. I mean that.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Same goes for your bedroom—it’ll always be here for you.’
‘I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Mr Chipman—really.’
‘Okay, enough of all this,’ Laura said, reaching for Jack’s hand. ‘Let’s get going.’
Mr Chipman and Michael stood on the porch and waved as Jack climbed into Laura’s car.
Laura turned to him with a smile, as she pulled out from the driveway. ‘You’re sure about this?’
‘Absolutely. Let’s go.’
‘And you don’t want to swing by to see Alice or—’
‘No,’ Jack interjected, as they drove past the end of Iyanough Avenue. His former home—still enclosed within a weave of police tape—had been reduced to an unsightly pile of unidentifiable rubble. His car, standing beside the house, had been damaged beyond repair. According to Alice, the fire department had managed to pull out a few bits and pieces, but nothing of his. She was still in hospital, suffering from first-degree burns and lacerations to her arms. With the fire raging, she had re-entered the house and had checked all the upstairs rooms for their dad. Then, she had somehow managed to drop down over the banisters to search their dad’s study. It had been there that she had almost succumbed to the smoke, before being rescued by firefighters and pulled out of the window moments before the house had collapsed. ‘He has to have been in the basement,’ she had said afterwards. And she had been right; his body—burned and crushed beyond all recognition—had been retrieved from the basement two days ago. An accident—that was where the investigation was so far pointing—possibly originating with the Christmas tree. But Jack knew better—he was certain that it had been started deliberately by their dad: the bigamist’s final act of cowardice, a sardonic ending for the lauded war veteran.
As they drove along Main Street, Jack’s eyes were drawn to Rory’s Store. He craned his neck as they drove past. The old man was standing outside, hands on his hips chatting to a customer—moaning, likely. Jack grinned. It was almost a year ago that he had stopped working there. So much had happened in the intervening months; he was a different person now, about to embark on a new life, leaving this one in Massachusetts behind.
With an ironic smirk, he realised that what he was about to do was the exact reverse of what his dad had done in 1950.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Laura asked.
Jack took a long breath as they entered the Mid-Cape Highway. ‘Just day-dreaming about life in San Francisco.’
‘It’s a big step, alright,’ Laura commented.
She was right: it was a massive step into the unknown. In an emotional phone call two days after the fire, he had spoken to his grandparents for the first time in his life. He was going to live with them, in the house in Cow Hollow in which his father had grown up. He planned to go back to college. And Laura, Michael and Alice had promised to come out to stay in the spring break.
They entered the Sagamore Bridge, leaving the Cape behind them. In front, was his future. ‘I’m ready.’
Chapter Twenty-One
27th August 2016, Boston Logan International Airport, Massachusetts, USA
Morton stared at him, dumbfounded. His thoughts were stuck behind the mulish spikes that were piercing his brain, refusing to make sense of the situation. He looked to Juliette for explanation. She’d found him? Juliette’s expression and her casual shrug suggested otherwise. A coincidence? Definitely not.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ Morton replied, slowly standing. He looked again at Juliette for guidance. He’d spent so long thinking about the search for his father that he hadn’t stopped to consider what he might say or do if they were ever to meet. And yet, here he was. He looked very much like the photograph that Juliette had surreptitiously taken at his Aunt Alice’s house; his youthful face belied his sixty years. He was precisely Morton’s height, his dark hair having the odd smattering of grey. His chestnut brown eyes were warm and welcoming, but still Morton couldn’t speak.
‘The Missing Man,’ Juliette quipped. ‘Found, wandering Boston airport.’
In perfectly mirrored synchronisation, the two men opened their arms and stepped into an embrace.
Morton held him like he had held no other, as tears rushed uncontrollably down his cheeks. The long journey that had started when he was just sixteen years old, when his father had blurted out that he had been adopted, was over. His fastidiousness, his stubbornness, his forensic genealogy, had been rewarded.
Time passed, but he hadn’t a clue how much. He held on to his father and continued to sob wet puddles into his grey t-shirt.
Morton eventually let him go and took a step back, taking the proffered tissue from Juliette. ‘What…? Where did you come from?’ he managed to say.
‘I just flew in from Canada,’ he answered, dabbing his eyes.
‘But how did you know?’ Morton asked, breathlessly. ‘I can’t believe it…’
‘Neither can I,’ he laughed.
‘How?’ Morton muttered.
‘My sister. She told me everything after you stopped by her house the other night. I don’t think she believed you when you first contacted her, then when you showed up, she knew. She told me, then ran off to bury her head in the sand dunes. I must say, I was pretty shocked.’
‘You had no idea that Margaret had had a baby?’ Juliette asked.
He shook his hea
d. ‘None at all. I wrote her a whole bunch of letters but she never replied.’
‘She…she never got them,’ Morton muttered through his sniffles. ‘Someone—her dad, I assume—intercepted them. Sorry, but I opened them.’
Jack nodded and smiled. ‘So my sister said—I don’t blame you—I would’ve done the same thing in your position.’ Jack looked at his watch. ‘How long do you guys have?’
‘Only about half an hour,’ Juliette said with a grimace.
‘How about we try and cram in as much of the past forty years as we can?’
Morton nodded, still trying to convince his brain to push past the combined barrier of pain and shock. ‘Less than a minute per year,’ Juliette laughed. ‘Good luck with that.’
‘I can’t believe it…’ Morton repeated, needing to sit back down. ‘I just can’t believe you’re here.’
‘You wouldn’t believe the hours of research he’s put in to finding you,’ Juliette said.
Jack smiled, sitting beside Morton and placing his hand on his leg. ‘Jeez—I hope I’m worth it—that’s a lot to live up to.’
Morton continued to stare at him, stunned. The man beside him, in so many ways a stranger, was paradoxically so familiar. It felt to him more like meeting up with a best friend after several years’ absence than the very first time that they had ever clapped eyes on one another.
‘So, let me see if I understand things correctly,’ Jack began. ‘Margaret was forced to give you up. Her brother and his wife couldn’t have kids and they adopted you? Is that right?’
‘Yes…’ he stuttered, ‘…that’s right.’
‘Is Margaret…is she still alive?’
‘Yes, alive and well. She lives in Cornwall. She’s married with two daughters. Happy.’
‘That’s good to hear. I often think of her and wonder what happened to her. I’ve got something you might like to see,’ he said, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Here.’
It was a photograph needing no explanation. It was Jack and Margaret standing together outside the Farrier household on Canterbury Road, Folkestone. His biological mother and father together. They were leaning on each other, smiling, their fingers interwoven. ‘Wow,’ was all that Morton could muster.
‘It’s the original—I’d like you to have it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely—I’ve made a copy for myself. It just seems right that you have it,’ Jack said, patting Morton’s leg.
‘Thank you.’
Jack laughed. ‘I don’t mean to get too base, but that was my last day in England; you were in that photo, too.’
Morton laughed. ‘Saturday the fifth of January,’ he stated, recalling the exact dates of their visit from his research.
‘If you say so, then, yeah,’ Jack laughed. ‘I still can’t believe this. When Alice told me I thought she was kidding. Then she went on and on with so much detail I knew that it wasn’t a joke. My God—a son I never knew…I don’t know…it’s just unbelievable…so, tell me about yourself.’
Something—the pills or the shock, he didn’t know which—released the talons from inside his head; he could think again. He was aware that time was running painfully low and he had his own questions to ask, so he kept it brief, condensing great chunks of his life into small portions. He sped through his childhood, college and university, an overview of his career in forensic genealogy, and ended with meeting and marrying Juliette.
‘You’ve done very well for yourself,’ Jack commented at the end. ‘I’m real glad to know that you’re settled and happy.’ He looked at his watch. ‘And I guess you want to know a bit about me?’
‘As much as you can say in thirteen minutes,’ Morton encouraged.
‘Okay. So, after the fire on Christmas Eve seventy-six, I took off to stay with my grandparents in San Francisco. I stayed there a few years—ironically in my dad’s old bedroom—anyway, I went to college and studied forensic archaeology. I married a lovely lady from back home, Laura and we—’
The penny dropped—he knew why there had been a hint of recognition of the woman in the photograph that Juliette had discovered at Alice and Jan’s house—Morton had seen her in the Barnacle year book. ‘Laura Chipman?’ Morton interrupted.
‘Yeah, that’s her,’ Jack said with a look of surprise. ‘You know her?’
‘I just stumbled upon her in the course of my research.’
‘Oh, I see,’ he laughed. ‘Yeah, she’s amazing. We’ve got one son, George—named for my grandad.’
He had a brother…The revelations were coming thick and fast—too fast for his mind to keep up. Rafts of questions kept springing up, before being replaced, unanswered with another.
‘I’m now a professor, teaching forensic archaeology and Laura is an obstetrician.’
‘Forensic archaeology?’ Juliette said. ‘What does that involve?’
‘Using and applying archaeological techniques to forensic investigations. I used to work closely with the police department in all kinds of situations: homicides, identification at mass fatalities, cold cases... Now I mainly lecture, although I do get dragged back on occasion.’
‘Sounds more gruesome than my job as a police officer,’ Juliette noted.
‘Gruesome but rewarding,’ Jack answered, before facing Morton. ‘You know what got me started?’
Morton shook his head.
‘The fire. There were some pretty suspicious circumstances going on there and I just couldn’t let it go.’
‘I thought it was accidental—caused by the Christmas tree lights?’ Morton countered.
‘Yeah—that was the official verdict. Afterwards, I became more and more convinced that my dad had started it deliberately. From out in San Francisco I made some discreet enquiries. I contacted the Chief Medical Examiner, who issued me my dad’s autopsy report, which obviously didn’t make a great deal of sense to me, so I took it along to the university and spoke to one of the professors there and I ended up joining his course. The fire became my pet project throughout the degree.’
‘And did you find evidence that it was deliberate?’
Jack nodded. ‘Yeah, I did.’
‘But why?’ Juliette asked.
‘Because my dad was still married to his first wife and she was threatening to expose him—’
‘What? But I found records for the divorce,’ Morton interjected.
‘She—his first wife, Audrey, refused it. He bigamously married my mom.’
‘And so he started the fire deliberately and killed himself?’ Morton questioned.
‘No,’ Jack replied. ‘The autopsy notes showed evidence that his neck had been broken before the fire. The Chief Medical Examiner had dismissed it since most of his bones were broken by the house falling on top of him.’
‘You’re saying he hanged himself?’ Morton asked.
‘That’s right,’ Jack confirmed. ‘The more time has passed, the more cases I’ve worked on, the more certain I am about it. It’s really hard for me because in the months leading up to the fire, we weren’t on good terms and I blamed him for a lot of things that weren’t actually his fault.’
‘So, if he’d killed himself, then who started the fire?’ Juliette chipped in.
‘Your mum,’ Morton answered for him.
Jack nodded. ‘I think my dad killed himself because of what I was finding out about his past. I think he thought it was a way to draw a line in the sand and finally put a stop to it all. My mom found his body in the basement, then she started the fire to cover up his suicide.’
‘Wow…’ Morton said.
‘Yeah,’ Jack agreed. ‘And that’s not all. It got me thinking about my dad’s first wife. She died in 1954, along with her daughter, Florence and her lover—a guy called Dwight. They were also killed in a fire.’
‘What?’ Morton stammered, struggling to take in this latest information, and fearing where his line of thinking was taking him.
‘It took a while after I finished colleg
e and built up some contacts in the police and fire departments and with local coroners, but I was able to get hold of the original reports into the fire. The verdict was inconclusive but one theory was that it started with an electrical heater in the basement. It was the middle of the night and the three bodies were discovered in their beds.’
‘Oh my God,’ Juliette mumbled. ‘You think that was her, too?’
‘Well, let me tell you this: the fire happened a week after my mom and dad were discovered by a private investigator that Audrey had hired to bring him to court to face charges of bigamy.’
‘You’re saying your mum started that fire, knowing that it would kill the three of them, including a child?’ Morton said.
Jack nodded solemnly.
‘Could it not just be a coincidence?’ Juliette ventured.
‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ Jack replied.
‘Neither does he,’ Juliette said with a nod towards Morton.
‘I didn’t want to just jump to that conclusion, I really didn’t. My own mom starting a fire that could have killed us all was one thing, but this was something completely different. So, I did more research. According to their neighbour at the time my mom went into a private hospital in Boston for two weeks suffering from bleeding in the early stages of her pregnancy with Alice. My dad drove her to the hospital for complete bed rest, picking her up again two weeks later.’
‘Giving her just the right amount of time to cross the country…’ Morton said.
‘Exactly the right amount of time, when you plot possible bus and train routes that she would have taken,’ Jack said. ‘I also found some witnesses and possible sightings along the route, but still it was circumstantial. Then I made enquiries at the hospital in Boston and they had no record of her ever having stayed there. In fact, nobody at all was admitted during that two-week period.’
The Missing Man Page 15
