by Anthony Tata
“That’s my uncle, Matt. He’s the one who saved my dad during that whole Ballantine thing. Remember the coliseum being bombed and all that?”
“I reminded you about that, remember? So that’s him? They look a lot alike.”
“I should call him. I wonder where Uncle Matt is right now.”
CHAPTER 27
SANFORD, NORTH CAROLINA
She led him up the stairs. Each step was a lightly stained oak that had retained its lacquer sheen. Amanda turned immediately to the left as she reached the small, carpeted landing.
“My room,” she said. “He never changed it.”
They were standing in a small eleven-foot by eleven-foot room. A white-and-yellow bedspread lay crisply atop the twin bed, which was beneath a window against the far wall. Amanda recognized the little sunshine patterns, the reason she had selected the bedding. To her left was the dormer window, and to her right was the cherry bureau with a large mirror. To the left of the dormer was a small desk with a computer. Next to the desk was a closet door that also doubled as the middle dormer of the house. Accordingly, it was well lit.
The door was slightly ajar, inviting.
Amanda pulled on the doorknob and stared into the sun-washed walk-in. She eyed clothes that she had long forgotten, perhaps never even been given the chance to remember. She reached out and pawed a small green velvet dress.
“Christmas,” she whispered. “In Virginia.”
She stroked the material as if it were the finest silk. Her sullen gaze moved incrementally to another garment, this one a bit larger. She took the T-shirt and jeans combo from the hanging bar and held it at arm’s length. The T-shirt said on the front, “This Kiss.” She flipped it over. “Faith Hill Rocks Fort Bragg.”
“I forgot all about this. Matt and my dad took me to see Faith Hill.” She dropped her arm and turned to Jake. “How could I have no memory of this,” she said, holding up the T-shirt in one hand. “Until now?”
“I’ve got some ideas.”
Amanda turned back into the closet. More clothes, shoes, and miscellaneous girl stuff were neatly arrayed along each side of the closet. She walked all the way to the end of the dormer and looked out into the front yard.
“He used to like to work on the yard. I’d work in the garden over there,” she said, pointing to her left where a row of boxwood shrubs angled along the property line. “But sometimes I’d be in my room here, and I would just watch him from right here. It was just nice, you know? Safe. I could keep an eye on him. And he would look up and wave without even knowing I was in here. I mean, he just knew. I never told him.”
She felt Jake’s hands on her shoulders and leaned back into him, closing her eyes.
“He’s got a nice house.”
“Our house,” she corrected. “He always called it our house.”
“Sorry. It’s just so perfect, you know, for you and him.”
“That’s all there was.”
“He sounds like he was really dedicated to you.” Amanda didn’t respond. She simply closed her eyes, pulled away, and then slid past him, walking out of the closet.
She walked across the landing and into the master bedroom. To the right was her father’s dark walnut double bed. She immediately recognized everything. The matching bureau and chest of drawers were on the two opposite walls. The third dormer separated the bureau from a small television stand with a fifteen-inch TV. Sunlight splashed in a long rectangular shape across the bed. She smiled at the sight of the green and maroon bedspread she had picked out for him many years ago. She walked to the left, where the bathroom and wash area was located.
Everything looked as if he would be walking in the door any second, saying, “Amanda, let’s go track some wild animals.”
But that wasn’t going to happen, and she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about anything right now. She leaned against the sink area that separated the walk-in closet from the master bath and shower. Looking in the mirror, she saw her face reflect the confusion, which she felt. What had happened to her?
The powerful scent of her father surrounded her and raised the hair on the back of her neck. She turned quickly, expecting him to be there. Emotions were rushing through her, tumbling over one another like a theater crowd escaping a blaze. She gasped, then caught her breath, placing her hand over her heart.
It took her a second to realize that the bathroom smelled of the shaving cream that he always used. That was his smell.
She realized that Jake had not followed her into the room. Wanting to scream, Amanda suppressed the urge and ran her hands through her hair, momentarily pausing as if to pull it all out. What was going on? Like some chemical reaction, the memories of her father and her came rushing back as if someone had just hit the rewind button on the DVD player, sometimes pausing, sometimes skipping along at speeds that made the images unrecognizable.
Suddenly she was sitting atop her father’s shoulders at the Faith Hill concert waving her arms in time with the music.
Skipping, blurred images . . .
Next she was hiking with him in the woods of Fort Jackson, South Carolina, believing they were following bear tracks along a sandy creek.
Skipping and blurring . . .
Now she was at the farm in Virginia, chasing the cattle that roamed freely throughout the hundred and twenty acres of Blue Ridge foothills.
Then summer camps in North Carolina.
Then trips to the Outer Banks.
The stories he would tell her at night.
Then—
“Hey, babe?” Jake called from an adjacent room. Amanda was vaguely aware of Jake’s voice, having been lost in the maze of memories springing forth like a newly tapped geyser. “Think you should probably see this.”
Her face was slick with perspiration. She pushed herself away from the sink to move out of the captivating aroma of her father. Like some invisible potion, the lingering scent of her father had spellbound her, if only for a moment. She took one step and then another, unsteadily making her way to the guest bedroom.
“Look at this,” Jake said without looking up at her.
Amanda saw that he was focused on stacks of paper neatly organized on the double bed in the center of the room and a small desk beneath the sole window, which provided a panoramic view of the backyard.
“What is it?” Her voice was weak, shaky.
“I don’t know—hey, you okay?”
Amanda began to falter, placed her hand on the bed for support, and then leaned into Jake, wrapping her arms around him. She felt Jake’s arms pull her toward him, almost lifting her up.
“It’s okay, Amanda. It’s okay.”
She buried her face into his chest and then muttered, “I’m fine. I’m okay.”
“Just say the word—”
“No, I have to do this. Something’s happening and I’m just . . . just confused, that’s all.”
“Okay, I’m with you.”
She pulled away from him and looked into his eyes. She studied him for a moment, reappraising his handsome features. The square jaw, deep-set brown eyes and dark hair were all so perfect. He was perfect. She felt something stir inside of her chest, a fluttering of her heart perhaps. What was happening?
“Have you ever felt like you don’t know who you are?”
She watched Jake consider her question. Of course not, she figured, he was Jake Devereaux, star athlete. Everyone wanted to be him, so it was only obvious that he knew exactly who he was and where he came from.
“Sometimes, you know, I wonder how I’m so lucky to be blessed with the things I have. Athletic ability, decent grades in school, good family.” He paused. “You.”
“Jake, I’m really struggling with something here.” She crossed her arms, not really considering his comment. “I feel like half of me has been hiding. I feel like, I don’t know, I’ve been ashamed of who I am, so I just cover it all up with this shallow bitch act.”
Jake dropped his eyes and looked at the floor. “I wouldn�
��t love you if I felt like I should be ashamed of you.” Jake’s words were reassuring to her. She felt his hands gently cup her face.
“You’re way too good for me,” she muttered against his hand, kissing his palm with a scrunched-up lip. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Hey, what kind of talk is that? We deserve each other.” His whispered words sounded sophomoric, he knew, but they somehow seemed appropriate.
“No, Jake, I’m a shallow, manipulating bitch. You’re a good person. I mean, look at you,” she said stepping back. “You’re here with me, skipping school, so you can help me deal with my dead father’s belongings, or whatever it is we’re doing.”
“You would have done the same for me.”
Amanda stared at him for a long time.
“Maybe I would have been there, but not like this. You’re the only thing I can rely on right now, you know. That and my mom and Nina.”
Jake stuttered for a second. It was obvious he was uncomfortable, as if he wanted to say something. Finally he did.
“I think you may be missing the point here. Take a look at some of this.” He waved his hand across the stacks of paper on the bed. There were about fifteen different stacks, some higher than others. On the tops of several were small yellow pieces of note paper. The titles read: Medical Insurance Fraud, Denied Visitation, Child Support Payments, Court Cases, Attorney’s Fees, Life Insurance Payout, Visitation Expenses, Grandmother Interference, Parental Alienation, One Day.”
Amanda was speechless.
“I think this is what he wants you to see,” Jake said. “It’s proof of something. Evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Well, Amanda, all I’ve ever heard you say is that your father was a louse, you did that ‘No Dad’ poem for the school magazine and you keep saying your mother and grandmother completely raised you. I flipped through some of the Visitation Expenses files; your father spent over $52,000 just coming to see you over the past decade.”
“No way.”
“The evidence is there. Plane tickets, rental cars, hotel rooms, you name it.”
“I can’t believe this,” she said, looking at the papers and then back at Jake. She could feel herself going numb.
“Look at the ‘medical insurance fraud’ stack, the one that’s twice as high as any of the others.”
“What about it?”
“You know how you’re always going to the doctor for some reason or another?”
“I have lots of medical issues.”
“No, Amanda, you don’t.”
“Yes I do. What about my bursitis? My acne? My back pain? My—”
“Amanda—”
“Shut up! Stop it! Just shut up!” She looked away, grabbing her bottom lip with her thumb and forefinger, squeezing off and on. Amanda looked through the large window into the backyard. Perfectly green stems of grass poked upward throughout the backyard. The grass in the back, she remembered, was different than the centipede grass out front. She and her father had dug holes and placed sprigs of Saint Augustine grass, another crawler that thrived in warm climates and sandy soils.
“It’s called psychosomatic. You’re led to believe it’s true and, therefore, it becomes true. Your mind tricks your body into thinking you have a bad knee or back or whatever, and you can actually feel the pain. But it’s not real.”
“What brought this up, anyway? Big deal. What can you prove?” Amanda felt herself slipping back into shallow bitch mode. She was defending her mother and grandmother, as she had been trained. “How do we know that all of this isn’t just a bunch of my dad’s creation?”
“Well, some of it might be,” Jake replied, pointing at the stack of papers labeled One Day.
Amanda reached over and thumbed through the stack of pages. She began to read:
One Day (15 June 1999/Amanda/Brooke/Megan/Christa sleepover)
One day, Amanda and Brooke and Megan and Christa were driving in a blue car really fast along the Auto Strada near Rome, Italy. Their driver was a nice Italian man named Antonio who let them play really loud Italian rock music from the radio. The girls didn’t understand the words, but Amanda in particular was having fun shaking her hair and bouncing in the car, giggling with her best buddies. . . .
“Oh my gosh, I remember that night like it was yesterday. My dad used to make up these stories all the time. In this one, we went to the Coliseum and there was this thief—‘the bad man’—who had stolen Caesar’s chalice and we helped the polizia capture him. And there was a dog. And they made us princesses of Italy forever.”
“What’s this?” Jake asked, pointing to the bottom of the page.
(Amanda said, Good story, Dad. The others chimed in with, Yeah, Mr. Garrett, great story. I asked them what was the moral of the story. Amanda said, Even though the dog looked mean, if you were nice to it, it could help you. Brooke said, Always carry dog biscuits. Beautiful night with the girls. Remember to tell Brooke’s dad what a funny girl he has.)
“Wow,” Jake muttered.
Amanda wiped a tear from her face. “He was always such a great storyteller. I never knew he went back and wrote all of this down. Brooke was great, too. Her dad was Army and divorced just like mine. We got along great, though her mom lived in Georgia and Brooke wasn’t here much.”
She flipped through the ream of stories: “German Castle,” “Bear Tracks,” “Underwater Cave,” “Beach Crabbing,” and so on. Each story, she noticed, began with the line “One Day, Amanda . . .” and would follow with whatever friends she seemed to be associating with at the time.
“It’s like he knew his time with you was slipping away. He wanted to capture the good memories.” Again he waved his hand over the reams of paper. “As great as that story is, and what it means about your real relationship with your father, take a look at this.”
Amanda haltingly took the manila folder from Jake’s hand. The title on the folder read: Insurance Fraud: How it Works.
She gave Jake a quizzical stare; he simply nodded at her to continue. She opened the folder and saw both writing and calculations. She read what she presumed her father had written.
“Melanie Garrett maintains three forms of health insurance on Amanda. First, is her own insurance through Beacham Advertising Company; that pays 80 percent of any doctor visit by Amanda. Then, of course, is her current husband’s insurance policy with Humana; that also pays 80 percent of all of Amanda’s doctor visits. Lastly, there is the military TRICARE system; that will pay 80 percent also. The insured must inform the insurance companies of the existence of other insurance. Melanie has craftily been bilking all of these companies, and Major Garrett, for many years, using Amanda as an automatic teller machine, of sorts. Whenever Melanie wants more money, she takes Amanda to the doctor and then bills all of the different insurances to include telling Major Garrett he owes her the remainder of the 20 percent not covered by the policy. For example, if there were a $100 doctor bill, Melanie sends separate bills (see enclosures) to each of the three insurance companies, who each send her an $80 check. Then, she forwards to Major Garrett one of the doctor bills telling him he owes her $20. So her gross on a legitimate $100 health insurance claim is $260. We have catalogued over 126 separate doctor visits that have been exploited in this manner for a total of $17,394 in illegally obtained reimbursements. —Insurance Fraud Division.”
Amanda dropped the piece of paper on the bed and stared at Jake. “We need to go through all of this.”
“You think you can?”
“Let’s get it over with.”
He handed her the folder labeled Life Insurance. “Brace yourself.”
She opened the folder and saw on top the words: “$250,000 payout to Amanda Garrett will be paid instead to Melanie Garrett, based upon the legal findings of this court. Further, the court finds that sufficient time had passed during Major Garrett’s alleged death such that it was a reasonable conclusion that he was dead, and that the money shall remain paid and be considered irrevocable.�
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“This was from when we thought Dad was killed in the Philippines.”
There were other important sounding words, but it was clear to her. Her mother had lied to her. The life insurance payout from his supposed death nearly two years ago had been paid to her, yet her mother somehow got it changed into her own name. No wonder they could afford the house, the trips, and the cars.
Amanda’s phone began to ring and her mother’s picture popped up on the display, as if she were in the room watching.
Jake stared at the stack of papers and then said exactly what was on his mind.
“You’re nothing but your mother’s money bitch.”
Then he made the mistake of walking downstairs.
CHAPTER 28
SANFORD, NORTH CAROLINA
Hanging up from the phone call with her mother, she ran down the steps into the foyer to find the front door open and two men in black windbreakers with NCBI stenciled on them. One man stuffed his weapon into a holster inside his jacket and walked over to her. He was about six and a half feet tall, muscular, and wore his hair in a tight blond crew cut.
“Miss Amanda Garrett? Are you okay?”
Amanda looked at the man and then noticed that the other man was handcuffing Jake, who was face-first against the foyer wall.
“What are you doing!” Amanda screamed, and moved toward Jake.
The tall blond man stepped in front of her, holding up a hand to keep her back. “Don’t touch me! Who are you? What are you doing here?” Her words were crashing together. “Jake are you okay?”
“Ma’am, I have to ask you to not communicate with the suspect.” By now the tall man’s partner was escorting Jake out of the house.
“What the hell is going on?” Amanda ran past the tall man to the front porch, chasing after Jake. The man escorting Jake was a powerfully built African American with a shaved head. “Jake, what’s happening?”
The black man stared at her with fierce eyes and then gave an annoying look at his partner.
