“Paul called that afternoon before his crash. He said Pastor Tufts recommended he talk to me. He came over that night.”
Samuel looked up at Jared. “He stayed for three hours. Sat on that ratty couch of mine and told me that he’d kept some money he didn’t deserve, then passed it to Sidney Grant. Said he’d worked out some kind of split with Grant for help concealing it. Then he changed his mind and demanded Grant return the money—said he’d go to the authorities if he didn’t. Grant wouldn’t give back the money, and Paul couldn’t get around to turning himself in. They were stalemated for years.”
“Did he ask you what he should do?”
Samuel nodded. “I told him to tell whoever he must to get it over with. Anything was better than what I put myself and my family through. It was the moral thing to do—but also just the best thing for everyone. That’s what I told him. But he already knew that. He was looking for a push.”
“What was stopping him?”
His father shook his head. “And here I was just saying how clever you are.”
“Erin.”
“Yes.”
“That’s important. She’ll want to know if he really was planning to make it right.”
Samuel nodded yes again. “He was. Soon. He planned to have a meeting with Grant to give him the final choice that they either returned the money together or Paul dealt with it himself. But he was still trying to figure out what to say to Erin first.”
The wind rustled through acres of uncut cornstalks behind the fence line. Jared listened to the sound, weighing how best to share all this with Erin.
“Was that the loose end you needed to tie up?”
“One of them.” He paused again. “Dad, do you pray often?”
“All day long when I’m working. I tell the pastor that the gardening is just to keep my hands busy since I’m kneeling already.”
Jared thought back to everything that had happened the past several months—and particularly to his thoughts the evening on the Areopagus.
“How about when I was in Greece?”
His father smiled. “Jedee, especially when you were in Greece.”
Jessie’s car was full of boxes and office supplies as she started her drive from Ashley toward the highway taking her back to the Twin Cities. She’d made a detour to fill the car with gas and now was passing between farm fields on a two-lane road that skirted the edge of the town before returning to Highway 7 and the freeway.
To her right, a baseball field emerged from the expanse of tilled earth, its parking lot empty but for two cars. She recognized both. Her eyes were drawn to two figures seated on stands facing an empty diamond.
As she watched, the figures embraced. Then she was past, driving toward clouds that threatened an evening of fresh snow.
They parted company in the Skyler Field parking lot. Jared pulled onto the road heading south as his father turned north behind him.
At this corner of Minnesota, the crossroad of their memories, Jared had forgiven his father. It felt like the reluctant shedding of a cast from a healed limb—the relief of a discarded burden mixed with caution at the tenderness and weakness exposed. Mostly, it felt like something new and better and right.
Now as he drove away, Jared believed he understood why his father had returned to Ashley after prison. He recalled the image of his dad standing on the grounds behind the church, shaking hands with Verne Loffler. That manicured lawn; his father’s daily labor out there for everyone to see; accepting the hard stares, gestures, anger, and invective—all without response or complaint.
“We go back four generations in Ashley,” his father used to preach when Jared was very young. “This place is family. When something happens to a neighbor here, it’s not a headline like in the Cities. It’s personal.”
When his father stole that money, it tore Ashley deeply. The open wound was evident everywhere. Jared avoided the streets his senior year of high school—despising the looks of anger and sympathy alike, spending Saturdays hiding in his library refuge, sheltered under Mrs. Huddleston’s watchful protection. The event was front-page news for weeks, second page for months, and the source of gossip to this day.
If Samuel Neaton had just disappeared after prison, flitting away like an exorcized ghost, people would have said he got away with it; imagined him living a life without remorse or consequence. It wouldn’t have been true, but people would have believed it.
People could be hardened by thoughts like that. The damage his father caused would have weakened the fabric of Ashley long after most folks had forgotten how the first thread came loose.
Working out there for everyone to see, day after day—painting a message on the palette of the church grounds—that was his dad’s apology. He was writing a different ending on what he had done to this town. Changing the story. By demonstrating every day that he’d paid a price for what he’d done and wanted to make amends.
And by allowing people like Mrs. Huddleston, Verne Loffler—and even his son—a chance to heal the only way he knew how: by giving them the opportunity to forgive him.
Epilogue
Jessie was humming again in the front office space. It used to bother him when he was trying to concentrate. It didn’t bother him now.
The day they’d left Ashley, Jared had taken Jessie to lunch a final time at Orsi and Greens. It was there that he’d told her he was sorry. She’d accepted his apology, and the hug that followed lingered for long seconds that left Jared a pleasant uncertainty as to where they went from there. In the weeks since, Jared had pondered more and more how long he wanted to continue with the constraint of Jessie being an employee.
With the arrival of Erin’s check for his fees and costs, he’d written his own series of checks—all the overdue bills, at home and the office; Richard Towers for his work, plus a bonus; and a twenty percent referral fee to Mort Goering. And of course, there was a significant bonus to Jessie.
Erin had paid Phil Olney’s share, and for Cory’s return to Europe, as promised. Then, to his surprise, Erin had announced she’d be joining her. A good thing, Jared thought. And hopefully the two would be staying in better hostels this time around.
Finally, yesterday, Jared wrote his last check from the fees. This one was to Clay. It was enough to repay the ten thousand dollar loan—plus a ten percent referral fee.
Jessie had been livid when he’d handed her the check.
“Just mail it,” Jared insisted.
The fees from Erin’s case were sizable, but after all of Jared’s accumulated bills, referral fees, and bonuses, it was like a river trying to cross a desert. He still had enough to cushion the practice for the time required to rebuild it—months or more. But this was certainly no “breakthrough case.”
That term sounded hollow now anyway. Not that he wasn’t interested. But for the first time in a long time—perhaps ever—the practice didn’t seem driven by that engine.
Each day Jared was aware of another task he must someday complete: keeping his promise to Marcus. He had no idea how he could communicate to Marcus’s family that the Paisley attorney’s last act was so different than what the press reported about him. Perhaps he would have to wait until Marcus’s children were much older; maybe it could only be done under a cloak of anonymity. Either way, it was a responsibility Jared would not forget.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come.”
Jessie entered, a pleading in her hand. “I . . .”
She got no further before the phone rang. Jessie reached for the phone on Jared’s desk and answered it.
After a few seconds of listening, Jessie said, “May I ask what this is in regard to?”
She put her hand over the mouthpiece.
“It’s Clay.”
“Did he get the check yet?”
Jessie looked sheepish. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to mail it yet.”
“So what’s he want?”
Her expression was flat. “He says he’s got
another case he thought you might be interested in.”
Jared reached out his hand to take the call.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Tim and Heather Peterson for their encouragement that enabled me to “cross the Rubicon” and fulfill my dream of becoming a writer.
I am also very thankful to my wife, Catherine, for her multiple readings of the book and uncompromising editing; to my son, Ian, for cheering me on and whose reactions, for a brief moment, made an aging father feel “cool” again; and to my daughter, Libby, for patiently interrupting her history studies to listen to her father’s chapters with cheerfulness and love.
I also wish to acknowledge many others who read and critiqued this first effort: my brother Scott Johnson; fellow conspirator Michael Schwartz; and particularly Sue Hoffman—whose encouragement helped make this book a reality. Thanks as well to Judy Wenderoth for the critical eye she applied to the recounting of banking practices.
And finally, thanks to my editor, David Long, for taking a chance with this new author, and for his repeated counsel that just one more rewrite and I’d finally have it.
Todd M. Johnson has practiced as an attorney for over thirty years, specializing as a trial lawyer. A graduate of Princeton University and the University of Minnesota Law School, he also taught for two years as adjunct professor of International Law and served as a US diplomat in Hong Kong. He lives outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his wife, his son, Ian, and his daughter, Libby. This is his debut novel.
Visit his website at www.authortoddmjohnson.com.
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