“Anybody you knew?”
“Yes. Henrietta. A lovely girl.”
“Henrietta?”
“Yes. Don’t remember her last name. I tell you what, Justin. If you really want to get into the story of Reuben twenty years ago, why don’t you go see Eric Monsanto? He’s here in town, a lawyer, family firm. Nice guy. He and Reuben were just like that—best friends. If you like, I’ll call him up from right here. He’ll give you a few minutes, I’m sure.”
Eric Monsanto did more than that. He told Maria to invite Justin to come to his house for a drink. Eric’s wife and children were away, and his office work would not detain him.
Her hand over the receiver, Maria conveyed the invitation. Justin nodded acceptance, and at six-fifteen he made his way to 18 Edgewater Road. He walked to the front door of the imposing brick house and rang the doorbell. A trim, dark-haired man opened the door. He stared hard at Justin for a moment and then invited him in and, with a friendly smile, offered him a chair.
“Do you drink?”
“A beer would be great, sir.”
Justin looked about the large wood-paneled room with all the photographs. He squinted his eyes and adjusted his glasses. Might one of those pictures have Reuben Castle in it?
He accepted the beer, and spoke engagingly, if, after the second beer, a little discursively—he was in no hurry to get back to Alpha Chi—about life at South Bend and his anxiety to turn in a good story on Castle for the first fall issue of The Observer. “A lot of people think Senator Castle is going to run for president next year. Have you stayed in touch?”
“Well, sort of. When he went into the army, I went into the navy, and there wasn’t much communication between the two services. Then, as your research no doubt tells you, Reuben—Senator Castle—went to law school at Urbana. I went to Harvard. And of course he didn’t stay with the law. The call of politics!”
“Sir, are you a Democratic member—Sorry. I mean, are you involved in the senator’s election campaigns?”
“Oh, no. I…have loved Reuben dearly, but I’m a Republican, so he knows not to come around at election time.”
“Did you spend a lot of time together when you were undergraduates? I know you were both on the newspaper, but—socially?”
“Oh, yes. We were very close.”
“Did he have a steady girlfriend?”
Monsanto’s hesitation was noticeable. “Yes. But that was back then, and as we both know, he is married, I hope happily—”
“You don’t know Miss America? I mean, Mrs. Castle?”
“We’ve just met, that’s all. They don’t spend much time in this neck of the woods.”
“His college girlfriend, are you in touch with her?”
“No. Not at all. She went to Paris in senior year to be with her father. Her name was Leborcier. She was a Canadian—I mean, she was born in Canada. In Letellier—that’s just north of here a stretch. In fact she went to the convent school in Letellier as a girl…. No, I don’t know what happened.”
Justin turned away.
“Looking for the washroom?”
Justin shook his head.
His host went and got himself another drink and, for Justin, another beer. “How long are you going to be in town? If you’ll be here Friday, you can come with me for a little fishing. I have a nice duck blind over at Devil’s Lake where we could spend the night.”
CHAPTER 35
Letellier, September 1991
At the second crossroads in Letellier, Justin looked hard at the signpost and took the westerly road, arriving a few minutes later at Saint Joseph’s Convent. It was nearly eleven-thirty. He rang the bell and a nun emerged.
“May I come in, Sister?”
“Yes, young man.” She closed the door and led him into a neat anteroom with faded curtains and slipcovers.
“Sister, I am trying to find information about someone who was a student at the convent school here in the ’50s.”
“What is her name? And what is your business?”
“Her name is Henrietta Leborcier. Mine is Justin Durban. I’m a student at Notre Dame, but I come from Grand Forks, and this summer I’ve been working for a lawyer named Eric Monsanto.” He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out the card Monsanto had given him the night before.
The sister glanced at the card and returned it.
Justin went on without waiting for her to speak. “We are trying to locate Ms. Leborcier because there is a gift, a small legacy from someone who knew her at the University of North Dakota. Mr. Monsanto was a friend of hers back then, though he has lost touch with her, and he says she attended school at the convent here. In fact she was born in Letellier.”
“You may not be aware that our school is closed. It merged with one in Montreal.”
“So you have no records here, Sister?”
“We have some things. If you will accompany me, we can go to the student index file.” She rose and walked unevenly down the high-ceilinged, faded hallway, taking out her key ring to open a door.
“This was the mother superior’s office.”
Inside, she lifted a tray down from a shelf overhead. “Leborcier.” She withdrew a card. “Henrietta Leborcier. Born 1948 in Letellier. Daughter of Raymond and Esther Leborcier. Baptized and confirmed at Saint Anne’s by Father François Lully.”
She raised her head. “God bless him, he is an old man now, but he still writes to us regularly.”
“He is no longer in Letellier?”
“No. He was moved to a parish in Winnipeg some years ago, and he has since retired. The current pastor is Father Daniel.”
“Do you think he’d let me look at the parish records?”
“I’m sure he would. Do you know Letellier at all? No? Well, drive back the way you came, until you get to First Avenue—that’s the main street, running north–south. Turn left onto First Avenue, and you’ll soon come to Saint Anne’s.” Justin asked if he might see the Saint Joseph chapel.
“Of course, just come with me.”
She opened the vaulted wooden door. There was stained glass in Victorian effusion behind the altar at the far end. Then came the nuns’ pews. In the front were the pews of the girls. Three rows on his left, facing three rows on his right. He could imagine as many as a hundred girls seated, or kneeling, there. He knelt at the prie-dieu in the vestibule and uttered a brief but earnest prayer to Saint Justin Martyr to guide him.
At Saint Anne’s, he rang the bell at the rectory. “Is Father Daniel in?” he asked the woman who opened the door.
“Yes. But he is resting. What can I do for you, young man?”
“I need to speak to him. I was sent here by the sister at Saint Joseph’s.”
He heard a man’s voice in the back. “Let him in, Claudette. I am fully awake.”
Justin entered the dusky living room. A middle-aged man in shirtsleeves took his hand and beckoned him to the sofa.
“I am Justin Durban from Grand Forks, Father. I am a student at Notre Dame, but this summer I’ve been working for Mr. Eric Monsanto. I am going to be a lawyer myself.” He handed the priest Monsanto’s card.
“What can I do for you, Justin, if you’ll permit me to use your Christian name—at least until you become a judge!”
“Thank you. By all means, Father. We are trying to locate a woman named Henrietta Leborcier. There is a legacy from someone who was a friend of hers at the University of North Dakota. Mr. Monsanto knew she had attended school at the convent here. I went to Saint Joseph’s, and there is a record of her attendance, from 1953 to 1959, and again in 1962, but nothing more. No record of relatives in the area or anything like that. The sister suggested I go to you.”
“Well, let’s see. Father Lully would have been the pastor throughout that time, but for myself I don’t recall ever hearing the name Leborcier. We’ll see if there is anything here. We do not keep a general directory of parishioners, but we have a record of baptisms, first communions, confirmations, weddings, and funera
ls. Come into my study.”
He brought down onto a long table covered with green felt three heavy leather-bound volumes. “Here are books that reach back to the 1940s. Each volume holds records for about ten years. Why don’t you just sit down and examine them? I wish I could say that there was some sort of alphabetized index. Can I have Claudette bring you a cup of tea?”
Justin’s face brightened. “Father, could I be very rude? I wonder if you have a cookie, or an apple? I did not stop for lunch.”
“Of course!”
Claudette was in the room, dusting. And listening. “I’ll fetch something, Father.”
A few minutes later Justin was munching a cookie as he turned the pages, page after page, without finding “Leborcier.”
“All baptisms would be recorded, Father?”
“In principle, though sometimes if we’re very busy we might slip up. You said that Saint Joseph’s records her as having been baptized here?”
“Yes, but they didn’t have a date. We’re just assuming it would have been in 1948 or ’49, since she was born in September 1948.”
“Well, just keep looking, Justin. That’s what lawyers have to do much of the time.”
Justin began to wonder why he was turning pages that took him into the 1960s, but he resolved to continue until he had at least finished the third volume.
He had reached November 1969. On the second page for the month, he read, “November 18. Married. Reuben Hardwick Castle, Henrietta Seringhaus Leborcier.”
His eyes froze, and his heart stopped.
The two signatures were there. He recognized his mother’s script. He was unfamiliar with that of…his father. With his right hand he reached for his pocket camera and snapped a picture.
He paused a good while. Then: “Father, where would the actual wedding certificate be?”
“It is taken away by the principals. We have just these registry notations. Of course, the civil record, the signed marriage license, would have been sent up to Winnipeg, to the Vital Statistics Agency. Perhaps they would have a mailing address, you are wondering? But surely those addresses would be obsolete. This was more than twenty years ago.”
“Thank you, Father, but I think with what I have here—what I have written down—we can track her current address.” He thought to add a touch of drama. “If she is still living, of course.”
“Would you care for more cookies? Or you could have an apple.”
“Thank you so much.” Justin extended his hand to Father Daniel and nodded to thank Claudette, who was busy mending a book.
It was more than an hour to Grand Forks. Nightfall. He considered going to Mr. Monsanto, but as he approached the highway exit, he decided to keep it all to himself. Keep it all to himself? Bewilderment overcame him. Why would…How could…He improvised answers to his questions, and discarded them. Ten miles beyond Grand Forks he impulsively pulled over to the shoulder thinking, momentarily, of returning to Mr. Monsanto after all. But restlessness took over, and the impulse to move, to drive the car, to push himself. To sleep was out of the question. He set out for South Bend.
But that was 700 miles away. Saint Paul was in the right direction. He reached the outskirts of the city at two in the morning, and pulled in at a motel and slept deeply.
CHAPTER 36
Grand Forks, September 1991
Eric Monsanto woke up at midnight, restless. His mind trained on the young man who had visited him that evening. Justin Durban.
“Duhrbahn,” he had pronounced his surname—French style. Monsanto wondered what the French connection was. He could hardly supply such details, having no knowledge of his own about the visitor. He had agreed to speak with the kid—acting instinctively. He would agree, as a matter of course, to meet with any young man or woman who was on a journalistic assignment. Why should he know more about his visitor than just that—that he was a student journalist at Notre Dame? That hardly made Eric Monsanto an expert on young Justin Durban. Without even pausing in his thought stream, he said to himself out loud, tapping his middle finger adamantly on his head, “That boy is the son of Reuben Castle.”
Could he be mistaken?
No. Not possible. The looks, the build, the blondness, the smile—even the manner. Though Reuben was more aggressive. Reuben Castle simply wanted—always—to win; prevail; get in there first. This kid was less direct than his father would have been, engaging at age twenty-one in an interview with a stranger. But the intense focus was the same.
Reuben Castle. Mix in Henrietta Leborcier—so pretty, blue-eyed, tall, appealing, adoring—and you had Justin Durban.
Rico Monsanto had spent a fair amount of time worrying about Henri, back in senior year at UND. He had had that ugly—and revealing—scene with Reuben at the Hop See. It was then that the estrangement came. Not formally—they continued to work together on the Dakota Student, and Eric continued to serve on the Student Council, of which Reuben was chairman. No, not formally, but essentially.
Eric had at first been disappointed and hurt that Henrietta hadn’t written to him again from Paris. There had been only the solitary letter from her, professing concern for Reuben, which had led to the confrontation at the Hop See. That night, back at home, he wrote to Henri, giving her the news, that Reuben had decided…to step away, to abandon Henri and, of course, the child.
But when he thought about it, Eric could understand Henri’s decision to sever ties with everyone at the university, even—maybe especially—Reuben’s closest friend, himself. He could understand her finding it embarrassing to stay in touch with him, the single person who knew the whole story of the romance. Eric Monsanto was the only other person in Grand Forks who knew, when she pulled away and went to Paris, that Henri was pregnant.
Eric knew almost nothing about young Justin Durban—only that he was evidently a student at Notre Dame and an editor on the student paper. Whatever that paper was called—he forgot. Eric closed his eyes and thought back to the fall of 1969. More than twenty years ago. The grown-up kid who had called on him this evening was surely the child of the duck-blind liaison. The child, Rico reflected, that Henri had refused to abort. He forced his memory back to the details of that harried week in late October and early November. He—good old Rico—had been conscripted to carry messages back and forth. It was he, at Reuben’s urgent request, who sped off to Minneapolis to interview the kind, efficient doctor who would perform the operation discreetly, and then returned to Grand Forks and described the procedure to Henrietta. For his pains Henrietta had professed shock that Rico would even suggest so obscene an idea: she would not even discuss the matter. It was to Rico that Henri then confided that what she wished was to be married—by a priest. By her family priest. It was Rico who had done the legal research. In Manitoba, he told her, the application for a marriage license had to be filed at least twenty-four hours before the license could be issued.
That flurry had gone on for a week, culminating in the dinner the three undergraduates shared, a bottle of wine discreetly concealed by a napkin. Eric remembered Reuben telling Henri, his voice low but easily heard, how much he loved her. She had replied that she loved him deeply and wanted a lifetime with him. The appropriate plan immediately suggested itself: she would go to Paris, continue her college work, have the child there, and stay with her father until Reuben had graduated. She said she had an idea or two and would talk to both of them about it in just a few days.
But she didn’t do so.
One week later, after a few beers, Reuben said something about having gone with Henri to Letellier, but he clammed up when Rico started to ask questions.
Now, twenty-two years later, this…young man comes to Grand Forks. What was he up to?
At his office early, Eric set out to confirm, or dispel, his suspicions.
His resources for finding people were considerable. He had spent professional time tracking down elusive boys and girls, men and women, grandfathers and grandmothers, establishing whether they were alive or dead, verif
ying true identities. Sometimes he was acting as a defense attorney, shielding his client from misidentification. More often his responsibility was to establish which of several claimants was entitled to a bequest in a will.
His leads in today’s investigation would be enough—provided the young man had told the truth about his name and where he was going to school.
Eric telephoned one of the sleuths he frequently used. He found Nick Finlay at his office in Chicago.
“The guy I want looked into, he has to have been born in Paris. I mean, if he is who I think he is. Because we know the mother went to Paris to stay with her father when the child came. And he would have been born in June 1970.”
“Is that a date you’re assuming?”
“Well, I have a pretty good idea of it, Nick, unless the mother decided to establish a new birth cycle. I mean, I know—like for sure—when the pregnancy began, which was September 1969. Add nine months, and you get June 1970.”
“And the kid—”
“We don’t have to call him that, Nick. He told me his name. Justin. Justin Durban. If he lied about that, then we have a real investigation ahead of us. But say he is Justin Durban. And say he is at Notre Dame. And say he’s on the staff of the student newspaper—those leads should get you started.”
“Right. I’ll get back to you when I have something.”
The fall semester at Notre Dame hadn’t yet begun, and members of the university administration were hard to reach. So it was the following week before Finlay accomplished his search of the admissions data and called back.
“Yep. That’s him. Born in Paris, May 6, 1970. He lives with his mother in Boulder, Colorado. She’s a librarian—her name is Henrietta Leborcier Durban. The student’s home address is the same as his mother’s, 7 Allenton Place, Apartment 7A.”
What would he do now? Eric asked himself.
CHAPTER 37
Boulder, September 1991
Amy Parrish dropped by her own house to change clothes and then drove to Henrietta’s apartment for dinner. “Sorry about the delay,” she said. “John has the new issue of Auto News, and the new Buick is on the cover, and dear John is transported.”
The Rake Page 13
