"Marcel called me," he says breathlessly. "How are you, Danny?"
He takes her hand and holds it to his chest before she can reply.
"Let's pray."
He says a short prayer and while he does, Danny's eyes find mine.
I return her look but she is suddenly gone.
She is asleep, as the pain pump has delivered another dose through her IV. I study the fine blue veins of her eyelids, then take Dania back. Father Bjorn steps away.
Then he lays a hand on my shoulder.
"Thank you, Michael."
I reach up and touch his hand.
Words are unnecessary, still I want to tell him about Jana. He should hear it from me.
I turn but he is gone.
With the baby in my arms, and a silent room all around me, I back into the visitor’s chair and find that it is a rocking chair. I breathe against my daughter's hair. Her head carries a smell like no other in the world.
I hold her, hold on tight, just me between her and the world.
Just me, and I am a better man for it.
EPILOGUE
Two months pass by. At last, an answer. There will be a new baby.
When we meet for coffee in his diocesan office, Father Bjorn is looking like a man who has spent too many nights waiting up for the adolescent who’s stayed out beyond curfew. Having a son who has been thrice-convicted for first degree murder will do that times one thousand. Under the best conditions, parenting an adolescent is an exercise guaranteed to exhaust and drain even the toughest player. Parenting a serial killer while serving in loco parentis to an entire parish must be somewhere on the road to sainthood for Roman Catholics. We’ll see what the Pope decides to do for Father Bjorn—whether he’ll recognize the merit and grit of our priest and commence the search for two miracles or whether his sainthood will be the other kind, the kind that isn’t celebrated, the kind that happens once a month through prison Plexiglas. Time will tell, I am thinking as my priest pours our coffee.
“This time I called you,” I mention to him. “I called you because in my heart of hearts I am struggling with a personal problem involving us both.”
“Both, meaning you and I?”
“Yes. You see, Father, your son impregnated my wife, Danny, when he assaulted her.”
Father Bjorn slumps in his chair, closes his eyes, and mutters a long prayer. Then he looks up at me, meeting my eyes again.
“How can I make this right, Michael?”
“Father, it isn’t your wrong to make right. So you can’t.”
“But still—”
“No, let me tell you why I’m here. It’s not about guilt or responsibility or sin or repentance—none of that. The simple fact is, your son has made you a grandfather. A grandfather to my wife’s son.”
“Sweet Jesus!”
“Yes. I will be the stepfather to my wife’s son. I don’t know how else to conceive of this except by the common terms we all use in our everyday language.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” he exclaims, tears in his eyes. He produces a folded handkerchief and wipes at his eyes.
“But we are going to want this child christened. And we will dedicate him to the Church. And we will want you to perform the service. Would you be able to do this thing for us?”
He shuffles his feet uncomfortably as he struggles to right himself in a world that must be swaying on all four corners for him. I am struck: it is too much at once for this dear man. His personal tragedy continues to lap at him, his youthful sin refusing to extinguish.
“Of course I will do it. The only reservation being that I first go to the Church and seek its guidance.”
“How long will that take?”
“Months. Maybe a year.”
“We wanted to have him christened sometime in his first ninety days.”
“Maybe you should select a different priest.”
“Maybe we should.”
We both sit there, watching the cloud of motes dance between us in the morning shafts of sunlight separating his chair from my own.
“But here’s the saving grace for us all. We are going to list me on the birth certificate as the child’s father. He will take my name, Michael Gresham. He will grow up as my son because I will not see him suffer even a jot or a tittle of shame for what his biological father has done. That slate will be wiped clean. There will no longer be any reason for you to be known as the child’s grandfather and there will be no reason for the child to know you as his grandfather. The thread will be severed along with his umbilical cord and it will be concluded.”
“That would be the best thing.”
“We’ll be lying on his birth certificate. And you will forgive the perjury of his mother and I in making this choice?”
“Consider it forgiven.”
“There’s a world of theology at work in this.”
“More than I can comprehend,” says my priest. “It overwhelms me and leaves me shaken, unable to contend.”
“Then I’m doing the right thing by claiming biological fatherhood.”
Again we study the dust floating across the light.
“One thing,” he begins slowly. “How are you sure the child really isn’t your own offspring?”
“You’ve seen those ads on TV? The ads for erectile dysfunction?”
“ED?”
“Yep. That’s me. And my prescription was awaiting refill at the time this child must have been conceived. Which was the exact day your son raped my wife.”
“Sweet Jesus! Why did I ask?”
“Because you’re a good man and you would have guided me free of all this if you could have. But you can’t and I can’t. What’s done is done. It’s our work now to confirm and protect innocence no matter the price.”
“Then I join you in that. I will have no claim on your boy.”
“That’s what I really came here to know.”
“Well, you have my joinder in this.”
“Your lineage will end with you, Father.”
“So be it. As it turns out, it’s a win for the world.”
Now it’s my turn to sit uncomfortably, my mission concluded, my son’s genetic code interrupted and changed by my will.
A peace spreads over me, then, and I am calm as I visualize the double helix of a DNA chromosome morphing into something it was not.
Rebirth.
It always begins with us.
THE END
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ALSO BY JOHN ELLSWORTH
THADDEUS MURFEE SERIES
The Defendants
Beyond a Reasonable Death
Attorney at Large
Chase, the Bad Baby
Defending Turquoise
The Mental Case
Unspeakable Prayers
The Girl Who Wrote The New York Times Bestseller
The Trial Lawyer (A Small Death)
The Near Death Experience
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Michael Gresham: Secrets Girls Keep
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Ellsworth practiced law while based in Chicago.
For thirty years John defended criminal clients across the United States. He has defended cases ranging from shoplifting to First Degree Murder to RICO to Tax Evasion, and has gone to jury trial on hundreds. His first book, The Defendants, was published in January, 2014. John is presently at work on his fourteenth legal thriller, which, it is hoped, will be published before May, 2016.
Reception to John’s books has been phenomenal; more than 500,000 have been downloaded in 24 months. All are Amazon best-sellers.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First off, thanks to Terry Cheryl Hopton, my editor, for an incredible job this time out. She makes me a better writer and for that I owe a huge debt of gratitude. Thank you, Cheryl.
Thanks to the Chicago Police Department and CSI teams for their knowledge, willingness to help, and cooperation. There is no greater help to a writer than the source itself.
Thanks to the physicians and medical examiners who guided me in the medical aspects of death by garroting and interruption of carotid blood flow, especially Robert Corish, M.D., and Roger Torres, M.D.
Special thanks to my wife, Debra Ellsworth, for her reading, comments, re-reading and an endless supply of coffee while the fingers are flying and the keyboard is melting down.
Special thanks to my daughter Adriane for all the pictures and videos of our grandchildren and to her husband John for his ministry and love. It all keeps me going.
Special thanks to my daughter RJ for her Deadwood album and the incredible lead vocals that had me listening again and again while these words met the page.
To all my incredible readers and those who reach out to me with their kindness and comments, thank you, especially.
It is my hope you all enjoy this book.
I loved writing it.
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— John Ellsworth (March 2016)
Copyright © 2016 by John Ellsworth
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book, like all my books, is purely fictional. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.
REVIEWS
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Table of Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Epilogue
Also by John Ellsworth
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Email Signup
Copyright
Reviews
Legal Thriller: Michael Gresham: Secrets Girls Keep: A Courtroom Drama (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 2) Page 24
