by Carol Coffey
Brendan touched his friend’s arm but did not speak. He could give Jonathan no assurance that the reunion he hoped for would be as he imagined.
“What’s next?” asked Jonathan.
Brendan exhaled loudly and frowned as he remembered his father’s remark that he might have to return to Attica to decipher which of the information was true and which was deliberately false to force him to return. He did not think he could endure seeing the man again and hoped that whatever leads he did have would suffice totake Jonathan home.
“We have to start with your maternal grandfather and work our way forward,” he replied.
“Wilson?” Jonathan asked doubtfully.
“Yes, Wilson.”
Chapter 31
Brendan stood alone in the silent garden watching the sun set slowly over Dover town. He shaded his eyes as bright rays reflected off the town’s orange-tiled roofs and glinted off the leaves of the large oak trees in the park beneath him. He had spent the whole day going over everything Jonathan remembered and had written a list of the leads he would begin his computer search with.
He crept into the empty kitchen and poured himself a coffee before turning on Coleen’s computer in her tiny office at the front of the house. He quickly wrote a list of the possible links to Jonathan’s family beginning with his grandfather. He typed Wilson+ politician + election + 1969 but found no matches. He tried Wilson + politician but again came up blank.
He searched for politicians from that era whose names began with ‘W’ and found two possibilities but one of the men had three sons but no daughters and the other was childless. He sighed loudly and placed his chin on his hand as he tried to decide what his next move would be.
He cleared his previous search and typed in Jonathan + author + Pennsylvania and found sixty-three matches, most of which were reviews of books on the works of three current authors from the state. He searched for photographs of the men, hoping to see a man who resembled Jonathan Doe, but found that the authors were all much younger than Jonathan’s father would be now.
He blew out and tried Jonathan + author + Pennsylvania + missingwhich narrowed the search to twenty-six hits. This time, the newspaper articles were reviews of one book by an author by the name of Jonathan Thomas.
He clicked on apiece from The Philadelphia Inquirer and quickly scanned the review of the 1970 book which was calledLost and was reported to be a fictional novel about a writer’s search for his missing son. A side note reported that the author’s own son had recently died in an accident. Brendan leant back and felt a tingling sensation run up his spine as adrenalin rushed through his system. He scrolled down and stared at the black-and-white photo of the writer at the bottom of the text. Jonathan Thomas was a tall, thin, bespectacled man of about forty with a thick mop of straight blonde hair and a shy smile. The editorial did not give an address but Brendan instinctively knew he was onto something.
“That has to be him,” he said aloud.
He searched for other articles and read about the writer being a widower with two children and how the death of his young son had a detrimental effect on his wellbeing which Brendan assumed was polite 1970’s code for “he went crazy”. Brendan searched for works by the author after Lostbut found that Jonathan Thomas had not published any more books after Lost which, according to the reviews, sold hundreds of thousands of copies in North America and was also widely sold in Europe.
He opened an article by the same newspaper whose headline alarmed him. It was written two months after the review of Lost and again simply referred to the writer as being born in Pennsylvania but gave no town address. Brendan read the report which listed Jonathan’s maternal grandfather as one Senator William Chapman and not Senator Wilson as Rafael Martinez had suggested. He groaned aloud as he finished reading the two-page report and pushed his chair back abruptly away from the desk. He stood open-mouthed and shook his head.
“Oh, Jonathan,” he said sadly.“So that’s why no one was looking for you.”
Brendan stood and stared out of the office window for a moment. He decided that he would not tell Jonathan what he had just read. It would be better if his sister told him. Brendan returned to the computer and forced himself to sit down and try to find the last lead he had on his friend.
“Please let there be a Cassie Thomas. Please let there be someone out there waiting for you.”
He typed in Jonathan’s sister’s name but again got no matches. He briefly wondered if she had married and searched for a marriage record but found none. He then searched for deaths for Cassie Thomas, daughter of Jonathan Thomas, and was relieved that no matches flashed onto his screen. He checked the White Pages directory and then suddenly realised that her full name would probably be Cassandra. He typed in her full name of Cassandra Thomas and found there were three-hundred and twenty-two people by that name in the US. He narrowed the search to Pennsylvania and found fifteen women by that name, eight of whom lived in the Philadelphia region. Brendan decided to focus on these women first. He took the cordless phone from the kitchen and dialled the first number. The phone rang eight times before a sleepy-sounding woman answered it. Brendan swallowed and asked if she was Cassie Thomas, daughter of the writer Jonathan,who once had a brother also named Jonathan. The woman angrily said no, he had the wrong woman and told him she was a night nurse and that he had woken her from her sleep before she went on duty at nine.
Brendan looked at the clock on the corner of the computer screen. It was eighto’clock.He sighed and went into the kitchen for another coffee which he brought into the garden to drink under the darkening sky. He could feel the energy flow through his body. His quest was coming to an end, he could feel it. He just hoped it would be the ending he had imagined it would be. He already knew from the newspaper articles that it would not be as Jonathan had hoped it would be but if Cassie was alive – if, indeed, she existed at all – he felt it would still be okay, it would still be a homecoming of a sort for his friend.
Ten minutes later, Brendan returned to Coleen’s office and dialled the second number on his list which was answered by the husband of this Cassandra Thomas. Verifying that it was the woman’s marriage name that was Thomas, he made his excuses to her husband and got off the line to move down his list as quickly as he could. Three more Cassandra Thomases were married women who were known by their marriage name of Thomas. Two more women were recently deceased and it had taken him ages to get off the phone as their grieving elderly husbands poured out their hearts to him.
By ten, Brendan had eight names yet to ring. Two numbers went directly to voice mail but he hung up rather than leave a stammering, confused message and made a note to ring back later.
He stood again and stared out of the window, wondering if there was an easier way to get through the last six numbers. He began to search through the addresses to see which of them would have views of the Appalachian Mountains and hoped that Jonathan was right about the geography of his home. He took an atlas from Coleen’s bookcase and opened the page on Pennsylvania and compared the terrain of the region to the addresses of the remaining six Cassie Thomases in the White Pages. Three of the women lived near the lake at Erie in the far west of the state which was two hours away from the Alleghenyplateau, which was the nearest section of the mountain range in the area and probably not that visible from their lakeside homes. He checked the remaining three women who lived near enough to have views of the Poconos, which was the name given to the section of the Appalachians in Eastern Pennsylvania.
He dialled the first number and held his breath as a middle-aged woman answered. He explained what he was looking for and held his breath while she said that, yes, she did indeed have a brother called Jonathan and offered to put him on the phone. Brendan sighed and disappointedly told her that she was not the Cassie Thomas he was looking for. He dialled the next number and a stressed-sounding woman quickly informed him that he had the wrong number and put the phone down on him.
He looked at the next numbe
r on his list and for the first time noticed that the name of the townland that the house was in. Wilsonville.
“Bastard!” he said realising that his father had probably remembered the name of the town Jonathan had been taken fromall along and had deliberately misled him by pretending it was the name of Jonathan’s grandfather.
He took a deep breath and dialled the number which rang about ten times before a woman answered. Brendan began by asking if she was Cassie Thomas. The woman gave him a curt “No” and waited in silence for him to speak.
“Well, can I speak with Cassie Thomas?” he asked.
“What do you want?” the acerbic voice replied.
Brendan sighed and wondered if he was speaking to Nella, the sharp-tongued childhood friend Jonathan had told him about.
“Who is this?” he asked, hopeful.
“Never you mind!” she snapped.
“I . . . I have information she might be interested in . . . about her brother.”
Brendan could almost feel the woman stiffen on the other end of the phone.
“What information?” she asked.
“I’d rather tell her directly.”
“Wait one moment. I’ll get her,” the woman replied brusquely.
Brendan listened as the woman’s heels clicked off the floor as she walked away and the sound faded down what sounded like a tiled corridor. He waited for a moment and then could hear the click-clicking of a pair of shoes followed by a rhythmic tapping sound which got louder and louder until he heard a woman speak.
“Hello?” a soft voice said nervously.
“Is this Cassie Thomas?” he asked.
“Yes, it is,” she answered.
“Are you the daughter of the writer Jonathan Thomas?”
“Yes, I am. What is this about?” She spoke in a voice so soft that Brendan had to press the receiver into his ear to hear her.
“And your grandfather was the senator William Chapman?”
“Yes,” she said hesitantly.
“I hope you don’t mind, ma’am, but I have a couple more questions for you before I can tell you why I am calling.”
“Yes?”
“Did you have a brother Jonathan?”
A couple of moments of silence passed and Brendan thought that Cassie Thomas had hung up on him.
“Ma’am?”
“I’m here,” she whispered.
He could hear the crackle in her voice.
“Yes, I did. He died. A long time ago.”
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you one more question? It’s a bit more personal.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Are you blind?”
Another silence deafened Brendan as he waited for her answer.
“Yes,” she finally replied.“Yes, I am.”
Chapter 32
Guido Diaz listened to Brendan as he pleaded with him on the phone to wake Pilar who had just gone to bed following a double shift at the shelter.
“No way, man, she’s tired out. Working double shifts and helping Isabel with the new baby. You can wait until tomorrow. I’m heading into work myself now.”
“Guido, can you at least leave a note at her bed asking her to call me urgently?” He knew that Pilar, like himself, often woke during the night and found it hard to return to sleep.
“Okay,” Guido said and put the receiver down.
Brendan raced to the computer and searched for road directions from Dover to Wilsonville. He shook his head as he printed out the route along NJ-15.
“Poor bastard. You were just over an hour away from home,” he said to himself as he planned the journey which would take his friend back to where he belonged.
Brendan climbed the stairs to Eileen’s bedroom. A light shone from underneath her door, suggesting that his sister was still awake. He knocked softly and put his ear to the door, listening as she rushed around the room opening and closing the closet doors loudly before she answered.
“What were you doing?” he grinned when his sister opened the door, red-faced and panting.
Eileen smiled shyly.“Reading,” she whispered.
“You’re not still hiding books?” he said incredulously.
He had thought that Eileen and Frank had sorted everything out and that his sister was now leading her life as she pleased.
“He has good days and bad days. Now that he is getting better, the bad days are starting to become more common.”
She beckoned for him to come in.
Brendan sat and told Eileen the news and watched as her face revealed a myriad of emotions from happiness that Jonathan’s family were real to fear thathe would now obviously return to them. He told her his plan to reunite her love with his family within hours and watched with alarm as the colour drained from her face which only moments before had a healthy pink glow.
“Eileen, he wants to go home. You can’t stand in the way of that,” he said.
Eileen nodded slowly. “I know,” she said sadly.
He watched as she creased her brow and bit down on her lip nervously.
“But, I’m coming with you,” she said. “I want to see him go home.”
Brendan stared at her for a moment. “Okay then, but be ready. I’m waiting for Pilar to phone me. You won’t be allowed to drive on motorways yet so she’ll need to drive us there. It could be in the early hours of the morning. Jonathan . . . his dream is to arrive at dawn. I want it to be as he imagined.”
“We’ll take my car,” Eileen said loudly, startling Brendan.
“Why?” he asked.
Eileen shrugged. “Pilar always drives us everywhere. My car is in better shape. It’ll make the drive more comfortable.”
Brendan narrowed his eyes at his sister, wondering what she was scheming. “All right,” he said as he let himself out of her room.
He walked quietly down the stairs and met his mother coming up. She looked down at her shoes as she tried to pass him on the narrow staircase.
“Mam,” he said.
Patricia did not look at him but slowly raised her small grey eyes and fixed them on the wall of the stairwell.
“Are we going to talk about whatever is going on between us?” he said. “You haven’t spoken to me since we left Attica.”
Patricia looked briefly at him but then turned her gaze downwards and stared at the red-patterned carpet on the stairs.
When she didn’t answer, Brendan shifted uneasily and tried to think of something to break the silence. It amazed him that after all their years of separation his mother’s silence still had the ability to make him feel so uneasy.
“We found Jonathan’s home. Eileen and I are taking him there when Pilar wakes up.”
Patricia did not appear surprised by the news and remained in her usual emotionless state.
“I knew you could do it . . . but . . . I feel for Eileen . . . she will be broken-hearted,” she said flatly.
“Is that what is wrong with you, Mam?Did my father break your heart?”
Patricia blushed and slowly moved her eyes upward to meet his gaze. “I am the way I am for many reasons,” she replied quietly.
Brendan sighed and moved out of her way to let her pass.
“Brendan?” she said when she had climbed halfway up the steep stairwell.
He turned and looked up at her. “Yes?”
“It’s a good thing you’ve done for that man. You should be very proud of yourself,” she said.
Brendan searched her face, hardly able to believe she had said those words.
And, as though she knew what he was thinking, she added, “I’m proud of you.”
She turned quickly and climbed the rest of the stairsout of view.
Brendanphoned Jonathan and told him to wait for him in the living room as there was something he wanted to tell him. He put the phone down and left for the shelter. On the way he pondered just how he would break the news to his friend.
