by Brenda Novak
“There are other considerations.”
“Like...”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it. Can we finish this game before you go?”
Bruiser shook his head. “You’re so damn stubborn. Ellie’s special, Hudson. Don’t let her get away.”
He thought the same, but she demanded too much. “I thought you were leery of her—afraid she might be trying to trap me.”
“I changed my mind. She’s one of the most sincere people I’ve ever met.”
“We’re better off as friends,” Hudson insisted, but it made him sad to say that, because he knew Bruiser was right. She’d make a great choice for a life partner. He’d never known anyone he liked as well. And she was already pregnant with his child. She just deserved more—more love and trust and devotion—than he could ever give.
And he was afraid if he let her get too close, she’d realize he wasn’t worth loving after all.
* * *
The sound of someone banging on the front door dragged Hudson from his sleep. That wasn’t a sound he heard often. He lived behind a security fence, which kept most unwanted visitors away. But he couldn’t remember closing the gate after the fund-raiser last night.
Actually, no, he hadn’t closed it. He’d left it open for Bruiser and hadn’t even mentioned to Bruiser that he should take care of it on his way out.
When the banging continued, Hudson wondered if the gardeners needed something. They were the only people he could imagine having a reason to bother him this early. It was only eight. Maybe they couldn’t rouse Maggie—or she was out, doing the shopping or whatever.
Intent on stopping the noise before it disturbed Ellie, he rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweatpants.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he muttered, taking the stairs two at a time.
What Hudson could see of his visitor told him it wasn’t one of the gardeners. The tall man who waited on his stoop had to be in his midseventies. He was wearing a flannel shirt buttoned to the top, his gray hair slicked back as if he’d made an attempt to look presentable.
Who was this? The guy seemed nervous, kept fidgeting and glancing over his shoulder.
Some sports fan had tracked him down, Hudson figured. Perhaps one of the locals had bragged about having him in town and had given up the location of his home, most likely at the bar last night. This guy looked as if he lived in a bottle.
“What can I do for you?” he asked as he opened the door.
The man’s rheumy eyes swept over Hudson—taking in his mussed hair, his lack of a shirt, his sweats and then his bare feet before rising to meet his eyes.
Whoever it was, he’d lived a hard life, Hudson decided. He had a scar on his cheek, was far too thin and reeked of cigarette smoke. Had he been drinking, too? Was that what’d given him the courage to approach the house and knock as if he had a right to barge in on someone who already received far too much attention from strangers?
“Hudson.” It was a statement that seemed to stand in for “we meet at last.”
Hudson dismissed his first guess about the stranger being a sports fan. This old man had a specific purpose in being here, and it wasn’t to get an autograph. “Yes?”
“My name is Cort—Cort Matisson. I’m sorry to...to surprise you like this, but...do you have a minute? I really need to talk to you.”
An impulse to back away and slam and lock the door shot through Hudson—which was odd, since this man had no chance of overpowering him and didn’t seem threatening in a physical sense. “I’m sorry. I’m not in the habit of inviting total strangers in. If there’s something you want from me, a donation or...or to ask me to speak at an event, you’ll need to reach out to my agent. You can find his contact information online. I go over all requests with him. That would be the appropriate way to handle something like this.” Not showing up, unannounced and uninvited, at his house...
The old man made no move to leave. “I don’t think you want me to contact your agent.”
A chill rolled down Hudson’s spine. “Because...”
He patted the front of his shirt, where he had what looked to be a pack of cigarettes. Hudson could tell he was dying to light up, but he wisely left those cigarettes in his pocket. “This is a personal matter.”
Hudson had the creeping sensation that whatever this man had to tell him wasn’t going to be something he cared to hear, and yet he said, “You’re going to have to give me some idea of what this is about, or we won’t be having that conversation. We won’t be having any conversation.”
The man seemed unsure about how to continue. He glanced back at the circular drive, where he must’ve parked whatever vehicle he’d driven, as if he wished he could just go. Then he grimaced and scratched his neck.
“Well?” Hudson prompted.
“I’m the one who left you under that hedge,” he said.
21
“How’d you find my house?” Hudson had let Cort Matisson in, but he hadn’t invited him to sit. They were standing in the living room, facing off over the giant ottoman.
Visibly uncomfortable, Matisson swung his keys around and around one calloused finger. “Wasn’t hard. I’ve followed you in the news. Saw the report when that pizza deliveryman turned you over to the authorities. Know every detail and stat of your career since you started playing ball. I even read about your volunteer work with the boys at New Horizons.”
“That’s how you found me.”
“Yeah. A year ago, an article came out that said you’d bought a place in this area, so I knew folks around here would be able to tell me where you live.”
Hudson couldn’t help feeling betrayed by the locals. This, when he was just getting comfortable in Silver Springs? When he’d tried to contribute so much to the school? “Why would anyone give you that information?”
“I told them you hired me to deliver a load of firewood, but I lost your address.” He hitched a thumb over one bony shoulder, gesturing at the driveway—if Hudson’s fireplace hadn’t been in the way. “Wood’s in the back of my truck, so it looked believable. Don’t be mad over it. The gentleman I spoke to was just trying to be helpful. He’s so proud to have you as part of the community.”
“In other words, you lied. You staged it all with that wood.”
“I deliver wood. That’s how I get by. But yeah,” he admitted. “I knew I’d need to think of something if I was ever going to reach you in person. I figured I was doing you a favor by lying, though. Figured you’d prefer the lie to having me tell the truth.”
If it was the same “truth” the private detective had given him in general terms—when the PI had asked, “Would you really want something like this coming out about you?”—Cort Matisson was right. “Who are you to me? If you’re really the one who left me under that hedge, why’d you do it?”
A pained expression appeared on the man’s heavily lined face. “That’s a long story. And not a pretty one. I can’t say I’m proud of who I was back then—”
“Spare me the regret and the justifications and just answer the question,” Hudson interrupted. If this man had done what Hudson had been told, he had no patience with his excuses.
“I panicked, pure and simple.”
So it was true. Cort Matisson might as well have slugged Hudson in the breadbasket. “I was your dirty little secret, so you tried to get rid of me,” he said, his words coming out in a shaken whisper.
“I didn’t know what else to do!”
This man—what he’d done before and after his visit to Bel Air that day—made Hudson sick. He was afraid he might throw up. “You’re telling me that you’re my father and my grandfather.” He spoke in a low voice because he couldn’t bear the thought of anyone overhearing, most of all Ellie, whom he respected.
Even Cort Matisson winced at th
ose words.
“Isn’t that true?” Hudson demanded. “Didn’t you get your own daughter pregnant when she was only sixteen?”
He nodded. That was a yes.
“Then I’m the result of that filthy, reprehensible, heinous, criminal act.”
He nodded again, acknowledging the absolute worst possibility Hudson could imagine. How could any man ever do such a thing to his own daughter? And how could that man live with himself afterward?
“I’m sorry,” Matisson muttered.
Hudson’s hands curled into fists, and it was all he could do not to use them. This man had nearly destroyed him—had destroyed certain parts of him. Thanks to his “father,” he viewed everyone with distrust and tried to wall himself off to avoid more of the same rejection he’d suffered as a child. “You sick bastard. Rape is bad enough. You deserve to be beaten within an inch of your life for that alone. But incest? Sleeping with your own daughter? Someone should castrate you for that—or worse.”
The old man started to shake and, once again, patted the cigarettes in his pocket. For reassurance? “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “I never forced her. There was no violence involved.”
“I’m guessing that’s because she didn’t resist. She trusted you to take care of her, to be good to her.”
He hung his head. “Yes.”
“So why?” Hudson cried. “Why’d you do it?”
He lifted his hands in a hopeless gesture. “I don’t have an explanation that you or anyone else will ever understand. My wife died in a terrible car accident not long before, one in which I was driving. I couldn’t deal with that. I was lost, lonely and feeling like I’d never recover. And Julia was there, needing me and grieving, too.”
“That makes it even worse,” Hudson said with a grimace. “You took advantage of her when she’d just lost her mother!”
“I loved her more than anything or anyone. I didn’t mean for that love to turn sexual—”
“Creeping into a girl’s bed doesn’t happen by accident,” Hudson snarled. “Babies aren’t left out to die by accident, either.”
He finally looked up. “After I’d done what I’d done, I couldn’t let her keep you. I knew the truth would come out if I did.”
“So you made her have the baby at home and told her she’d given birth to a stillborn child, which you buried.”
Matisson didn’t answer, but Hudson didn’t need him to confirm that part of the story. Although the PI hadn’t named any names, he’d related the basic facts of the situation. How Samuel Jones had ever come across the newspaper article about this man being charged for molesting his own daughter, Hudson had no idea. Jones had said he’d been looking at every individual who’d had any reason to be in the area back then and found, through police interviews, that there was a gentleman who’d worked as a handyman for several of the families in the neighborhood. Although he was questioned at the time, he’d never been considered a suspect. It wasn’t until some years later, when that man’s daughter was in her thirties, that she went to the police with the allegations of abuse she’d suffered at her father’s hands. Jones was a genius for putting it all together.
Hudson wished he’d hired someone a little less thorough. Or, better yet, never hired anyone at all. What a fool. He’d once mentioned Pandora’s box to Bruiser. Well, here he was, staring right into it. “Isn’t that what happened?” Hudson pressed when Matisson neither confirmed nor denied what Hudson had said.
“Yes,” he replied, but he spoke with his head down. “That’s what I did. I was terrified the truth would get out—knew my parents, my brother, everyone I’d ever known would think I was a monster. So I put you in the car and drove over to Bel Air, where I’d been working. I guess I was hoping one of the rich people who lived in that area would find you and take care of you. They had so much, far more than I could ever give you.”
“How am I supposed to believe you cared at all when you didn’t put me somewhere I was likely to be found?” Hudson asked. “You wanted me to die. Then your secret would die with me. You just didn’t have the balls to kill me yourself. You were going to let hunger and cold do that.”
“No...”
“Then why didn’t you take me to a fire station or a hospital?”
“I couldn’t. I was afraid I’d be seen!”
“Bottom line, you cared more about yourself than an innocent newborn.”
No response.
Hudson cursed under his breath. The person he’d wondered about his whole life was standing in front of him. But it wasn’t the joyous reunion he’d secretly dreamed of. His last hope for a positive resolution to the pain and neglect he’d suffered as a child had been destroyed. “You’re disgusting.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Hudson ignored the apology, could never accept it. “You knew I survived. You said so.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve followed my career.”
He nodded.
Hudson hoped that watching his son rise to the top of the NFL without being able to claim the connection had at least been some form of punishment. But that thought spurred another. Why was Cort Matisson risking a second prison term by revealing himself now? Was it because he was so old that getting put away didn’t matter to him anymore?
Hudson couldn’t believe his father’s conscience had finally gotten the better of him. A man like that didn’t have a conscience or he couldn’t have done what he did in the first place. He had to want something.
“When they found you, it was on the news and in all the papers, like I said,” Cort was explaining. “So I knew. The police even questioned me, asked if I’d seen or heard anything unusual in the neighborhood that day.”
“And you lied, of course. But...they didn’t question your daughter—even though she’d just had a baby?”
“They didn’t know about that. She quit school as soon as she found out she was pregnant, hardly left the house. Right after you were born, we moved.”
This was so surreal Hudson was tempted to think he was having a nightmare. He shook his head in astonishment.
“I was glad you were okay,” Matisson added, “even though letting you live put me at risk.”
Hudson barked out a humorless laugh. “Oh! How generous of you to be glad I didn’t die! Am I supposed to admire you for that?”
“I didn’t mean... No, of course not. It’s just... I had nothing against you personally.”
“Nice to hear, Dad. I’ve been worried all these years about what I could possibly have done wrong—at birth.”
Matisson flinched at the heavy sarcasm, but Hudson didn’t care. He wanted to lash out in worse ways, make this man hurt as badly as he’d hurt for so long. “Once your daughter came forward and told the police she’d had your baby, quite a few years had passed. Why didn’t you do the right thing and confess—for her sake?” he asked. “If you felt any remorse whatsoever, that’s how you should’ve handled it. Instead, you admitted there was a baby but told the police what you’d told her—that the child was stillborn and you couldn’t remember where you buried it.” Jones had said the police had been skeptical of Cort Matisson’s story. But they’d never connected Matisson to the abandoned newborn in Bel Air. Matisson and his daughter lived in Arizona by the time she went to the authorities. Instead, they’d suspected he’d killed the baby, but without a body, they couldn’t prove it.
Matisson shoved his hands in the pockets of his worn jeans. “Admitting anything else would’ve gotten me more time. I served ten years as it was.”
Hudson sank onto the couch. “Why are you here now?” he asked dully. “You have to know that what I’d like to do to you would be far worse than anything you might’ve endured in prison.”
“I understand that, yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir, as if you
have some respect for me. You don’t respect anyone.”
“I knew how you’d feel about me, Hudson.”
Hudson didn’t like this guy using his name, either. But what he really objected to was being related to this dirtbag in the first place. “And yet you came in spite of that.”
“I wouldn’t have come for my own sake. I’m here because I don’t have any choice.”
“Bullshit. No one dragged you here.”
“You’re my only hope.”
Hudson jumped to his feet and grabbed the old man by the shirt collar, dragging him forward until they were nose to nose. “You’d better not be here to ask me for money,” he ground out.
The color drained from Matisson’s face. “No. N-not for myself. It’s for your mother.”
His mother had been a sixteen-year-old girl victimized by her own father. Hudson had refused to let himself think about her, had refused to fully accept what the PI had told him. “This Julia person you mentioned that I’ve never met. You’re here for her.”
“Yes. She was married once. Has a couple of other kids—two boys, one ten and one eight. But she’s divorced now, and her ex can’t keep a job. Won’t keep a job, I should say. She hasn’t even seen him for over a year, doesn’t know where he’s at, so it’s not like she can count on him for any support.”
“You expect me to step in and fill that gap—knowing what I know? I realize she wasn’t at fault, that she’s as much a victim in this as I am, but what makes you think I’d ever want to claim either one of you?”
“I was hoping you might have some compassion—for Julia, not me,” he said. “She has cancer. Can’t cover her bills while she’s off work to get treatment. With how well you’re doing, I thought maybe you could help her out a little. That’s all. She was just an innocent girl who...who trusted the wrong person.”
Was this some kind of scam? Cort’s daughter had eventually turned him in, but there was no saying what their relationship was like now. Had they reconciled and concocted this story between them, hoping to cash in on Hudson’s success? “So she knows I’m alive.”
