“Why?”
“I really have no idea. Ed Morrissey worked for me on occasion, but he was what you might call a freelance security consultant. When Rupert telephoned and told me about the watch and your request for an interview, I contacted Morrissey to arrange for him to oversee your visit to Manitou Island. I wanted to know what you were up to, and I didn’t want Ellsworth handling you alone. After your visit, Morrissey phoned in his report. He indicated you were simply working a con, trying to squeeze some money out of me. He told me he’d taken care of the situation discreetly, as he had on other occasions in the past. I was surprised when Rupert called to tell me the police were investigating the incident in Minnesota.”
“Surprised but not troubled?”
“I didn’t know Henry Meloux or his story.”
“Morrissey never reported that part to you?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
“Of course it does, now.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell you everything?”
“That’s a question for which I have no answer.”
“What about Rupert?”
He shook his head. “Rupert’s only part has been to pass along requests that seem to have some merit. Those have been blessedly few. He made it clear from the beginning that he wanted no part in my charade, and he’s done his best to keep Northern Mining distanced.”
“You don’t care about Northern Mining?”
“I gave the company the best I could for most of my adult life. When I stepped away and secluded myself here, I severed myself from any worries about Northern Mining. It was an amicable divorce. I have no desire to renew the relationship.”
“And you don’t mind that Preston Ellsworth has played you as pretty much a lunatic?”
“My family knows the truth, Mr. O’Connor. What the rest of the world thinks of me is a concern I left behind a long time ago.”
Benning came from the kitchen. “Would you care for dessert or coffee?”
“Gentlemen?” Wellington asked. “I have fresh strawberries and sweet cream.”
My stomach was full, and I was tired, so I said no. Schanno did the same.
“We’re fine, Sandy,” Wellington said to Benning. “Why don’t you call it a night? I’ll clean up.”
“You’re sure, sir? It’s no trouble.”
“It was a good meal. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Very good, sir.” Benning vanished the way he’d come.
“I’d be glad to help,” I said.
Wellington set his napkin on the table and waved off my offer. “I won’t hear of it. You’re my guests. I’m just going to fill the dish-washer anyway.”
It felt as if the evening had been drawn to a close, but there were still many questions unanswered. Most of them didn’t involve me. They were between Wellington and the man I was certain was his real father. I couldn’t imagine Wellington not wanting to talk with Meloux, but I saw no sign of eagerness on his part.
I went upstairs to my room still at a loss to understand what kind of man he was and what kind of son.
FORTY-SEVEN
I was tired, but I tossed and turned in a restless sleep. I didn’t think Wellington would have us all murdered in the night; still, there were a lot of unanswered questions flapping around in my brain. Why had Morrissey followed me to Meloux’s and tried to kill the old man? Was he acting on his own or under orders? Orders from whom? The Wellingtons had something to lose, maybe, if the truth of Meloux’s story was ever made public, but I figured a lot of fortunes had been built on the graves of innocent people. It wasn’t that startling, and Leonard Wellington’s treachery had happened a long time ago. Both sons—Rupert and Henry—seemed civilized, if a little on the chilly side. On the other hand, a lot of civilized people have convinced themselves that in the right cause it’s acceptable—noble, even—to bloody your hands. If neither of the Wellingtons was responsible, then who? If it was all Morrissey’s idea, then why?
I wasn’t thinking only about Meloux, however. Jenny was heavy on my mind.
Sure, we would help her make a life for herself and her baby, but it wouldn’t be the life we’d dreamed of for her or that she’d dreamed of for herself. That made me sad. I had no doubt she would love her child fiercely and be a great mother, but I knew that there would always be the demon of if only harping away in the back of her mind. Every life lived fully is going to have some regrets, because every risk is not worth taking, but you don’t always see that in time. Or if you do, you convince yourself that you’ll be the one to beat the odds. Jenny and Sean had gambled, and it wasn’t that they’d lost exactly. The dealer had simply swept all the chips off the table and placed them in the hands of an unborn child.
The tyranny of love. Love demands all, everything. Jenny was up to the challenge. Sean, it seemed, was not. I wasn’t angry with him. I didn’t think any of us were. We were just disappointed. I figured that in his own life, no matter how he played it, when Sean looked back, Jenny and his child would be one of his regrets. And that made me sad, too.
I slept off and on. Every time I woke, the pattern of moonlight on the floor of my room had shifted. I looked at the clock on the stand next to my bed. Three A.M. I got up, used the toilet, and went to check on Meloux. His room was empty. I slipped my pants on and went downstairs. The house was dark, except for a light under the door of the study where, earlier that day, Wellington had greeted us and Meloux had told his story. I listened at the door and heard the rustle of a page being turned. I considered knocking, but decided against it. I didn’t think Meloux would be reading.
I had another idea. I went out onto the rear deck where I could see the lake, a great pool of silver poured out from the moon. I also saw what I thought I might see: the silhouette of Meloux standing alone on the dock. I walked across the yard, carefully because I was barefoot. The ground was cool against the soles of my feet. I coughed as I approached so that I wouldn’t startle the old man. His head half-turned, but he didn’t speak.
“Mind if I join you, Henry?”
“Your company is always welcome, Corcoran O’Connor.”
“Get some rest?”
“Yes. I was tired.”
“No wonder. Long, hard day. Hungry?”
“The morning will come soon enough. I will eat then.”
I put my hands in my pockets and stared up at the stars the moonlight hadn’t swallowed. “I’m sorry, Henry.”
“Why?”
“I hoped, I don’t know, that Wellington would be the son you wanted.”
“How do you know he is not?”
“He hasn’t been what I would call enthusiastic about seeing you.”
“He has also not turned me away.”
“Forgive me for saying so, Henry, but you set your sights awfully low.”
Meloux didn’t reply.
“What do you want to do now?” I said.
“I want you to smoke with me,” he said.
He took a pouch from his shirt pocket and sprinkled a bit to the four points of the compass, acknowledging the spirits that governed each, then he sprinkled some in the center. We sat down on the dock. He took papers and, in the moonlight that bleached his old hands white, he expertly rolled a cigarette. He lit it with a wood match that he struck to flame on his thumbnail. For the next few minutes, we smoked in silence. On the lake, two loons called back and forth, but I couldn’t see them. In the woods on either side, tree frogs and crickets chirred. The surface of the water was so still and shiny that it could have been made of polished steel. All this felt little different from any lake I’d ever sat beside on a Minnesota night, and I was aware that the vast wilderness, which began near the border of Canada, still ran relatively unbroken to the other side of the Arctic Circle. We were in the middle of a great, enduring beauty, and despite the danger and confusion involved in our being there, I couldn’t help but feel a profound sense of gratitude. Probably, that was exactly what the old Mide had hoped I might feel when
he asked me to share the tobacco and the moment.
I heard the deck door open and close. I saw Meloux cock his head slightly, as if he’d heard, too, but he didn’t turn. Half a minute later, I felt the dock shiver under an added weight.
“I have seen you,” Wellington said at our backs. “In visions. I’ve had them all my life. I never understood them or understood why they came to me.”
Meloux spoke toward the lake. “You are my son. You have a gift.”
“I isolated myself here years ago to try finally to understand that gift. It’s been lonely and difficult. I was about to give up.”
“Perhaps that is why I’m here.”
“Mother never told me about you. She believed you were dead.”
“Why?”
“She came back with Leonard the next spring and went to Maurice’s cabin. She found the remains of two bodies, which the scavengers had cleaned to mostly bone. She thought one was Maurice and the other was you.”
“She married Leonard Wellington.”
“That was part of the bargain she struck with him. When her father died, she agreed to marry Leonard and give him access to her father’s money. In return, he promised not to tell the police about your part in the death. She had no idea he’d already been here or what he’d done.”
“How do you know these things? Did she tell you?”
“She wrote them in her journals.”
Wellington walked to where we sat. He held out a book bound in soft leather. Meloux took it and opened it. Glancing, I saw that it was written in thin, precise script that would be difficult to read by moon-light.
“There are more than a dozen like it,” Wellington said. “She left them to me, in the care of her attorney, not to be read until I turned twenty-one. I was a fighter pilot in Korea when I turned twenty-one and had no interest in reading them. I didn’t get around to it until after Leonard died.”
“He was a good father?” Meloux asked.
“We fought all the time. I could never please him. He was a man too absorbed in his own affairs. Finally I gave up trying. Poor Rupert, though, he worked so hard to be noticed. The man treated him badly, but Rupert just kept coming back for more. When I read the journals and finally understood that Rupert was his real son, it made me sad. Me, I just came with the contract, but my brother was truly his son, and Leonard still treated him like a dog.”
In front of us, a small fish jumped, creating a circle of ripples that widened until they captured the reflection of the moon.
“I used to come here with her, just the two of us, and she would tell me stories about an Ojibwe hunter, very brave and handsome and noble. She called him Niibaa-waabii. She said it meant Sees At Night. She died when I was ten. After that, whenever I felt alone, whenever I felt that Leonard was a dense, unfathomable fog, I would imagine that the hunter was my father and that he was pleased with me.”
Meloux said, “I am pleased.”
He sat beside the old Mide. “After all these years, why did you come looking for me now?”
“My heart told me it was time.” The old man laughed. “It gave me a good kick in the ass.” He went quiet again, then asked a question that must have been heavy on his mind for seventy years. “Leonard Wellington said it was your mother who told him about Maurice and the gold. I never wanted to believe it.” He turned his head and looked to his son. “Do you know the truth?”
“No,” Wellington said. “I’m sorry.”
I stood up. “I think I’ll call it a night.”
I left them on the dock. Inside, I looked back through the clear glass of the sliding deck door, toward the lake. Against the reflection of moonlight off the water, the two men stood talking. It had taken seven decades for this to happen. For a lot of people, that was more than a lifetime. I had the feeling that for Meloux and his son, a new and remarkable kind of life had just begun.
I went up to bed and lay there thinking that sometimes stories did have happy endings.
The problem was that this story wasn’t over.
FORTY-EIGHT
I woke to Schanno pounding at my door. The sun was up, already high. A cool breeze lifted the curtains on the window. I figured I’d opened my eyes to a good day.
“We’re waiting for you downstairs,” Schanno said when I swung the door wide. He was dressed in clean khakis and a white short-sleeved shirt with a button-down collar. He looked very Ivy League and refreshed.
“We? Meloux’s up, too?”
“He says he never went back to sleep after you left him alone with Wellington. He spent the night talking with his son, then reading Maria’s journals.” Schanno’s face held a look of warm affection. “He’s something, that guy. Wellington’s brother is here, by the way.”
“Rupert?”
“Does he have another I don’t know about? Yeah, Rupert. And Benning’s fixing us up some breakfast, so get your ass down there, son. Time’s a wasting.”
I splashed my face with cold water, ran a toothbrush across my teeth, threw on the clothes I’d worn the night before, and joined the others downstairs. They were gathered in the shade of the umbrella table on the rear deck, drinking coffee that smelled like it came from caffeine heaven.
“Mr. Wellington,” I greeted Rupert, who accepted the hand I offered. “This is a surprise.”
“Mr. O’Connor,” he responded cordially. He wore jeans, a light blue polo shirt, and expensive Gore-Tex hiking boots. He appeared tired, especially around the eyes.
Meloux sat next to his son. I thought he’d look happy, but in the Ojibwe way, his face betrayed no emotion.
“Sit down, Cork.” Henry Wellington indicated the empty chair. “Would you like some coffee?” He poured me a cup from the white ceramic pot on the table. “Breakfast should be ready soon.”
“You flew up?” I asked Rupert. I used my cup hand to wave toward the floatplane tethered to the dock.
“I did.”
Henry Wellington flicked a deerfly from the table. “In his younger days, Rupert was quite a bush pilot.”
Rupert shrugged off the compliment. “It didn’t compare with being an honest-to-god war hero like Hank, but it had its moments.”
“When are you going to let go of that, Rupert? How many times do I have to tell you I don’t feel any glory in what I did.”
“Right,” Rupert said. He gave his brother a little smile, tight-lipped and unpleasant.
“Let’s not get into any of that sibling stuff in front of guests, all right?”
“Sibling?” Rupert’s tone was one of mock surprise. “We have different mothers. And according to your mother’s journals, we have different fathers as well.”
“Come on, Rupert, we’re brothers. We were raised that way.”
Rupert shot him an obviously angry look. “You knew, what, forty years ago that my father wasn’t your father? When exactly did you plan on telling me? A deathbed confession?”
Wellington took a deep breath. “I didn’t see any reason to tell you. What difference would it have made?”
“You always made decisions without talking to me.”
“I’m ten years older than you. Sometimes decisions had to be made, and you simply didn’t know enough to be able to contribute.”
“Do you think I know enough now?”
“I would never have turned the reins of Northern Mining over to you if I didn’t think so.”
“Northern Mining,” Rupert snarled. “Do you ever read the correspondence I send? Do you even care?”
“I’m finished with that part of my life.”
“Right. You live the pure life of the ascetic now. How utterly noble. So tell me, since you’ve stepped back from any responsibility for the company, do I get to make the decision about what to do with the information Mr. Meloux has offered us about Dad?”
“I think what we do is obvious, don’t you?”
“Enlighten me.”
“I think, at the very least, there’s a lot of restitution to be made.”
“Restitution?” Rupert seemed genuinely surprised. “To whom?”
“For starters, the families of the two men who died up there at the ruins of the old cabin. And we need to check the documentation on mineral rights to be certain Leonard didn’t actually jump a claim.”
“Ancient crimes, Hank. It’s like giving the descendants of African slaves restitution for what was done to their ancestors. It solves nothing. It absolves no one. But, hell, it’s easy for you to propose, I suppose, considering that Leonard Wellington wasn’t your father. Think of me for just a moment, Hank. For once, think of someone besides yourself.”
“You’re proposing what? That we ignore the truth and go on as if nothing ever happened?”
“Hank, how do you know that what he’s said is true? You told me not half an hour ago that there’s nothing in your mother’s journals that corroborates what he accuses Dad of doing.”
“I didn’t tell you everything, Rupert. Yesterday, he showed me irrefutable, fourteen-carat proof. Look, I understand that this is going to be hard, especially for you, but we don’t have a choice. I mean, these men here, they all know the truth. Even if I agreed with you, what would you propose to do about them?”
Rupert swung his eyes slyly across Schanno and me. “It’s my firm belief, gentlemen, that everyone has a price. Am I correct?”
It was Schanno who broke the embarrassed silence that followed. “You may know business, Mr. Wellington, but you’re no judge of men.”
Rupert settled his gaze on me. “He speaks for you?”
“He took the words right out of my mouth,” I said.
“Very well.” He offered that unpleasant smile again. “I think you’re about to find I’m not such a terrible judge of men after all, Mr. Schanno.” He lifted his hand and gave a little wave toward the house.
Benning stepped out, and he wasn’t alone. Dougherty was with him. They didn’t bring us breakfast. They carried a couple of high-caliber automatics.
“Dougherty?” Wellington said.
“He flew up with me,” Rupert said. “I dropped him off on the other side of the point before I taxied here. He hiked in.”