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60
It was a professional messenger service with a package, asking for a signature.
When Rich returned to the living room, he handed Rebekah a heavy square box. He said, “It’s addressed to you, from your father’s lawyer, Mr. James Pearson at Pearson, Schultz and Meyers here in Washington. I signed for it.”
Rebekah felt her heart pounding as she carried the box back into the living room and set it on an antique marquetry table. Rich handed her scissors, and she cut away the tape and opened the box, her hands unsteady. Taped on top of a thick bubble-wrapped package was a sealed envelope with REBEKAH written in black ink. Her breath caught at the sight of her father’s distinctive sloping handwriting. She stood there a moment, holding the letter, wondering if her world was about to change.
Rich said, his voice gentle, “Do you want me to open the letter, Rebekah?”
“No, no, I will.” She got it together and slowly opened the envelope to find six handwritten pages. Her heart pounded slow, deep strokes. The letter was dated four years before the strokes had plunged her father into a sixteen-year coma. She’d have been eight years old.
She stepped away, holding the letter close, and read:
My dearest Rebekah:
As I write this letter, you are still my delightful girl, my Pumpkin. Since you are reading my letter, I’ve been dead for one month, and I hope you are at least twenty-one. Perhaps you are married, with children of your own. I hope you’re happy, that your husband is, or will be, faithful and kind. Ah, isn’t that what all of us wish for when we marry? I would have preferred to tell you this myself when you grew up, but it appears I never got the chance.
There are so many things you don’t know, things you wouldn’t have understood as a child. Let me begin with the most important, the truth of who I really am to you. Perhaps Gemma or Caitlin has already told you, though they promised me they wouldn’t, and it wasn’t in Gemma’s interests that you know. In any case, it’s time you did know, directly from me. My darling girl, I am not your grandfather as you were raised to believe. I am your father. I met a young woman in Washington in the late eighties, and we had an affair. When she discovered she was pregnant, she told me she simply couldn’t keep you, couldn’t accommodate a baby in her life. I wanted you very much, so I paid her to carry you to term and sign adoption papers to give you over to me. No, she didn’t extort me. She had a very sick mother she cared for and staggering medical bills, so she agreed. You will want to know your birth mother’s maiden name was Constance Riley. If you wish to find her, I can tell you she moved back to England, to Birmingham.
I was in public life, as you know, and I couldn’t let it be known I had adopted my own child, born out of wedlock. I didn’t want Gemma to be your mother, and I knew she would refuse in any case. So Caitlin and I decided she would be your mother and I would be your grandfather. I was certainly old enough. To be honest, Caitlin was hesitant, but once she saw you and held you as I had, she wanted you. Never doubt that, dearest.
Forgive me for the deception, but at the time I didn’t feel I had a choice. Giving you over to Caitlin was the best way forward for all of us. It kept you close to me, and my love for you only blossomed as the years passed. It wasn’t the same for Gemma, of course. She was against my plan, but I gave her no choice. If she wanted to keep running Clarkson United, she had to agree and accept being your grandmother. Our estrangement was complete from that point on.
Now let me tell you what happened in 1995. It has long since ceased to matter to most anyone, except maybe poor Miranda Elderby, but understanding it will soon matter a great deal to you. You see, for two years before Nate met and married Miranda, he and Gemma were lovers. Yes, I knew all about it but said nothing to either Gemma or Nate. Perhaps it’s my own conceit, but I believed Gemma took Nate as her lover to punish me for my own betrayal. To be honest, I didn’t care. As I said, she and I shared a business partnership by that time, nothing more. And Nate? I’d loved Nate since we were boys, loved him more than I’d ever loved Gemma, truth be told, and I would have forgiven him much more, and he me, I suspect. Fact is, when I found out he was sleeping with Gemma, I felt sorry for him because I knew he had to feel immense guilt, even though he knew the only thing tying Gemma and me together was the business. And yes, Nate knew of my affair with Constance Riley and about you.
Nate broke off his affair with Gemma when he married Miranda, a lovely young woman you would have liked very much. He fell in love, you see, for the first time in his life, and I understood, maybe I was even a bit jealous.
Then Nate’s luck ran out. I remember I warned him not to take on a particular client being tried for murder, told him it could end badly if he lost because of his client’s criminal family, but he didn’t listen. He lost the case because the evidence was too overwhelming. The family blamed him, of course. It did end badly for him, but not in the way any of us could have imagined.
His client’s family didn’t murder Nate, Rebekah. Gemma murdered him that long-ago afternoon on Dawg Creek. I’m quite sure of it. It’s true he’d been drinking, what with everything happening, and he told me he was going there to face off with Gemma, to tell her he was leaving the country with Miranda. Yes, he asked me for his share of a great deal of money due to him so he and Miranda could settle outside the country in lifelong comfort. I will tell you about that money in a moment, Rebekah.
Poor Nate didn’t realize how vindictive Gemma could be, how quickly she could morph from pleasant and smiling to uncontrolled rage. I don’t think she intended to murder Nate. I believe she went out to his boat hoping to convince him to come back to her, and when he told her he didn’t want her, that he was leaving the country with Miranda, she lost it and killed him. As I said, I wasn’t there, but I know that’s what happened. You see, she came to me demanding Nate’s share of the money, said she deserved it. He’d let our theft slip to her, but thank heaven he hadn’t told her where we were hiding it. I told her I knew what she’d done, that she’d killed him, and she threatened to tell the world about how Nate and I had stolen the money. So, we were deadlocked. I agreed because I knew the consequences of my telling the truth would have been staggering. I’ve since regretted that decision. Gemma deserved to be punished, and Miranda deserved the truth. But I kept silent, and Gemma did as well. You need to know all this now so you will understand what I’ve done and what I plan to do.
It’s time for you to claim your inheritance. Yes, I left you a sizable trust fund, but this is more, unbelievably more. Ninety million dollars in bearer bonds, bonds you can take to any bank for payment. Nate and I hid the bonds because we couldn’t afford to draw attention and agreed to wait until we were sure no one would come looking for the money or asking questions.
I’ve arranged to leave it all to you. Only you will know how to find the bonds, if you think and remember. I have but one request: Gemma must never see a cent of it.
Where the money is from is the last secret I will tell you. As you know, I was in Congress in the early nineties when we were trying to steer our way through the madness of Saddam Hussein’s reign in Iraq after Desert Storm. I served on the House Intelligence Committee when our government was involved in clandestine efforts to topple Saddam or at least sow trouble for him. We were sending black-ops funds, off the books, to support Shia clerics and warlords militarily in the south of Iraq. It was a gravely immoral act because they didn’t have a chance. I knew that money would only lead to yet more chaos, more unnecessary slaughter. But I couldn’t change enough minds, couldn’t stop it. It was Nate who suggested we might be able to divert some of those funds by leveraging my position on the committee and my contacts in Iraq. He arranged to pay off a key Iraqi conduit to confirm to our government that he’d received all the funds, rather than only a part. All went as planned, apparently business as usual in that vicious sectarian war. I’m only sorry we couldn’t divert more of it.
I’m sure you remember the story I told you when you were a child. So many versions of how Nate and I managed to steal the evil sheikh’s treasure. I tried to make it more exciting each time with ever more outrageous adventures, so you would remember it. The story was a tale for a child, but the bearer bonds are real and will soon be in your hands to do with as you wish. What you already know, what you’ve kept secret, will lead you to their hiding place.
I have done what I can to be sure no problems arise no matter how many years pass before you read this letter. Surely the bonds will have been forgotten, so you needn’t worry about cashing them. There is so much good you can do with that money, Rebekah. But in any case, it is your decision.
I have loved you from the moment I first saw you squalling in the nursery at the hospital. I hope you will remember me fondly despite what I felt I had to keep from you. I’ve always thought life is an incredible gift, regardless of its unexpected tragedies. My life has been blessed by a profound joy bestowed upon me, namely you. Of course, I don’t know how or when I will die, but I will leave this earth with only one regret—that I let down my friend Nate. I hope I have a chance to ask him to forgive me.
Live happily, Rebekah, and try to live honorably.
Your loving father,
John Clarkson
