Fonduing Fathers (3 page)

I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT I’D EXPECTED TO SEE, but I felt my anticipation deflate the moment the lid was removed. Inside were old papers folded in half and a few snapshots that tilted out from between the yellowed sheets. I couldn’t make out the pictures from my angle.

“You’ve seen photos of your dad in his army uniform,” Mom said. She waited for my nod of acknowledgment before easing one of the pictures out of the box, holding it with both hands as she studied it. “He was so proud of his military career. When we were first married, I used to joke that if it were between me and service to the country, I’d come in second place.” Mom focused on me. “Once you came along, however, there was no contest. You were first in his world. First in mine.”

She handed me the picture.

The faded color snapshot was old, taken with an inexpensive camera and printed on paper that had seen better
days. The photo’s corners were rounded, softened by age and by what I guessed were many stolen glimpses by my mother over the years. Despite the overall yellow-green cast, despite the fact that the lighting had been poor, I recognized my father immediately. Though not particularly tall, he stood erect and seemed far more imposing than the man to his left. Both were in full military dress, and both wore a fruit salad of medals on their chests.

When I looked back at my mom, I noticed she’d turned toward the window, lost in some private memory.

I chanced a look at Nana, who stared at her daughter with such intensity I wondered if she was attempting to transmit strength through her powerful gaze.

“Your father was a good man.” Mom bit her lip, still looking away. “Correct that. He was a
great
man. He was strong, devoted, and compassionate. If he had a flaw, it was that he had such a finely honed sense of right and wrong. We all know the world is not black-and-white. I loved the fact that he could appreciate gray in the little things, but when it came to the bigger issues, there was no compromise. When it came to protecting this country, or to being a good citizen, he made no concessions.” She fingered one of the folded documents in the box. “Which is why this almost killed him, years before he actually died.”

Her hand shook as she handed me the sheet.

My eyes scanned the page, immediately recognizing my father’s name, “Anthony Paras,” printed on the government form. I read, then stopped myself. I reread what else was written there, my mind refusing, my whole being rejecting what was so clearly, so preposterously stated.

“This says—”

Mom’s words were quiet. “Dishonorable discharge.”

I glanced at Gav, who looked as confused as I was. “But this is wrong,” I said. “Obviously.”

“It’s not.”

“But,” I began again, “Dad’s buried at Arlington. You
can’t be buried there with a dishonorable discharge. He had medals. He was a hero.” My voice had risen and I had to tamp down a rising hysteria. My world tilted off its axis. I couldn’t say it enough times: This was wrong. Did no one else understand that?

“He was discharged for insubordination,” Mom said. “He never gave me the details. In fact, he told me he was so ashamed that he never wanted to speak about it. So we didn’t.”

“No,”
I said with force. “No. This is not right. There must be some mistake.”

“No mistake,” she said.

I grabbed my head with both hands, trying my best to stay calm. Failing. “You can’t just get into Arlington because you
want
to,” I said, trying to make my mother understand that she had to be wrong. “I’ve visited his grave there. You have, too. How do you explain that?”

My mom and Nana exchanged a look I didn’t understand.

Gav had brought his chair closer to mine, a fact I didn’t notice until he ran a hand down my back. “Let’s hear more,” he said.

I didn’t want to. Not if it involved my dad being dishonorably discharged—the equivalent of a felony conviction. My father. It couldn’t be true.

The pain on my mom’s face was almost more than I could bear and in a moment of instant realization, I knew I was making this harder for her than it already was. Gav was right. I lowered my hands into my lap, making fists beneath the table my mom wouldn’t be able to see. It took every ounce of my love for her to calm myself down. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I said, fighting the urge to run from the room. “Go on.”

“The other man in the photo is Eugene Vaughn.” The name meant nothing to me. “He was your father’s commanding officer and very good friend.”

I worked hard to not interrupt again.

“Eugene took care of getting your father into Arlington. He also made sure we received veteran’s benefits after your father died.”

That was wrong, on so many levels. Still, I held my tongue. The breeze that had tickled us earlier with its gentle touch now ran shivers across my neck.

“After the discharge, your father went to work for a company that manufactured dietary supplements.”

“Dietary supplements,” I repeated.

She gave a brief nod. “The company was called Pluto, Incorporated. They’re located outside Washington, D.C. Your father originally wanted to move back here, but Pluto’s offer was too good to pass up.”

A tiny memory flickered in my brain. “Didn’t they have a logo with…planets?”

“They did. Bigger planets surrounding little Pluto, back when it was still considered a planet.” She sighed. “Things change in the most unexpected ways.”

“I remember…We used to have a trophy or something. It had the solar system on it.”

“I kept it out for a few years because I couldn’t bear to put anything of your father’s away. Every time I did, it felt as though I was losing him all over again.” She smiled at me. “You have a good memory.”

“Seems like an odd logo for a dietary supplement company.”

Nana, who’d remained quiet up until now, spoke up. “That’s what I always said. The ads made me think that if I took their pills I would see stars. No thank you.”

The little bit of levity helped my mom continue her story. “Your dad worked in the management information systems department there, moving up the ranks to eventually become one of the vice presidents.”

I wanted to ask how a felon would be hired for such a key position in the first place, and then how in the world
he’d been able to move up, but again, I stopped myself. Back then, times had been different and maybe safeguards weren’t as strong as they were now. What I said was, “That’s quite an accomplishment.”

“Your dad started coming home late,” Mom began again. “I wasn’t worried about him in that way,” she said with wide eyes and a knowing expression. “Your father had problems he wouldn’t talk about.” She spread her hands over the contents of the shoe box. “But he was not unfaithful. He was having problems at work.”

“‘Problems?’” I parroted, because I couldn’t stand to not know the whole story. I wanted—no, needed—her to get through this quickly. This was like ripping off a bandage in super slow motion. I could barely endure the pain.

Gav must have felt my impatience because he gripped my shoulder in silent warning.

“Tony said there was a man at work who was giving him trouble. He wouldn’t elaborate,” she added. “He told me he was afraid of big problems with this guy.”

“That’s pretty cryptic.”

“Your father was a careful man.”

Not careful enough,
I thought.

“I remember the day you told me that he died,” I said gently. “You told me that he’d gone to heaven, but I didn’t understand why he wasn’t coming home to us. Years later, you told me that he’d had an accident.” My mom’s expression tightened as the memories washed over me. “What kind of accident was it?”

This was hard for her. I waited for her to swallow a couple of times. She pulled her lips in, biting down. I could feel the fear and sadness that threatened to reduce her to tears. After a moment she drew a breath. “He was murdered. Shot on the street.”

I sucked in air. I’d been waiting to hear the truth all my life. When I did, it hit me straight to the gut. “Who killed him?”

She shook her head. “We never found out. Tony didn’t come home that night. I called the police the next morning to report him missing….” I watched her relive the moment. She swallowed again. “They said they had a John Doe they’d picked up. He…matched my description of Tony so they asked me to come down.”

“And it was Dad?”

“And it was your dad.”

She pulled out his death certificate and unfolded it before me. I’d never seen it before and only my mother’s insistent entreaties for me to respect her wishes had kept me from trying to obtain a copy on my own. Shot in the back of his head, twice, the medical examiner had ruled it a homicide. I stared at this new piece of evidence. “And they have no idea who did this?”

“He was found in a rough neighborhood, far from our home and from Pluto’s offices. No one knows what he was doing out there so late at night.”

“Did you tell anyone about the trouble Dad was having at work?”

“Of course, but without the man’s name, the police said it was like investigating a shadow.”

“But they did investigate?”

“Of course. They believed it to be a robbery gone bad, though they never found a single lead. Everything was missing. His wallet, his watch, his…” She drew in a quick sob. “His wedding ring. All gone. That’s why he was a John Doe. I had to go to the morgue to identify him.”

I reached a hand out and grasped my mother’s warm one. “That had to be so very difficult for you.”

Her grateful glance wrenched my heart.

“It was the worst experience of my life,” she said. “And then I had to contact Eugene Vaughn.”

I picked up the photo again. “Why?”

“Your dad wrote me a letter shortly before he died. He told me he’d written it and made sure I knew where to look
when the time came. I didn’t want to hear any of that, but he made me promise that if anything happened to him, I’d read the letter before I made a single decision.”

“He knew he was going to die,” I said to no one. “He knew.”

Mom pulled the last document from the box. “I have the letter here. I’ll let you read it later because he talks about how much you mean to him and how much he knew he’d miss us. In it, your father asked me to contact Eugene Vaughn about burial in Arlington. I had the same reaction you did, Ollie,” she said. “I knew that his discharge made him ineligible, but at that point I had lost my husband and this was the last thing he’d asked me to do for him. So I contacted Eugene and told him what had happened.”

“He pulled strings to get Dad in?”

Mom and Nana exchanged a glance.

“Not right away,” Mom said. “He asked me to trust him and then suggested that you and I move back to Chicago and I find a local cemetery with a mausoleum.”

None of this was making sense. “A temporary entombment?” I asked.

“Eugene said that he’d be able to help, but that we needed to wait until the time was right. He coached me through the entire process and a year later, almost to the day, we had your father moved to Arlington.” She sighed. “Sadly, there was no fanfare, no ceremony. Eugene warned that we needed to keep it quiet. But at least your father was finally laid to rest where he deserved to be. I don’t know what I would have done without Eugene helping me through all the paperwork, all the heartache. He took care of everything.”

“How did this Eugene manage such an impossible feat?”

She didn’t answer me. “Things got worse.”

I turned to Gav, who sat in rapt attention. I looked at Nana, hoping she would correct my mother. “How?” I asked.

“Pluto was very kind to us when your father died. They paid for our relocation to Chicago and took care of all funeral expenses. The owner of the company came to visit me himself to express his condolences. He handed me a check for fifty thousand dollars to put into trust for your education, telling me it was the least he could do.”

That didn’t sound like things getting worse. Mom squared her shoulders. “Months later, he contacted me again, this time by phone. According to information they’d discovered when clearing out your father’s desk, they had reason to believe he was selling corporate secrets to other firms.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “No way.”

I barely remembered my father and was hardly in a position to vouch for his integrity. Yet I could feel how wrong this was, with every fiber of my being.

“That was my reaction,” Mom said.

Nana raised her hand. “And mine, too.”

“Craig Benson—that’s the owner’s name—asked me questions I had no answers for. Questions about what your father might have told me about Pluto and who your dad met with outside of work. Honestly, your father was always home when he wasn’t working, so I had nothing to share with him.” She frowned. “I was so taken aback by the accusation that I couldn’t think.”

“What did you do?”

“I almost told them about Eugene Vaughn, I was so upset. The only reason I didn’t was because Eugene had warned me not to tell a soul that I’d contacted him. He said that if I did, Tony might never get into Arlington.” She gave a sad shrug. “I guess I’m glad I kept my mouth shut.”

I stared at the wall across the room, seeing nothing. My brain was reeling from overload. I’d always known there was more to the story of my dad’s death, but I hadn’t expected anything like this.

“It’s a lot to take in all at once, isn’t it?” Mom asked,
reading me so well. “There’s one last thing you need to understand: I don’t believe a word of it.”

My attention snapped back and I stared at her. “You don’t believe he was selling secrets?”

“No.”
The word came out angry, decisive. “Nor do I believe he was kicked out of the army for a good reason. I believe he was set up. How else could Eugene have finagled his burial at Arlington? When I pushed him for answers, however, he refused. He told me that Tony had been a respected hero and that no matter what his record stated, he deserved a place of honor for all eternity. Does that sound like a man with a dishonorable discharge?”

“You didn’t dig deeper?”

“I couldn’t. Eugene warned me that if I made a fuss, I could jeopardize your father’s last wish.”

“Dad never said anything that made you suspicious? You never had an inkling of what was really going on?”