Only Son (28 page)

Amy almost expected to find Humphrey Bogart inside the old office, his feet up on a battered desk. Instead, a plump blonde in her late forties sat at the keyboard of a computer terminal. She offered them coffee and explained that Mr. Sharkey was due back shortly. “I talked to him after we spoke,” she told Barry while pouring coffee into two Styrofoam cups. “And Mr. Sharkey said he'll see you. Hope you like it black. I don't know where he keeps the cream and sugar. I'm just a temp, filling in today.”

Amy and Barry sat quietly and sipped the bitter coffee while watching the secretary struggle with a computer that was obviously unfamiliar to her. Amy felt some of her enthusiasm wane during the long wait in the cramped, ugly little room.

She and Barry were starting their third round of rancid coffee when Milo Sharkey finally stepped inside the office. He was a tall, formidably built black man. The blue, three-piece suit almost seemed too small for his broad shoulders. There were flecks of grey in his close-cropped hair; Amy couldn't tell if he was closer to thirty or fifty. One thing was apparent. He seemed very surprised to see them—and a bit annoyed.

Barry stood up and extended his hand. “Mr. Sharkey?”

“Are you my noon appointment?” Sharkey shook his hand. Amy noticed his eyes darting back and forth from her to Barry.

“This is Mr. Horton and Ms. Sheehan,” the secretary said.

With a slightly dazed smile, Milo Sharkey opened his office door. “Have a seat,” he said. “Sorry you had to wait so long. I'll only be another minute.” Once they were inside his office, he closed the door.

The room was cluttered with grey file cabinets, Sharkey's desk and chair, and two ugly, metal and pea green vinyl chairs. Barry and Amy sank down in them. They stared out the plate glass window at the view of the Puget Sound. In the outer office, they could hear Sharkey whispering to the secretary.

“
Well, you didn't ask me what their names were
,” Amy heard the woman say indignantly. Then more whispering.

“I don't know about this guy,” Amy said. “Something's wrong. Was he expecting somebody else?”

Finally, Sharkey came back inside the office, a cup of coffee in his large hand. He sat behind his desk. “Now, I understand you're looking for a teenage boy who may or may not be your son, Ms. Sheehan. Is that the story you gave my secretary?”

“I'm the one who talked with her,” Barry explained. “I'm a friend of Ms. Sheehan's. A couple of years back, you helped locate my niece, Lisa Horton—”

“And I need you to help find my son,” Amy cut in. Barry quickly clammed up and let her talk. She explained how Eddie had been kidnapped twelve years ago. She told Milo Sharkey about the postcard “updates” from his abductor—all of them postmarked from cities between Portland and Seattle. She described the twelve-year-old boy she'd seen the night before, his resemblance to Paul, the telltale scar on his chin, the medication his “father” had referred to. “My ex-husband took daily medication for epilepsy—which he inherited from
his
father,” she said. “We might be able to trace him through local doctors' or pharmacists' records for epilepsy medication. That shouldn't be too tough.” All the while she talked, Milo Sharkey just nodded. It bothered Amy that he wasn't writing anything down. And he was looking at Barry half the time—his eyes narrowed.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I think this boy I saw last night could be my son. I talked to a couple of salespeople who saw him. He bought something in the store. He was carrying one of our shopping bags. We're hoping he used a credit card. But even if he paid in cash, we might get a name or some clue…”

“Ms. Sheehan, you work at the store, right?”

She nodded. “I've been there five years.”

“Well, then you're better acquainted with the store and the salespeople than I am. I don't think I'd be much use to you.”

“But that's crazy,” Amy said. “I mean, okay. If I find the man's name on a credit card receipt, then I wouldn't need you. But what if that doesn't happen? I mean, you're the pro. You know how to look for missing persons.” She reached into her purse. “This morning, I wrote down descriptions of both the man and the boy—”

Milo Sharkey held up one hand. “I'm sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “If you're sincere about this search for a missing son, I—”

“Of course I'm sincere!” she replied, the folded piece of notebook paper in her hand. “What kind of thing is that to say?”

“Forgive me. I just don't think it's plausible that this boy you saw last night is your son. It's just too much of a coincidence.” He glanced at Barry. “Not that I don't believe in coincidences. In any event, you'd be wasting my time—and your money—trying to track down this customer and his boy.”

“Listen,” Amy said. “If you're too busy to take this case, just say so.”

Then Barry piped in: “If money's a problem, between Ms. Sheehan and me, I'm sure we could handle it.”

Amy patted his arm. “Oh, no, honey, I won't have you spending any money on this.”

“I don't want to take money from either one of you,” Milo Sharkey said. “And I don't want to take this case. It's not because I'm too busy either. I just don't like the odds. Of course, you could get yourselves another private investigator.”

“Maybe we should,” Amy sighed, frowning at him.

“He'll tell you that the odds are wonderful,” Sharkey continued. “He'll tell you everything you want to hear. He'll also charge you at least a hundred a day—plus expenses. Then he'll take a week to find this father and son. For that, he'll demand a five-thousand-dollar bonus. About six thousand dollars later, you'll discover that this boy isn't yours. A lot of PIs would be happy to do that for you, but I don't like charging people for an investigation that leads to a dead end.”

Amy said nothing for a moment. Finally, she stood up. “I get your point, Mr. Sharkey,” she murmured. “Thank you.”

 

“Why couldn't he have just told us he was too busy to take the case? Why did he have to shoot down my hopes like that?” Amy was shaking her head. She and Barry sat in his car, parked outside the Bon Marche employee entrance.

“Want to try another private investigator?” Barry asked.

“Yes.” But then Amy frowned. “Oh, crap, I don't know.”

He stroked her shoulder. “I just don't want to see you setting yourself up for another heartbreak. Maybe Milo Sharkey's right. It might be a wild-goose chase.”

Amy said nothing.

“I know how depressed you are, honey.” Barry leaned over and kissed her. “I wish I didn't have to go back to Spokane today. I hate leaving you alone now like this.”

“Oh, I'll be fine,” she replied with a pale smile. She opened the car door. “I'll buy a box of Pepperidge Farm cookies and eat them all in one sitting. I'll be fine.”

“Call you Monday night.”

Amy climbed out of the car. “Be careful driving back,” she said. Then she shut the car door. She watched Barry drive away.

Later, Gayle, who worked with Brian in Young Men's Sportswear, came up to Amy's department. Gayle was a bit chubby, with dark lipstick, exotic eyes, and short, styled dark auburn hair. She was a flashy, smart dresser and very gregarious. She'd heard Amy had been asking about a teenager in a red jacket. “I waited on him,” she said, leaning against Amy's sales counter. “Cute kid, polite, too.”

Amy felt her heart leap. “Oh, God, you're kidding. Did he buy anything?”

Gayle squinted at her, then twisted her mouth up.

“Try to remember,” Amy pleaded. “I need to know who he is. I'm hoping to get his name off a credit card receipt. Please, Gayle…”

She snapped her fingers. “I remember now. He bought a Huskies sweatshirt—fourteen bucks.” Then she frowned. “Oh, but he paid in cash. I remember, because it was a five and a bunch of singles.”

A hopeful smile still clung to Amy's face. “You said that he was polite?”

“Oh, a doll. He asked to try on one of the leather jackets locked to the display rack. I helped him with a few, and he kept thanking me all over the place. Sweet kid. Who is he?”

Amy shrugged. She felt her throat tightening. “I think I might know his parents. Did he seem to you—like he was happy?”

Gayle chuckled. “I guess so. Most kids I can't stand. This one was sweet. But that's all there is to it, Amy. He told me that he'd bring his dad back in a few minutes to show him the jacket he liked. But he never came back. Listen, if he does show up today, do you want me to give you a call?”

“Thanks.” Amy was barely able to get the word out. She nodded and tried to smile. But her heart ached, because she knew: neither the boy nor his father would be coming back to this store.

Football practice had been canceled on account of heavy rains that Tuesday in November. But it didn't stop Sam from playing football.

“Largent turns on the ten yard line. He's clear! Bosworth pulls back…hesitates…” Sam pivoted around the ottoman to his father's favorite chair and leapt up on the sofa. “He passes!”

Craig threw the football. Too late. Sam had already run the length of the sofa and was jumping off the other end as the ball spun in the air—a few feet behind him. He tumbled on the carpeted floor. “Oh, Jesus!” he heard Craig cry. The football smashed one of the framed pictures on the wall behind the couch. Glass shattered. Both the picture and the football bounced off the wall. Another crash as the picture hit the floor, and more glass broke. “Oh, Jesus!” Craig said again. “I told ya we shouldn't be doing this inside!”

“I was way the hell over here!” Sam yelled. “What are you passing it there for? God, my dad's gonna shit.” In his stocking feet, he threaded around bits of broken glass to the picture frame, lying facedown beside the coffee table. Sam glanced up at the wall and the blank spot amid several framed photographs that had been knocked askew. He knew the casualty among them: his parents' wedding portrait. It was the only picture they had of his mother. “Oh, crap…” he murmured. If the photograph was ruined, his father would kill him. Sam turned over the picture frame to assess the damages. Only a small white scratch at the hem of her wedding gown, practically unnoticeable. The frame had survived, too.

“I didn't even want to do this in the first place,” Craig whined.

“It wasn't your fault,” Sam said. He carefully picked a sharp triangle of glass out of the frame.

“What are you gonna do?”

“I don't know. But we got an hour and a half before my dad gets back from work. Help me clean this up, will ya?”

They'd disposed of all the broken glass when Sam got a brainstorm. If he could find another piece of glass to fit the frame, his dad would never know the difference. There was a framed photo of Mel Gibson as Mad Max hanging above Sam's desk. Sam took the photo from his bedroom wall. He compared it to the frame holding his parents' wedding portrait. Too small.

He tried several others until he found that the frame to his Brian Bosworth picture was a perfect fit. Sam pried out Brian, then removed the glass. With a scissors, he cut the brown paper sealed against the frame backing to his parents' wedding picture. “Won't he notice?” Craig asked.

“Not for a few months at least—I hope.” He was about to replace the glass when he saw some writing on the back of the wedding portrait. It looked as if someone had tried to erase the words, written in blue ink. The faded penmanship belonged to his father. His dad always labeled the backs of pictures with the date, the occasion, and the locale. It seemed funny that he'd found it necessary to scribble such information on the back of
this
picture. Like he'd ever forget his own wedding day…

But that wasn't what it said.

Sam saw it, in his father's handwriting: “
Tom Welshons Wedding—Groomsman, 1970
.”

He frowned. It didn't make any sense. This was supposed to be his parents' wedding—in 1976. His mother and father. He wasn't a
groomsman
in this picture, he was the
groom
.

Sam checked the photo again, and read his father's caption once more. How could his dad make a mistake like that? Or was it really a photograph from someone else's wedding?

“What's that say on the back?” Craig asked, pulling his glasses out of the breast pocket of his shirt.

“Nothing,” Sam said. He quickly turned the picture over, then reached for the glass. “Just the date, that's all.”

Sam had never seen another photograph of his mother besides the one he now held in his hands. The pretty blond lady in the picture had always been a stranger to him; and now he wondered if she was really his mother.

“Hey, your hand's shaking,” Craig said.

“No, it's not.” Sam set the glass in the frame, then placed the matted photograph on top of it. He didn't want Craig to see what his father had written. He didn't want his friend thinking something was wrong. He covered the back of the picture with cardboard and stuck the tiny nails in place. Hurriedly, he taped the brown paper to the back of the frame, then hung the picture on the wall. He straightened out all the pictures around it.

“Looks good,” Craig said. “I don't see any difference.”

But to Sam, the wedding portrait of his parents suddenly seemed very different indeed.

 

Sam glanced at the picture he'd drawn in first grade: a gruesome G.I. Joe battle scene. He must have worn a fresh red crayon down to a pebble with all the blood. It was a horrible picture. Yet his father had saved it—along with all the other pictures, watercolors, finger paintings, and homemade birthday cards Sam had ever given him. They were stowed away in a liquor store box that sat on the floor in his father's closet. The box also held Sam's old report cards, photos that hadn't made the family album, and negatives. Sam had been through the memento box at least half a dozen times in the past, but then, he'd only been browsing out of boredom, never really looking for anything.

Now he wanted to find some proof of who his mother was—another photo of her that his dad might have overlooked; their marriage license; or her death certificate. He'd settle for just her name on his own birth certificate. But Sam couldn't find any of these things in the old liquor store box.

He checked the desk drawers. He'd been through them several times before, too. His dad kept some
Playboys
under his bed, and Sam often sneaked a peek at them. Routinely, while his dad was at work, he'd check the desk and dresser drawers, hoping to uncover similar hidden treasures. But he'd never found anything.

And he didn't find anything now: nothing about his mother, and no birth certificate either. He
had
to have one, and her name would be on it.

He didn't like to think that his dad had been lying to him all these years about the wedding picture—and about his mother.

If he had to turn the bedroom inside out, he'd find something—just to prove to himself how silly the whole idea was. Under the bed: just the
Playboys
and one sock. In his father's dresser: clothes, nothing else; the closet shelf: sweaters.

Then he found something—under one of the sweaters.

Sam dug out the blue spiral notebook. Frowning, he flipped through it. The back pages were blank; but the first fifty or more sheets were filled with his father's handwriting.

He stopped on one page and noticed it was dated about six weeks before:

The telephone rang. Startled, Sam dropped the notebook and reached for the phone on his father's nightstand. “Hello?”

“I just got home, and I'm drenched.”

“Oh, hi, Craig.” He glanced at the notebook on the foot of his father's bed.

“Listen, are you pissed at me?” Craig asked.

“No, of course not. Whaddaya mean?”

“Well, you kicked me out in such a hurry, I figured you were ticked off at me for breaking the picture.”

“It wasn't your fault,” Sam said. “Don't sweat it.”

“Well, what was the big rush? Why'd you make me leave all the sudden?”

Sam looked over at the notebook again, then at the clock on the nightstand. His dad would be home in a half hour. “I just had a lot of stuff I remembered I had to do,” he said. “In fact, I'm right in the middle of something now. So I can't talk.”

“You sound funny, Sam. You sure you're not pissed off?”

“Positive! Geez! I'll see you in school tomorrow. I gotta go. Okay?”

“Well…okay…'bye.”

“'Bye.” Sam hung up the phone. He sat down on his father's bed and reached for the spiral notebook. His heart was racing.

So his dad kept a diary—all his secrets and personal thoughts in this notebook. It was different from sneaking a peek at his dad's
Playboys
; it seemed far more private and forbidding. And he was a little scared. But he picked it up anyway, and found the passage he'd been reading before:

Sam frowned. He didn't know what to make of it. His dad had written this seven whole weeks ago; so obviously he'd decided not to move. But why had the saleslady at the Bon Marche thrown him into such a panic? Was A.M. an old girlfriend or something? And who the hell was P.M.? Her husband? Did his dad have an affair with a married lady? And who was Eddie?

Flipping through the pages of the spiral notebook, Sam shook his head. “Jesus,” he murmured. “What's going on here?” Just two hours before, everything had been fine. And now, he wasn't sure who his mother was, and his dad seemed to be living some kind of double life.

If he expected to understand any of it, he'd have to read the journal—from beginning to end.

He couldn't ask his father anything. He'd gone around that corner when he'd covered up his own little crime, then invaded his father's bedroom and read his diary. Besides that, all of the sudden, for the first time in his life, Sam wasn't sure he could trust his dad to tell him the truth.

 

Sam read a little bit more of the diary every chance he got—usually during that hour alone after football practice and before his father came home. He didn't like himself very much for what he was doing.

His dad didn't write one mean word about him in the whole book. It was very clear that in his father's eyes, he could do no wrong. And here he was, doing wrong.

If his dad was mean to anyone, it was himself. “
Moron that I am
,” seemed to be one of his favorite expressions. Using swear words Sam had never heard him say out loud, he ruthlessly criticized himself for drinking too much. He kept writing about how he wished he could be a better father; and once, for two whole pages, he beat himself up for missing one of Sam's Little League games last summer. He hated his job (something Sam never knew), and felt bad that on his salary, he couldn't afford to give Sam the things he wanted—a house with a backyard and a dog. He was so hard on himself.

After reading those passages, Sam almost wanted to hug his father when he came home, then assure him that he was a terrific dad and he loved him very much.

But there were other things in the diary which made Sam shrink back whenever his father tried to embrace him.

Portions of the journal reminded him of events last summer that he'd practically forgotten. The day after he'd fainted at the Seattle Center fairgrounds was one such time. He'd been in Dr. Durkee's office, scared about the fainting spells and concerned that he was the hairless wonder. Well, he was showering in the locker room after football practice now, and he had no cause for embarrassment. Puberty had come at last. And his epilepsy was under control, too.

But his father's account of that day, June 9, 1989, ripped the lid off a whole new can of worries: