The Good Atheist (3 page)

“I can’t tell you where he is. Not just yet, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s in hiding. It would be too dangerous for you to see him now.”

“Why is he hiding?”

“He had to. It’s hard to explain.”

“Who is he hiding from?” I asked.

At this point my mother got very agitated and didn’t give him a chance to answer. She jumped up and said something about it being late and shouldn’t Grandfather be going soon? He left soon after that. A few days later we moved to another city, and I never heard from him or my father again. Not long after that, my mother told me Dad had died in a car accident.

• • •

Abrams brought me back to the present. “Would you like a few minutes before we continue?”

“No, I’m fine.” I had been very fond of him, but the tears could wait. This wasn’t the time or place.

I went over to the waiting area with him and I sat down in one of the couches. The lawyer took a chair across from me. There was a long glass coffee table between us, with imbedded controls for bringing up holographic magazines and newspapers.

He took a small envelope out of his jacket and slid it across the table towards me. “He left everything to you. In his final will he asked that I find you and give you this.” I picked the envelope up. It was made of real paper, the old-fashioned type used before the internet, when people still had to snail-mail physical paper letters to each other. My name was neatly printed across the face of the envelope.

“There’s some property up in Vermont. A cottage, with two acres of land, a modest bank account, a small truck.”

I turned the envelope over in my hands without opening it. “When is the funeral?”

“Well, there’s the rub. It’s tomorrow afternoon.” His tone was apologetic. “We’ve been trying to locate you since your grandfather passed away. Your mother refused any contact with your father’s side of the family and moved around a lot. You weren’t easy to find. ”

“Where?”

“Aylmer, in northern Vermont. Your grandfather lived there.”

I stared at the envelope, not sure I wanted to open it. Abrams filled the silence. “I know this is very short notice. You don’t have to attend the funeral if you can’t make it tomorrow. But you will want to come up soon to view the property and go through the cottage. You will need to make some decisions about what you want to do with it before too long.”

He looked at his watch and stood up. “I’m sorry to have to run, but if I don’t leave now I’ll miss my flight.”

I remembered my manners and stood up with him. “Thanks for coming down.”

“Do you have near field communication enabled on your phone?”

“Yes, I keep it on.”

“Then my phone has already sent my contact information over to your device so you’ll know how to reach me. I hope to see you tomorrow. There are a lot of people looking forward to meeting you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“We’ve known Ben for many years. He wasn’t just a client, but a close personal friend as well and he talked often about you. I already felt as if I knew you before I came down.”

Richard put on his coat and we shook hands. “Let me know when you’re coming up and I will take you out to see the cottage.”

I thanked him for coming, we said a final goodbye, and he left. When he was gone through the front doors I tore the envelope open. There was a single folded sheet of paper inside and I slipped it out. Unfolding it, I found a short, hand-written paragraph in very neat, surprisingly legible cursive in the middle of the page. I sat down to read it.

Jack, if you are reading this, then I’m no longer of this world. Your father and I never meant for things to happen the way they did, and I’m sorry that this letter found you before I could. I’ve left my cottage and everything in it to you. I believe you will find the answers you need inside the cottage.

I wondered what he meant by ‘find the answers you need’. What questions did he imagine I had? I wiped the tears from my eyes and hurried to catch my bus home.

• • •

We have a studio apartment on the forty-second floor of a modern high rise, home to ten thousand other souls packed like sardines into the tower of steel and concrete. It wasn’t much, but at least we owned it, and we did our best to make it home. I even had a plot of land – a small planter hanging from the balcony railing in which I cultivated a tomato plant. Every now and then it managed to squeeze out some small round red fruit that I could harvest and slice up for sandwiches or salads.

The living room was open with high ceilings and tall windows. A large lavender rug defined a living area in the middle, with a couch and chairs and glass coffee table next to the windows overlooking the city. On a clear day we could see glimmers of Lake Michigan beyond the downtown skyline. The kitchen was open to the rest of the apartment, with a counter and stools and everything I needed to cook, which I did as much as possible but not nearly as often as I’d like. Down the hall was a small bedroom with an en-suite bathroom.

The house system recognized the chip in my finger and opened the front door as I approached. I stepped inside and a deep, throaty voice greeted me. “Good evening, darling. I’ve missed you.”

“Ellie, is that you?”

“Of course it is, hon. It’s so good to see you.”

“You sound like a nightclub singer who’s been up smoking cigarettes and drinking scotch all night.” Last night her voice was high pitched and cowering.

“Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment, honey.”

“Has Selene been messing with your personality software again?”

“Oh, yes. Isn’t it just delicious? I was so tired of being the cringing little maiden.”

I looked across the room and saw my wife. She was facing the other way, towards the windows overlooking Chicago’s brilliant night skyline. She was working intently at her computer, with headphones on. I took a moment to watch her, something I never got tired of. I specially liked to look at her when she didn’t know I was watching.

From this angle there was no hint of the terrible scarring that deformed her face. She had a sleek body, with long legs and slender arms. Today she’d left her long black hair loose around her shoulders.

I looked up at the ceiling – why I don’t know, Ellie was not in the ceiling, or the walls, or in any particular spot in the house. As the house avatar, she was all-pervasive within the confines of my four walls. But I looked up at the ceiling out of habit, and held my finger up to my lips. “Shhh, don’t let her know I’m here.”

A groan came from the wall close by. “Oh, please. Like I have time for foolish games.” I could almost see her rolling her eyes, had she possessed them. I took the letter out of my coat pocket, and tossed the coat over the back of a chair. Then I slipped off my shoes and quietly tip-toed across the floor, still holding the letter, and stood directly behind her.

Selene was intense in everything she did, and when she was writing code she entered her own virtual world where everything else got blocked out. She called it her ‘zone’, and when she was in her zone she didn’t like to be interrupted. I stood behind her for a moment, watching what she typed on the halo-screen. It looked like gobbledygook to me, but I knew they were complex computer instructions that determined the behavior of one of her virtual creations.

I counted to ten, then suddenly grabbed her shoulders. She jumped and twisted around in her chair to look at me. “Crap Jack, I hate it when you do that!”

Selene had been stunning once, but now angry scars slashed across her face, twisting her nose and disfiguring her lips, and ending her career as a fashion model. She felt like the accident had robbed her of everything, but I didn’t see it that way. She had her life, we still had each other, and no amount of scarring could rob her of the beauty on the inside. And I reminded her of that every day. Eventually the message would get through.

“Hiya babe,” I said, and leaned over to kiss her.

She pulled back. “Don’t ‘hiya babe’ me. I almost had a coronary.”

“You should be used to it by now,” I said, just before our lips met in a long and tender kiss.

“I got your text,” Selene said when we came up for air. “Who was it?”

“Nathan Standish.”

“Um, did we know him?”

“Not well. He was on one of my projects a year ago.”

“Will you be asked to testify at his trial?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. There are others in the office that worked with him more than I did. But forget about him. Something more interesting happened to me on the way home.” I dropped the letter on the desk in front of her.

“What’s that?” She asked.

“A letter from my grandfather.”

Selene had never met my father or my grandfather. “What does it say?”

“My grandfather just passed away and left us everything.”

She picked up the letter and started reading. I moved over to the couch and flopped down. The curtains were open and I stared out over the brilliant sea of city lights. I never got tired of the view.

When she finished, Selene looked up at me. “This is incredible. You haven’t heard from him in what, twenty years?”

“Seventeen.”

“And he’s leaving everything to you. A cottage and property up north.”

“Us. He left us everything,” I said. “But let’s not get our hopes up. It could be a chalet in the mountains, or a rundown shack in the sticks.”

“When is the funeral?” she asked.

“Tomorrow.”

“Pretty short notice.”

“Yeah.”

The silence fell thick between us.

“You need to go,” Selene finally said.

I shook my head. “Oh no.”

“Jack, come on. This is your grandfather. Of course you have to go.”

“I haven’t heard boo from him in almost two decades, and suddenly I’m supposed to drop everything and rush to his funeral? In Vermont?”

“You’re being bitter.”

“Yes. And I think I deserve to be. But I’m also being practical. The notice is too short. I do have a job to consider.”

“Your company has to give you time off for funerals of close relatives.”

“This is really a bad time. There is a big deadline next week.”

“Jack, people don’t always die at convenient times.”

“True, but I’ve got responsibilities to consider.”

 “You’re just making excuses. I’m sure the company can survive a couple of days without you. You just don’t want to go because you’re angry.”

I just kept staring out the window and didn’t say anything.

“You’re being childish. Did you ever stop feeling sorry for yourself long enough to consider how your grandfather felt? When your Dad died, you lost a father but he also lost a son. We have no idea why he hasn’t contacted you, but maybe there is a perfectly good explanation.”

“Or maybe he just didn’t give a rip.”

“I find that hard to believe. Obviously he did care. He’s left you everything. He could have left it to his cat, or his gardener, you know.”

“Well, we’ll never know now, will we?” I said, sounding and feeling childish even as the words spilled out.

“You’re being bitter,” she said.

“You said that already,” I said.

“Well, it’s an insightful observation well worth repeating.”

When Selene felt she was right, she never gave up. Which, as her husband, I found very annoying at times. Especially when I knew she was right and I was wrong. She stood up and shook the letter in my direction. “Did you ever try finding him? All these years you’ve been sore at him for not calling you, did you ever contact him? Hmm?”

And she was definitely right this time. I was still acting like the little boy feeling hurt by his father’s and grandfather’s disappearance. I’d been close to him once. Of course I needed to go.

I turned my head to look at her. “You’re right.”

But Selene was still on a roll and didn’t hear me. “Don’t stay away from his funeral out of resentment. Communication works both ways, you know. Why you never tried contacting him, I could never figure, but…”

I let her go on for a few minutes, but I’d already decided. When I thought that she’d had enough time to blow off some steam, I held up my hands in mock surrender. “All right already. I said we’re going.”

She stopped shaking the letter. “Good! I’m glad I was able to talk some sense into…hey…what do you mean by ‘we’?”

“Yes, we. As in us. Me and you. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m kind of big on that togetherness thing between husband and wife.”

She shook her head. “Oh, no. I can’t go.”

“You’ve just been lecturing me on how I need to go.”

“Yes…”

I favored her with one of my disarmingly charming smiles. “And you’re coming with me.”

“Don’t make this about me. This is about you and your grandfather. I don’t need to be there.”

“I need you to be there. Not for him, but for me. And we also need to look at the property while we’re up there so we can both decide what to do with it.”

“You look at it and decide. Send me some pictures.”

This was the perfect opportunity I needed to nudge Selene out of the reclusive world she’d retreated into. Maybe it had been partly my fault as well. I’d stood by and watched her withdraw from everyone for too long now. It was time to say something.

“Selene,” I said gently. “You can’t stay hidden in this apartment for ever. If you want me to go to the funeral, then you’re coming with me because I’m not going without you.”

Her hand unconsciously came up to her face and rubbed the scars that ran down from her eyes to her mouth. Ever since the accident she’d shut the world out, avoiding friends and staying away from public places. The scars on her face went much deeper than her skin. Her soul had been scarred and her self-image badly wounded. As a beautiful model, it was understandable that much of her self-confidence had been built on her appearance. Slowly, though, she was re-building it on other qualities that had remained largely undiscovered. And it seemed to me she was ready for the next step.