The Shape of Mercy (32 page)

“Just for few minutes. Don’t tell your mother.”

Another prancing beat. “But Dad, your doctor said you came through just fine.”

“It wasn’t during the surgery. It was afterward, in that hot, white room. I felt like I was slipping away, like I was leaving you. Leaving you all.”

I stroked his hand and said nothing. My heart pounded.

“And do you know what I was thinking?” His hand stirred under mine.

“Tell me.” My two-word answer was a whisper.

“That I hadn’t done enough. I was afraid I’d see my father and he would know I hadn’t done enough.”

My grandfather, who I barely remembered because he died when I was six, came to the forefront of my mind as I sat with my father’s hand under mine. I remembered my grandfather in snapshot images, moments of video when he waved the camera away while he puffed on a pipe. I remembered thinking he looked like Winston Churchill. I remembered him wearing gray suits and smelling of pine.

I remembered being afraid of him.

Charles Durough was a stranger to me. Not a mean or hostile stranger, but a stranger nonetheless. My father never talked much about Grandpa. I always thought he and my dad were just men who kept their feelings to themselves.

“What do you mean you hadn’t done enough?” I asked.

“Duroughs have to make something of ourselves, don’t we? We have to take the tobacco and the gold nugget and make something of ourselves. And we can’t stop.”

His voice fell away.

“Can’t stop what?” I whispered. But I knew. In that moment I knew what my father feared more than anything, and it had nothing to do with money. He feared he wouldn’t measure up.

I had underestimated everyone.

Everything I believed about my dad and me and the Durough legacy fell away, and the truth suddenly became crystal clear.

My father wasn’t driven by a relentless desire to amass wealth. He was driven to please his father. And he worried that he couldn’t do it.

Just like me.

Certain there could be no pleasing my father because I wasn’t a son, I convinced myself to do the opposite of what he expected of me. I would be nothing like the sons the Duroughs before me had been. This is why I went to a state school and majored in English and told myself I had no desire to run the company—so that I would be nothing like my nonexistent brother, the heir who was never born.

I squeezed my father’s hand as tears slipped down my cheeks. “You’ve done quite enough,” I whispered. “Do you hear me, Dad? You’ve done more than enough.”

He closed his eyes, but a tiny grin formed on his lips.

“I am so sorry, Daddy,” I mumbled. The tears kept coming. I couldn’t stop them.

My father slowly opened his eyes. “Why?”

“I’m sorry you never had the son you wanted. And I’m sorry I’ve made such a mess of things.”

He could only stare at me as tears coursed down my cheeks. I had to look away to avoid his questioning eyes.

“What are you talking about?” he finally asked.

I caressed his hand and waited for my voice to return and my tears to lessen. He waited too.

“I don’t know who I am,” I said, shaking my head.

His fingers tightened around mine. He said my name and waited until I looked him full in the face. “You are my daughter. You are my flesh and blood. I have never wanted you to be anyone else. You will do wonders with your tobacco and nugget of gold. I know it.”

We were silent for a few moments. I wiped away my tears with my free hand. He was so quiet I assumed he had fallen asleep, but he was looking at me still, waiting for me to acknowledge him.

“I’ve made so many mistakes,” I said.

“Welcome to planet earth.”

I smiled. “I just wish … I wish I didn’t judge people by what they have or don’t have. I wish I could see people for who they are on the inside before I come to any conclusions.”

My dad blinked slowly and then said something so profound, I knew I would never forget it. The funny thing was, after that morning, he didn’t remember saying it.

“Yes, that would be better than the other, but it still makes you their judge.”

My father squeezed my hand and drifted back into his numbed slumber.

And I just sat there, mesmerized.

Later that afternoon, as I stood in my father’s study and prepared to head back to Santa Barbara, Esperanza called me. I hurried to answer my phone, anxious to talk to Abigail.

“Lauren, it’s Esperanza.”

“Yes, I know. Is she home?”

“No.”

“Have you heard from her?”

“No. I have heard from someone else.”

“Who?”

“Graham. He’s coming.”

Something about the way Esperanza said his name alarmed me. “What do you mean, he’s coming?”

“I think he knows Abigail left without telling anyone where she is. And he saw how tired she looked when she was with him. And sad. He could tell too that she’s not herself.”

“So?”

“He told me he thinks she is, how do you say, losing it.”

Losing it?

“Esperanza, what are you saying?”

“I think he’s coming to take over her affairs. I think he wants to go to a judge and have him say Miss Abigail is not able to take care of herself.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Sí, but that’s what I think he wants to do.”

“Well, he won’t get away with it. Abigail is fine. She … she probably just needs some time alone.”

“Perhaps.”

Esperanza sounded so unsure.

“What?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But I think you should be here when he comes.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because you are Miss Abigail’s assistant. I am only the housekeeper. What if he brings a lawyer? A lawyer will not listen to a housekeeper.”

“And you think he will listen to me?”

“You are her assistant. You are smart. You can talk to these people.”

I couldn’t believe Esperanza believed a twenty-year-old college student would be able to help Abigail.

“Surely she has other friends, business associates …,” I began.

“Miss Abigail worked at the library twenty years ago. No one remembers her. And she only worked part-time. She didn’t need the money. She just loved the books.”

“What about her lawyer? She has to have a lawyer.”

“I don’t know his name, and I don’t know how to find it. You should come and look for it. Look in her desk. In her files.”

I was appalled. “I can’t do that!”

“Then how can we prove Miss Abigail is not crazy? How can we keep Graham from taking everything? You should come. She likes you. She trusts you.”

“No, she doesn’t,” I said, remembering my last conversation with Abigail.

“Yes, she does.”

“I tried to take a copy of the diary.”

“She was disappointed in me that I took that thing from your purse! More disappointed in me than in you.”

“But she kept it.”

“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t trust you.”

I had no idea how to intervene on Abigail’s behalf and was about to say so when my eyes fell upon an antiquated tin of tobacco on the mantle in my father’s study. My father had had it for years. It was there to remind him, to remind all of the family, of the tin of tobacco that Abel Durough gave Wilbur Fellowes, the tin of tobacco that contained a gold nugget and changed a man’s life.

My father’s words came echoing back to me.
You will do wonders with your tobacco and nugget of gold.

I had a choice.

My father had spent his life making not money but an image. An image of the successful man. He knew no other goal, and it haunted him.

I could spend my life making something else.

This is what Mercy taught me in her dark and dreadful classroom. The choice was mine, imperfect though I was. I could choose to make a difference in the life of someone else.

This one thing I could do, even in chains.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

E
speranza was alone at Abigail’s house when I got back to Santa Barbara a few minutes after three in the afternoon. She let me in.

“When is he coming?” I asked as she closed the door behind me.

“Tomorrow. He said he would be on a flight first thing in the morning. You have classes tomorrow?”

“Yes. I can skip the last two, but not the first. I’ll get here as soon as I can, a little before ten.”

“Bueno. I think you should plan to sleep here until he goes back.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a young single girl. It would not be right for him to stay here too. He will have to get a hotel room.”

“But this is—”

“This is not his house. This is Miss Abigail’s house. I will tell him you’ve been working on a project and staying here.”

“But I haven’t been staying here.”

“You stayed here two nights.”

“But the diary is finished. It’s not even here!”

“Graham doesn’t know that. I don’t have any trouble lying to protect Miss Abigail. You say nothing about that. I will tell him you are staying here, and he will have to get a hotel room. Bring some clothes, pajamas. You are staying here.”

“All right.”

“Bueno. Now I show you Miss Abigail’s files so you can find her lawyer.”

“Okay.”

Esperanza started to walk away, but then she stopped and turned to me. “Your father is okay, no?”

I fell in step with her. “He’s okay. He’s going to be fine.”

It took an hour, but I found a file that included some legal documents and the name of Abigail’s lawyer, Alexander Helming. The document related to some property Abigail owned in Long Beach and was dated two years earlier. I prayed he was still her lawyer and knew her personally.

I phoned his office and convinced the secretary who answered the phone that my call was urgent. As soon as she heard Abigail’s name, she transferred the call. I took that as a good sign.

“This is Alex Helming.”

“My name is Lauren Durough and I am Miss Boyles’s literary assistant.”

“Yes?”

“I think Miss Boyles might be in need of your assistance. Quick.”

“Oh? What’s the problem?”

“Do you know about Graham?” I figured that was as good a place as any to start.

“I’m afraid I do.”

“Miss Boyles has … taken a vacation. She decided to keep her whereabouts private. Miss Boyles’s housekeeper received a phone call from Graham. He’s coming to Santa Barbara, and he knows Miss Boyles left without telling anyone where she was going. The housekeeper is afraid Graham wants to prove Abigail suffers from dementia and that’s why she’s disappeared. We think he wants to have her declared unfit to manage her affairs.”

“That’s preposterous. Miss Boyles is old, but she is not senile. That man just wants her estate.”

“Yes, I know. But he’s coming here. Tomorrow.”

“So? Let him come. He won’t be able to prove it. When Abigail returns, she can send him on his way.”

“But Mr. Helming, Esperanza and I don’t know where Abigail is. And when she left she was upset.”

“Upset? How so?”

“She’d just returned from seeing Graham, and I don’t think their visit went well.”

“They never do.”

“And she was angry at me.”

“You? What did you do?”

I sighed. “We had a misunderstanding about a project I was working on. I thought she hadn’t been up-front with me about something. It was my fault.”