No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [60]
“I think,” I said, “that we should go visit Tess tonight.”
“Yeah,” said Grace. “Let’s see Aunt Tess.”
Cynthia, as though coming out of a dream, said, “Tomorrow. I thought you said we should go see her tomorrow.”
“I know. But I think it might be good to see her tonight. There’s a lot to talk about. I think you should tell her what Mr. Abagnall said.”
“What did he say?” Grace asked.
I gave her a look that silenced her.
“I called earlier,” Cynthia said. “I left her a message. She must be out doing something. She’ll call us when she gets the message.”
“Let me make a call,” I said, and reached for the phone. I let it ring half a dozen times before her voicemail cut in. Given that Cynthia had already left a message, I couldn’t see the point in leaving another.
“I told you,” Cynthia said.
I looked at the wall clock. It was nearly seven. Whatever Tess might be out doing, chances were she wouldn’t be out doing it much longer. “Why don’t we go for a drive, head up to her place, maybe she’ll be there by the time we arrive, or we can wait around for a little while until she shows up. You still have a key, right?”
Cynthia nodded.
“You don’t think this can all wait till tomorrow?” she asked.
“I think, not only would she want to hear about what Mr. Abagnall found out, there might be some things she might want to share with you.”
“What do you mean, she might have something to share with me?” Cynthia asked. Grace was eyeing me pretty curiously, too, but had the sense not to say anything this time.
“I don’t know. This new information, it might trigger something with her, prompt her to remember things she hasn’t thought about in years. You know, if we tell her your father might have had some other, I don’t know, identity, then she might go, oh yeah, that explains such and such.”
“You’re acting like you already know what it is she’s going to tell me.”
My mouth was dry. I got up, ran some water from the tap until it was cold, filled a glass, drank it down, turned around and leaned against the counter.
“Okay,” I said. “Grace, your mother and I need some privacy here.”
“I haven’t finished my dinner.”
“Take your plate with you and go watch some TV.”
She took her plate and left the room, a sour expression on her face. I knew she was thinking that she missed all the good stuff.
To Cynthia, I said, “Before she got those last test results, Tess thought she was dying.”
Cynthia was very still. “You knew this.”
“Yes. She told me she thought she only had a limited amount of time left.”
“You kept this from me.”
“Please. Just let me tell you this. You can get mad later.” I felt Cynthia’s eyes go into me like icicles. “But you were under a lot of stress at the time, and Tess told me because she wasn’t sure you’d be able to deal with that kind of news. And just as well she didn’t tell you, because as it turned out, she’s okay. That’s the thing we can’t lose sight of.”
Cynthia said nothing.
“Anyway, at the time, when she thought she was terminal, there was something else she felt she had to tell me, something that she felt you needed to know when the time was right. She wasn’t sure she’d get the chance again.”
And so I told Cynthia. Everything. The anonymous note, the cash, how it could show up anywhere, anytime. How it helped get her through school. How Tess, taking the author of the note at his or her word, that if she breathed a word of this the cash would stop coming, kept this to herself all these years.
She listened, only interrupting me a couple of times with questions, let me spell it all out for her.
When I was done, she looked numb. She said something I didn’t hear very often from her. “I could use a drink,” she said.
I got down a bottle of scotch from a shelf high in the pantry, poured her a small glass. She drank it down in one long gulp, and I poured her about half as much again. She drank that down, too.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s go and see Tess.”
We would have preferred to go see Tess without bringing Grace along, but it would have been a scramble to find a sitter with no notice. And not only