They had never found a suicide note. That had been Amy’s first thought when Ryan had mentioned a letter from her mother. The absence of a note had been one of the precious things she had clung to all these years. It was the cornerstone of her denial that her mother had killed herself. It was what had spurred her to drive down from Boulder all night. As she took the letter from Ryan, it was the cause of the butterflies that stirred in her stomach.
Amy handled it carefully, delicately, as if the parchment were as priceless and fragile as the original Magna Carta. She unfolded it and laid it on the desktop before her. The process felt ceremonial, a sacred connection to her mother’s past. She checked the date. Ryan had been truthful. It was just two weeks before she had died.
Amy read in silence, the eyes leading her down an uncharted path. She struggled to keep her composure. She knew Ryan was studying her from the other side of his desk, though her eyes never met his, never left the pale green stationery that bore her mother’s initials.
She glanced up only once, as if suddenly aware of how stifling it was in the back office of Ryan’s clinic. The air conditioner hadn’t been run in days. The lone window was blocked by a set of floor-to-ceiling shelves jammed with patient files. The faux wood paneling was the cheap kind typically found in basements. Directly over Amy’s head was a long, bent-arm lamp that belonged over a physician’s examining table, not a desk. It threw more heat than light.
It was the emotional heat, however, that was starting to consume her, rising with each sentence, heightened by each word. Halfway through the letter, tiny beads of perspiration gathered above her lip, making her mouth dry and salty. She read to herself, allowing her mind to put the words to the tune of her mother’s voice. She tried to envision her mother actually saying such things aloud. It was a frustrating exercise. The imagined voice kept changing. Amy reached back in time for the soothing voice she remembered as a very small child, but the anxious tone of her mother’s last days was a constant interruption. It was like listening to a radio with a faulty antenna. At times, the interference was so great she couldn’t even remember what her mother had truly sounded like, happy or sad. Her confusion turned the narrator into someone altogether. She could hear Marilyn, Gram, and even herself. The distractions made her angry. It was misdirected anger, an unfocused rage she had harbored her entire life — the anger of an eight-year-old robbed of her mother.
Her hands were shaking as she neared the bottom of the page. She finally had reached a silent rhythm, reading in her mother’s voice, loud and strong. It was strange, but she finished with one overwhelming impression.
“This can’t be true.”
Ryan looked at her quizzically. “You mean everything in the letter is false? Or do you mean your mother didn’t write it?”
“Both.”
Ryan disagreed. But he tried not to sound disagreeable. “Let’s focus on the authenticity first. Did you bring something with your mother’s handwriting that we can compare to this letter, like we agreed?”
“Yes. But I don’t need to make any comparisons to tell you this letter is bogus.”
“That’s your opinion. I’d like to see for myself.”
“What are you, a handwriting expert?”
“No. But if you’re so sure it’s a phony, then what’s the downside to letting me lay the two side by side and compare?”
Amy clutched her purse. She didn’t feel threatened, but his tone had definitely challenged her. “All right.”
She unzipped her purse and removed an envelope. “This is a letter my mother wrote me when I was seven years old, at camp. As you’ll see, the handwriting is totally different.”
He took the letter a little too eagerly, embarrassed by the grab. He opened it and laid it beside the other letter, the one to his father. He didn’t really focus on what the letter to Amy said. Instead, he was checking the loops in the penmanship, noting the way the she dotted the letter “i” or crossed the letter “t.” He compared individual letters, groups of letters, words, and groups of words. He did all the things Norm had told him a handwriting expert would do. Finally, he looked up.
“I’m no expert, but I would say that these two letters were written by the same person.”
“It’s not even close.”
Ryan backed away in his chair. Her tone was getting hostile. “Look,” he said, trying to appeal to reason. “The penmanship in this letter to my father is a little shaky, I’ll grant you that. But they look very similar.”
“You think it’s similar because you want it to be similar.”
“I’d like to copy this and have an expert tell us one way or the other.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve worked at a law firm long enough to know that people hire experts who will tell them what they want to hear.”
“I’m just after the truth here.”
“You’re out to clear your father’s name.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong with that?” she said, raising her voice. “Marilyn Gaslow was my mother’s best friend. Your father raped her. And now, forty-six years later, you expect me to believe that Marilyn made it all up?”
“It’s right there in the letter. According to your mother, my father was convicted of a rape he never committed.”
“That’s why I say the letter’s a fraud. Why would my mother write a letter like that?”
“Because it’s the truth, that’s why.”
“It’s not the truth. If it were, your father would have told the whole world he had been falsely accused. Any normal human being would do everything possible to clear his name.”
“There was no need to clear his name. He was convicted as a juvenile and the record was sealed.”
She smiled sardonically. “How convenient. Marilyn works hard all her life, never so much as a hint of scandal in her life. But the very week of her presidential appointment, out pops a letter saying that she falsely accused a man of raping her.”
“I can’t account for the timing.”
“Well, I can. It’s a lie. It’s designed to hurt Marilyn. And it’s at the expense of my mother.”
“If it’s a lie, then why did my father send you two hundred thousand dollars?”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“I believe my father sent you that money out of gratitude to your mother. She was Marilyn’s best friend. Marilyn confided in her and told her the rape never happened. Your mother did the right thing and wrote a letter to my dad, telling him just that. It finally gave my father the corroboration he needed to prove himself innocent.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Do you have a better explanation as to why my father would send you that kind of money right before he died?”
Amy glared, but she had no response.
Ryan said, “I didn’t think you did.”
Her voice shook with anger. “All right. I’ll play along with your little fantasy for a minute or two. Let’s say my mother wrote that letter. Let’s say Marilyn Gaslow falsely accused your father. Where in the hell did your father get the two hundred thousand dollars that he sent to me?”
“That’s a fair question,” he said softly. “And I’ll answer it on one condition. I want to make a copy of that letter you brought, so I can have an expert compare the two.”
“What if I say no?”
“Then I guess you’ll never know where the money came from.”
Amy paused. The letter she had brought contained nothing embarrassing or too personal. There was no guarantee Ryan would tell her the truth, but there was one way to make sure she was getting something out of the deal. “I’ll swap you. You can copy the handwriting sample I brought. If I can copy the letter to your father.”
“Deal.” He rose from behind the desk, leading Amy to the copy machine in the next room. He reached for Amy’s letter, but she pulled away.
“Yours first.”
Ryan didn’t argue. He made a quick copy and handed it to Amy. She shoved the duplicate in her purse.
“Now yours,” he said.
She handed it over. Ryan shot the copy, then reached for the duplicate feeding out of the other end. Amy stopped him.
“Not so fast. This isn’t a one-for-one trade. Where did the money come from?”
His throat tightened. It had been hard enough to tell Norm, his friend and lawyer. Amy was altogether different. Maybe it all went back to the spark he’d felt the first time they’d met, but for whatever reason, what she thought of him mattered. “I don’t know for sure.”
“Where do you think it came from?”
“I think… my father used your mother’s letter to get the money.”
“Used it? What do you mean?”
He removed the copy from the tray. “I’m talking about extortion. That’s where the two hundred thousand dollars came from. And lots more.”
“He extorted Marilyn?”
“Not Marilyn. A very wealthy businessman named Joseph Kozelka.”
Amy stepped back, suddenly eager to leave. “This is getting way too crazy.”
“Just listen to me, please. I know it sounds horrible to say my dad was a blackmailer. But put yourself in his shoes. I think the only reason he became a blackmailer is because he was falsely convicted of rape.”
“Your father was a blackmailer and a rapist.”
“That’s not possible. The only way this makes sense is if he didn’t commit the rape.”
“You wish.”
“It’s mere logic. Ever since I learned about the rape conviction, I’ve asked myself: How does a man rape a woman and then turn into a blackmailer? Could the rapist extort the victim? No way. Unless the rape never happened — and the alleged rapist could prove the victim had made it all up. Your mother’s letter proves exactly that.”
“The only thing this whole visit proves is that I should have listened to Marilyn Gaslow. You Duffys are despicable people, and I need to stay as far away from you as possible.” She grabbed the photocopy from his hand. “And I’m not going to let you use this to prove your phony point.”
“Amy, wait!” He ran after her as she hurried toward the door, grabbing at the letter in her hand and ripping it in half. She screamed and swung at him. He stopped in his tracks. She looked him straight in the eye, her fist clenching pepper spray for self-defense.
Each watched the other, waiting for the next move. Neither one flinched. For an instant, they seemed taken with the irony. It was their parents, after all, who had predestined their meeting, watching from another world as the children moved from subtle flirtation at the Green Parrot to outright confrontation in Ryan’s office.
Amy said, “Stay away from me. I don’t want your money. And I don’t need your lies.” She turned and quickly let herself out.
He felt the urge to follow but didn’t. He’d taken his best shot. He should have known there would be no persuading her. At least he had a handwriting sample — half of Debby Parkens’s letter to her daughter. It was surely enough to allow one of Norm’s experts to verify she’d also written the letter to his father.
He laid his torn copy on the table and flattened the creases so that it would run through the fax machine. He scribbled a short message on a cover sheet, punched Norm’s number, and fed the documents into the slot.
Second thoughts gripped him as the machine slowly swallowed the letter. It wasn’t as if the handwriting analysis would be dispositive. Experts could only render opinions. Neither experts nor Amy could confirm for a fact that Frank Duffy had been falsely accused of rape. Only one person alive could do that. Her name was Marilyn Gaslow. The next chairwoman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.
The fax machine beeped, signaling the transmission was completed. Ryan stared at the documents, chilled by his own sudden resolve.
He picked up the phone and dialed once again.