Sliver Of Truth

“Don’t worry, lullaby,” he said with a forced lightness. “Uncle Max has had a bit too much to drink. He’s got a lot of demons; sometimes the bourbon lets them loose.”

“But what was he talking about?” I asked stubbornly, having the sense that I was being shut out of something important.

“Ridley,” said my father, too sternly. He caught himself and softened his tone. “Really, honey, don’t worry about Max. It’s the bourbon talking.”

He walked away from me and disappeared behind his study doors. I hovered there a minute, heard the rumbling of their voices behind the oak. I knew the impossibility of listening at those thick doors; I’d tried it many times as a kid. Plus, I ran into my favorite aunt in the hallway. You remember her, Auntie Denial. She wrapped her arms around me and whispered comforting sentiments: Just the bourbon. Just Max’s demons talking. You know Max. Tomorrow he’ll be fine. As fragile as she is, she’s powerful when you cooperate with her, when you let her spin her web around you. Yes, as long as you don’t look her in the face, she’ll wrap you in a cocoon. It’s safe and warm in there. So much nicer than the alternative.

That’s the last time I saw my uncle Max. His face still wet with tears and flushed with bourbon, his sad smile, his final words to me. Ridley, you might be the only good I’ve ever done.

Those words had taken on different meanings for me with every new thing I’d learned about Max. They meant one thing when I thought he was just my sad uncle whom I had loved and who had died later that night. They meant another when I found out he was my father, a man who’d made so many awful mistakes, who’d failed me in so many ways. I wondered what they’d mean to me at the end of the road I found myself on now. I flashed on the articles in Jake’s files-those grisly crimes, those missing women, children and girls abducted from nightclubs and sold into prostitution. Why had he saved those articles? What did it have to do with Max? And why was the FBI still interested in him?

The man next to me snored softly, his head leaning at an awkward angle against the airplane window. The girl across the aisle read a Lee Child novel. Normal people leading normal lives. Maybe. They probably thought the same of me.

I found the harder I reached for my memories of Max, the more vague and nebulous they became. One thing was certain, though: If Nick Smiley was right, if Max was who Nick believed him to be, then I had never met that man. He’d been so well-hidden behind a mask that I’d never even caught a glance. I’d seen only a sliver of the man, the part of himself he’d allowed me to see.

In the cab on the way home from La Guardia, I pulled the cell phone from my bag. Yes, I’d kept my cell phone in spite of my repeated threats to get rid of it. You might remember my disdain for the things (I hate them even more than I do digital cameras). Cell phones are just another excuse for people to not be present, another reason for them to be even ruder and more unthinking than they normally are. But what can I say? I got hooked on the convenience.

There were three calls from Jake, according to the log, but no messages. I was aching to call someone. Not Jake; I didn’t want to fan the flame of his obsession. I couldn’t call Ace or my father; neither of them would want to hear the questions I had to ask (though my father was the most logical person to go to). I hadn’t had a real conversation with my mother in over a year. I leaned my head back against the vinyl seat and watched the glow of red taillights and white headlamps blur in the darkness.

Then the phone, still in my hand, started to ring. I didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID, but the 917 exchange told me it was a wireless phone. I picked up out of sheer loneliness.

“Detroit’s nice this time of year,” said a low male voice when I answered. “If you like shitholes.”

“Who is this?” I said, my stomach clenching. Nobody knew I’d been to Detroit. I’d told no one, took off that morning, paid a ridiculous sum for a round-trip same-day ticket.

“Let me guess. The pictures got to you, right? Then I suppose you talked to your boyfriend. Has anyone ever told you that you have an investigative mind? You might have missed your calling.”

“Agent Grace?” I said, annoyance replacing trepidation, a feeling that was beginning to characterize our encounters.

“So what did Nick Smiley tell you?”

“That Max was a psychopath,” I answered, figuring he probably already knew that much. “A killer.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I said.

“An interesting fact about Nick Smiley: Did he tell you that he is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who has been doped up on lithium for the last twenty years on and off?”

“No,” I said. “He failed to mention that.” Something like relief made the muscles in my shoulders relax a bit.

“Doesn’t make him a liar. Just makes his version of the truth questionable.”