“Jed didn’t want to be related to that horrible man. He was trying to get away.”
“Have you ever been contacted by Conklin or his organization? Any of his so-called Rulers?”
Shivering in the cold, I shake my head.
“Something to think about,” he says before powering up the window.
Hours later that’s all I can think about.
Midnight finds me in the attic, going through boxes. Not in a frenzy, nothing like that. I’m being very cool and methodical. Some rational, robotic part of me has taken over and begun conducting a search for evidence that Jedediah hadn’t invented his connection to the father he sometimes called Monster Man. Monster Man not because Jed had ever been physically abused, but because his father had such monstrous ideas about human behavior.
There will be no recent correspondence, no original birth certificate, of that I’m almost certain. Jed burned all of that, his little hoard of what he called “sick memorabilia,” before we moved upstate. Eventually he obtained a legal passport—he had to have one for his job—but the required birth certificate had been altered from Conklin to Corbin. And that document he had forged before we met, while he was still attending Rutgers, already planning for a complete break with his cold and domineering father and the devoted followers who called themselves Rulers. According to Jed, no contact had been attempted in years. Not from his father or any of the Rulers. Certainly not since Noah was born. So it’s not as if we had saved Christmas cards from dear old Dad.
Jed had wanted a clean break and part of it was giving up the things that linked him to his past. But he hadn’t thrown everything away, because shortly after he proposed, after confessing to be the son of Arthur Conklin, the Arthur Conklin, Jed had read me a letter the legendary man had written to him years before, when Jed was twelve years old. A letter that pretty much explained what happened between them, although the actual, final break didn’t come until several years later, after Jed’s mother died and his father remarried.
The letter certainly existed at the time, of this I am certain. I have a clear image of it in my mind. It was creased, well-worn, resided in a tattered, folded envelope. For a long time Jed carried it in his wallet, as a reminder of why he’d made the break. That much I recall, Jed flapping it around as he read—come to think of it, he had it pretty much memorized—offering it as proof positive that cutting himself off from his famous father was something he had to do. Within the last few years he’d stopped carrying the letter. I know this because I bought him a nice ostrich skin wallet for his last birthday and watched as he transferred all his cards and cash, and I recall thinking to myself, he’s finally put away the letter, that’s good.
Unless he threw it away. But somehow I don’t think so. Somehow I think that if it ever came up with Noah, why he’d never met his grandfather, Jed would have wanted to show him, just as he’d shown me.
One o’clock in the morning comes and goes. Amazing how much stuff we’ve stowed in the attic. Boxes of canceled checks, bills, credit card receipts, tax forms. Tons of my own family junk, from broken dolls to obituary notices for both my parents, plus all the condolence cards, neatly sorted and bound with elastic bands. Which had, no surprise, disintegrated in the summer attic heat. The elastic bands, I mean, not the cards. Hallmark greetings live forever, apparently. Plus every sketch and coloring book Noah had ever made, from day care on.
I spend hours going through Noah’s drawings, reliving kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and so on. Right up to the last, furious drawings he’d made of a black plane falling from the sky. Not crashing—never crashing in Noah’s drawings—but falling like an angry leaf.
Eventually I get back to the task at hand, and just after dawn it finally reveals itself.
Jed had tucked it into one of the graphic novels he collected as a teen. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Of course, I should have known. Although he’d carried the letter as an adult, it dated from his boyhood, and so he’d stowed it away with something else that made a big impression on a twelve-year-old, namely Batman.
I hold the thing reverently, this tattered, wrinkled, finger-smudged envelope. Jedediah’s name and address is handwritten, inscribed in a firm hand. The boarding school where he had been sent against his mother’s wishes, and where he had been, for the first several months, miserable and homesick. Enough so that he had written to his imperious father begging to be allowed to come back home. This letter, the letter he saved as a reminder, is in response to that request.
Jedediah—Let me be crystal clear: the answer is no. You are to remain in school. During holidays and summer break I have given instructions that you will be boarded either on campus, or, when that is not possible, elsewhere. In your letter (there are a number of misspellings, by the way) you profess to loving your parents, in particular your mother, but this is merely reflexive and typical of an as-yet-unformed mind. As an expression of self, the bonding instinct we mistakenly call love can be a powerful tool for success, but in its lesser form, as an emotional attachment to others, love tends to weaken self-interest, thereby weakening the whole. Your mother now agrees that her connection to you is only biological, mere reproduction. Therefore she does not ‘love’ you any more than I do. Do not attempt to contact us again until after your 18th birthday, by which time your brain will have matured to its final adult form, and you may finally be ready to evolve into a fully developed Ruler. Until then, any attempts at contact will be rebuffed. Phone calls will not be taken and letters will be returned unread. In the meantime, work on forming your protective carapace. Form your adult self. When in doubt consult the manual. All answers lie within. The Rule of One is the One Rule.
That’s it. No formal closing, no yours truly or sincerely yours. But the handwritten signature is clear enough: A. Conklin. Not Dad or even the more formal Father, because terms of affection and familiarity are signs of mental weakness.
The manual he refers to is his bestselling book The Rule of One. All answers lie within. No ego at work there, eh? Jed almost always referred to the book itself in sarcastic or derogatory terms. The Sociopath’s Bible, or How to Be Selfish and Justify Your Greed in 900 Hard-to-Read Pages. Wisecracks covering the pain. He’d grin and roll his eyes, but deep down he meant it. He’d been a late child and an only child, born after his father had already become a reclusive cult figure, and in any case the old man believed that children were meant to be observed and perhaps, if they exhibited interesting behavior, studied. But not loved. Never loved. That had been made clear.
I have to fold that horrible, inhuman letter away quickly, store it back in the envelope before my tears dissolve the only physical proof I have that Jedediah didn’t lie to me about who he was and what he’d been through.
It’s a relief, really, to find that I can still cry.
Randall Shane might not consider the letter proof of anything because letters can be forged, but I know it’s real because I know where Jed hurt. Exactly where, and how to heal it, too.
You can’t fake a thing like that, not for ten years.
Not for ten seconds.
4. A Few Drops Of Blood
According to Shane’s in-dash GPS navigator, GenData Labs, Inc. is located in one of the new high-tech industrial parks situated a few miles west of the Greater Rochester International Airport. Which means it takes Shane, who habitually drives four miles an hour below the speed limit unless being chased or chasing, a little more than an hour to get there. An hour in which he listens to most of Herbie Hancock’s River album and tries not to think about how he’ll deal with Haley Corbin when he will undoubtedly have to return with the bad news.
For all he knows her little boy really was Arthur Conklin’s grandchild—he’ll run that down later, if need be—but her theory about the kid’s survival is so far-fetched that it strains the imagination. Wealthy, powerful families, however dysfunctional, can still be victims of