Sliver Of Truth

Acceptance was slow. Then, when I realized that it was true, I tried to think of something to make it all right that he’d lied to me about how he’d found me, a reason he would have to make up a false scenario as he did. Pathetic, I know. Anyway, I couldn’t think of anything. Then I started to wonder: If he’d lied about how he found me, what else had he lied about? I thought about the things Jake had told me. How he’d tracked Max to a bar in Jersey and confronted him about Project Rescue. How just a few weeks later Max was dead.

I’d come to believe that it had been Max’s realization of how much harm he’d done that led him to drink so much the night he died-that in a sense Max had killed himself by drinking and driving off that bridge. But the man in the dossier was not a man to die over the grief of others. The man in the dossier didn’t have a conscience at all. Did that mean Jake had something more to do with his death than I’d believed? Or something more to do with Max than he’d revealed? The possibilities were chilling.

“A lot of what you know about Jake is true, I think,” Dylan said kindly. “He didn’t make up the stuff about his childhood, about his quest to find out who he really is and where he came from.”

“How do you know?” I said angrily. “How do you know all this about Jake?”

“Because I’ve been watching him for years.”

I looked at him sitting there.

“Why?” I asked him.

He smiled at me sadly. The answer was clear. I spoke for him.

“Because he’s been watching me, waiting for Max to approach me. He never believed Max died that night, and he believed that one day Max would reach out for me, try to contact me. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“And when Max did, Jake would be sleeping beside you,” said Dylan. “He knew he’d be the first person you told.”

I felt as if someone was stepping on my chest. I thought of all my nights with Jake and all the love I’d had for him. The idea that it had all been a part of some design, or something to do to pass the time as he waited for Max to make contact, sliced me open.

“And you’d be listening when I did.”

He shrugged again. “Max Smiley is a man with the means, the resources, and the motives to drop off the face of the earth forever. As far as we know, he only has one weakness, one place in his heart that feels.”

I didn’t have to ask who or what that was. I thought about the patience it must have taken to wait day after day for Max to contact me, how badly Jake must have wanted it.

“I’ve never understood Jake’s obsession. All this time, I thought it was just his needing to know what happened to him, his wanting to bring Max and the other people responsible for Project Rescue to justice. I thought he just wanted some closure. But there has to be more to it than that.”

“That’s probably how it started.”

“Then?”

“My guess is that the more he learned about Max, the more obsessed he became with finding him. I think his obsession grew beyond his personal quest for answers. I think the search for Max became his whole reason for living. Eventually it started to define him.”

I could see how that might happen; in fact, I could feel it happening to me. But at the same time, Dylan’s answer didn’t quite work for me. I realized then that Jake’s obsession had seemed out-sized for months; it had grown in a way that had felt incongruous. Early in our relationship, I’d believed that it would lessen over time, but the opposite had happened. It was one thing for me to be obsessed; the man was my father.

“I guess you know a thing or two about obsession,” I said.

I thought about the crime-scene photos I’d seen in the dossier. I’d seen what Max did to Dylan’s mother. I understood Dylan better now.

“I guess I do.”

“You turned yours into a career.”

He shrugged. “It’s a living.” He tried for a smile but it died on his face. I, for one, wondered if I’d ever smile again.

“How did Jake know I was Max’s daughter?”

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just knew that Max had loved you.”

“Then why would he lie about how he found me?”

“I can’t answer that.”

There was so much more to ask, so many questions about the last couple of years and the last couple of weeks. We hadn’t scratched the surface. But I sat there for a minute before launching into all that. I wanted to ask about the men at the Cloisters, how I’d wound up in London, and whom he had killed in the hospital. I was afraid that once I started, the answers would only lead to more questions.

“Myra Lyall is dead,” I said. “They found her body floating in a trunk in a canal.”

Dylan nodded. “I know.”

“What did she find out? The people who took her-are they the same people who took me?”

“I’m not sure, Ridley. I don’t know what happened to either one of you. I was hoping you could answer some of those questions.”

I frowned at him. I guess I kind of had the idea that the only reason I didn’t end up in a trunk floating is that Dylan Grace had saved my ass, as he so eloquently put it. Wrong again.

“Then how did you find me?”