Cheated By Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

He’d abandoned my mother
and me and never bothered to marry Patty’s mother. Typical.
    “So, where’s Patty?”
    “Working.”
    “Does she drive the white Mustang?”
    He nodded. “She wants to meet you. She’s only
seen pictures of you.”
    “Pictures?”
    He reached for a shoe box on the table in
front of him. He dug through it and came up with a couple of old
black-and-white photographs and some color Instamatic shots,
handing them to me.
    I flipped through them. The black-and-white
ones were me at two. My mother had had a duplicate set. I stared in
disbelief at the faded color shots taken at my high school
graduation. They weren’t very good; I wasn’t even the central
figure in most of them, probably because they’d been taken from a
distance. Though the focus was fuzzy, I recognized my sullen
features, remembered feeling embarrassed in the black cap and gown.
I thought Richard was my only family member to go to the ceremony.
I thought Richard was my only family.
    “Where’d you get these?”
    “I took them.”
    “You were there?” I asked, my stomach
tightening.
    “You’re my kid. It was your graduation
day.”
    “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you
introduce yourself?”
    He shrugged. “By then I had Joan and Patty.
You didn’t need me. Anyway, you done all right.”
    Yeah, right. Dumped on a brother I didn’t
know, whose family despised my mother—and me. Oh, yeah, living in
the Alpert house was real pleasant.
    I looked at that frail, sick old man, unable
to let go of the anger. Yet this man was my father. Half of what I
was came from him.
    “You got any questions?” he asked.
    Only one.
    “Why did you leave my mother and me?”
    The old man frowned. “All Betty ever thought
about was getting her boy Richard back. That’s all she talked
about. That’s all she cared about. After five years, I couldn’t
take it no more.”
    Something about that didn’t quite ring true.
I knew all about how Richard’s grandparents had gotten custody of
him after his father died and our mother had a nervous breakdown.
She never regained custody of him. But I couldn’t hold that against
my brother, who’d been a pawn in the struggle between his rich old
grandmother and my working-class mother.
    I looked Chet in the eye, felt him take a
mental step back as I connected with him. Unnerved, he looked away,
but I knew something he wouldn’t want me to know. My breathing
quickened—anger rising as I registered a vague understanding of
what he felt, and it sorted itself out in my brain.
    “You . . . wanted to kidnap Richard. To
extort money from the Alperts.”
    “That’s a lie,” he said, his face flushing
“Whoever told you that lied!”
    “I don’t think so . . . .”
    He leaned back against the chair, struggling
for breath—his anger evaporating. “Believe what you want. I know
the truth.”
    So did I. But after all those years, it
wasn’t worth pursuing.
    He clutched the chair’s arms, forcing himself
to breathe slower.
    “What happened to Patty’s mother?” I
asked.
    “Joan died of cancer about ten years ago.
That’s a bad time for a girl to lose her mother. Patty’s been a
handful ever since.”
    “Tell me about her.”
    “She works at a medical supply house in
Lockport. Makes good money, too.”
    “But she lives here?”
    “When she’s in-between boyfriends.” That
didn’t set well with the old man.
    I noticed the previous day’s paper neatly
folded at the side of his chair—reminding me of another question
that needed to be asked.
    “You told Richard you didn’t know I was back
in Buffalo.”
    “Yeah.”
    “What about the newspaper stories about us
and that murder last winter?” It had been front page news, and my
name—and picture, as well as Richard’s—had been prominently
displayed in the paper, and on TV.
    Caught in a lie, the old man looked
appropriately guilty. He shifted his gaze, annoyed. “Elena, where’s
that coffee?” He called and dipped