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  Ryan had supported his father’s decision to spend his few remaining days at home. Frank Duffy was well liked among the town’s twelve hundred residents, but the two-hour trek to the hospital was making it hard for his oldest friends to say their final goodbyes. Ryan had set his father up in the rear of the house, in his favorite sitting room. A rented hospital bed with chrome railings and adjustable mattress replaced the rustic pine sofa with forest-green cushions. Beyond the big bay window was a vegetable garden with knee-high corn and bushy green tomato plants. Ash-oak floors and beamed cedar ceilings completed the cabin feeling. It used to be the cheeriest room in the house.

  “Did you get it?” his father asked eagerly as Ryan entered the room.

  Ryan smirked as he took the bottle from the paper sack in his hand: a fifth of Jameson Irish Whiskey.

  His face beamed. “Good boy. Set ’em up.”

  He put two glasses on the bed tray in his father’s lap, then poured two fingers into each.

  “You know the really good thing about Irish whiskey, Ryan?” He raised his glass in a toast, smiling wryly. “It’s Irish. To your health, laddie,” he said in an exaggerated brogue.

  The hand was shaking, Ryan noticed, not from drinking but from his illness. He was even more pale today than yesterday, and his weakened body seemed shapeless, almost lifeless, beneath the wrinkled white sheets. In silence, they belted back one last round together. His father finished with a crooked smile of satisfaction.

  “I still remember the first drink you ever took,” he said with nostalgia in his eyes. “You were a spunky little eleven-year-old, pestering my old man for a sip. Your grandmother said go ahead and give it to him, thinking you’d spit it out like medicine and learn your lesson. You threw your head back, guzzled it right down and slammed the glass on the table, like some cowboy in the movies. You wanted to cough so bad your eyes were nearly popping out of your head. But you just dragged your sleeve across your lips, looked your grandma in the eye and said, ‘Better than sex.’”

  They shared a weak laugh. Then his father gave him a searching look. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile in I don’t know how long.”

  “Guess I haven’t felt much like smiling. Didn’t feel much like drinking tonight, either.”

  “What do you propose we do? Make a few phone calls, cancel the disease? Look,” he said warmly, “the way I see it, we can either laugh in the face of death, or we can die trying not to. So be a sport and pour your old man another drink.”

  “I don’t think you’d better, Dad. Painkillers and alcohol aren’t a good mix.”

  “God, you’re always so damned responsible, Ryan.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. I admire you for that, actually. Wish I were more like you. People always said we’re exactly alike, but that’s just on the surface. Not that it wasn’t cute when you used to sit at the breakfast table and make like you were reading the sports section with me, trying to be just like Dad, even though you were two years old and didn’t know how to read yet. But all that was just pretend. On the inside, where it counts — well, let’s just say that you and I are far more different than you’d think.”

  He paused and placed his glass on the tray. All humor had left his face. He was suddenly philosophical. “Do you believe that good people can turn bad?”

  “Sure,” Ryan said with a shrug.

  “I mean really bad, like criminals. Or do you think some things are so unspeakable, so heinous, that only someone who was bad from the very beginning could have done them?”

  “I guess I don’t think anyone’s born bad. People have their own free will. They make choices.”

  “So why would someone choose to be bad if they’re not bad?”

  “Because they’re weak, I guess. Too weak to choose what’s good, too weak to resist what’s evil.”

  “Do you think the weak can become strong?” He propped himself up on his elbow at the edge of the mattress, looking Ryan in the eye. “Or once you turn toward evil are you like rotten fruit, gone forever?”

  Ryan smiled awkwardly, not sure where this was headed. “Why are you asking me this?”

  He lay back and sighed. “Because dying men take stock. And I am surely dying.”

  “Come on, Dad. You’re devoted to Mom. Both your children love you. You’re a good man.”

  “The best you can say is that I’ve become a good man.”

  The ominous words hung in the air. “Everybody does bad things,” Ryan said tentatively. “That doesn’t make them bad.”

  “That’s the fundamental difference between you and me, son. You would never have done what I did.”

  Ryan sipped nervously from his empty glass, unsure of what to say, fearing some kind of confession. The drapes moved in the warm breeze.

  His father continued, “There’s an old chest of drawers in the attic. Move it. Beneath the floorboards, I’ve left something for you. Some money. A lot of it.”

  “How much?”

  “Two million dollars.”

  Ryan froze, then burst out laughing. “That’s a good one, Dad. Two million in the attic. And hell, all this time I thought you had it hidden in the mattress.” He was smiling, shaking his head. Then he stopped.

  His father wasn’t smiling.

  Ryan swallowed hard, a little nervous. “Come on. You’re joking, right?”

  “There’s two million dollars in the attic, Ryan. I put it there myself.”

  “Where the hell would you get two million dollars?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to explain. You’re not making this easy.”

  Ryan took the bottle from the tray. “Yup, I’d say that’s about enough horsing around. Whiskey on top of painkillers has you hallucinating.”

  “I blackmailed a man. Someone who deserved it.”

  “Dad, cut it out. You were in no position to blackmail anybody.”

  “ Yes, I was, damn it!” He spoke with such force, he started a coughing fit.

  Ryan came to him and adjusted the pillows behind his back. His father was wheezing, gasping between coughs. The phlegm in his mouth was coming up bloody. Ryan pushed the emergency call button for the home care nurse in the next room. She arrived in seconds.

  “Help me,” said Ryan. “Sit him up straight so he doesn’t choke.”

  She did as instructed. Ryan wheeled the oxygen tank alongside the bed. He opened the valve and placed the respirator in his father’s mouth. Home oxygen supply was a drill the whole family knew well, as he’d suffered from emphysema long before the terminal cancer developed. After a few deep breaths, the wheezing subsided. Breathing slowly returned to normal.

  “Dr. Duffy, I don’t mean to question your professional judgment, but I think your father should rest now. He’s had way too much activity for one night.”

  He knew she was right, but his father’s eyes gave him pause. Ryan had expected the glazed, delirious look of a sedated man who was making up crazy stories about blackmail. But the dark old eyes were sharp and expressive. They not only spoke without words, they spoke intelligently. They had Ryan thinking, Could he be serious?

  “I’ll be back in the morning, Dad. We can talk then.”

  His father seemed to appreciate the reprieve, as if he had said enough for one night. Ryan pulled away, forcing a meager smile. He started to say “I love you,” like he always did, fearful as he was that each conversation might be their last. This time he just turned and left the room, his mind racing. It was inconceivable, really — his father a blackmailer to the tune of two million dollars. Never, however, had Ryan seen his father more serious.

  If this was a joke, it was frightfully convincing. And not the least bit funny.

  Damn it, Dad, he thought as he left the house. Please don’t make me hate you.

  3

  It was still dark when Amy woke. The drapes were drawn, but lights from the parking lot made them glow around the edges, the room’s only illumination. Her eyes adjusted slowly
. The twin bed beside hers was empty, already made. The usual morning noises emerged from the kitchen. Gram was always the first to rise, earlier and earlier with each passing year. Amy checked her alarm clock on the nightstand. Five-sixteen A.M.

  She’s probably fixing lunch by now.

  Amy lay still, staring at the ceiling. She had done the right thing, she knew, by telling her. Gram would have wormed it out of her eventually. Amy had an incredibly expressive face, one that Gram had learned to read with ease. Truthfully, Amy wanted to tell her. She needed help with this one. Gram was old-fashioned, but few things were more reliable than old-fashioned common sense.

  Amy slipped on her flannel robe and shuffled toward the kitchen, following the aroma of fresh strong coffee.

  “Morning, dear,” said Gram. She was already dressed. Overdressed, by her own historical standards. For almost half a century, Gram had lived in blue jeans in the winter, Bermuda shorts in the summer. Lately, she’d taken to pressed slacks and silk blouses, even for routine trips to the grocery store. Amy suspected a man was in the picture, though Gram vehemently denied it.

  “Morning,” said Amy. She pulled up a chair at the dining room table. Gram brought her a cup, no cream and two sugars, the way she liked it.

  “I’ve made a decision,” she said, taking the seat across from Amy. “We’ll keep the money, right here.”

  “I thought you said you wanted to sleep on it, and that we’d discuss it in the morning.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, this is hardly a discussion. You just announced a decision.”

  “Trust me, darling. Your grandmother knows best on these things.”

  The coffee was suddenly bitter. Amy measured her words, but there was resentment in her tone. “That’s exactly what you said when you talked me into quitting astronomy for this computer job.”

  “And that has worked out beautifully. The law firm loves you so much they’re willing to help send you to law school.”

  “It’s not the law firm that loves me. It’s Marilyn Gaslow. And the only reason she got the firm to cough up this partial scholarship is because she and Mom were old friends.”

  “Don’t be cynical, Amy. Be realistic. With a degree in astronomy you would have been lucky to get a job teaching high school. You’ll earn ten times more as a lawyer.”

  “Sure. And with spiked heels and a G-string I could make fifty times more than-”

  “Stop,” said Gram, covering her ears. “Don’t be talking like that.”

  “I’m kidding, okay? Just making a point.”

  “There’s no point in sass.” Gram went to the kitchen and refilled her coffee cup.

  Amy sighed, backing down, as usual. “I’m sorry, all right? It’s not every day a box full of money comes in an unmarked package. I’d just like to talk it out.”

  Gram returned to her chair, then looked across the table, eye to eye. “What do you think we should do with it?”

  “I don’t know. Should we call the police?”

  “What for? No crime has been committed.”

  “None that we know of, you mean.”

  “Amy, I’m surprised at you. How did you get so negative? Something good happens, and you immediately figure it has to be connected to something bad.”

  “I’m just considering all the possibilities. I’m assuming we don’t have any rich relatives you’ve forgotten to tell me about.”

  Gram laughed. “Honey, in our family tree, not even the leaves are green.”

  “None of your friends have this kind of money to give away, do they?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  “So, if this is a gift, it came from someone we don’t know, someone who’s not even related to us.”

  “It could happen. Things like that do happen.”

  “When?”

  “All the time.”

  “Name one.”

  “I can’t think of one, but it happens. Somebody you met, somewhere along the line. You’re a sweet person, Amy. Maybe some rich old man had a crush on you and you didn’t even know it.”

  Amy shook her head. “This is just too strange. We should call the police.”

  “For what? We’ll never see it again.”

  “If nobody claims it, I would think the police will give it back to us.”

  “That’s not the way it works,” said Gram. “A few years ago, I read in the newspaper about a minister who found over a million dollars in a suitcase on the side of the road. He turned it in to the police, thinking that if nobody claimed it, the cops would give it back to him, since he was the guy who found it. Sure enough, nobody claimed it. But you know what? The police said it was drug money, and they confiscated it under these drug laws they have now. They kept every penny of it. That’s what will happen to us.”

  “I’m just worried. If it were just the two of us, maybe I’d be braver about this. But with Taylor living here, I’d feel better if we had a little protection.”

  “Protection from what?”

  “Well, maybe it is drug money. Someone could have sent it to me by mistake, thinking I’m part of their distribution chain or something.”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  “Oh, and some rich old man with the hots for me is perfectly logical.”

  “Look,” said Gram, “I don’t know who sent you this or why. All I know is that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. So we keep the money, and we wait a couple weeks. Don’t spend any of it, at least for a little while. Maybe in a few days a letter will come in the mail from someone that explains everything.”

  “Maybe the Mafia will come pounding on our door.”

  “Maybe. That’s why we’re keeping the money right here in our apartment.”

  “That’s crazy, Gram. We should at least put it in a safe deposit box for safekeeping.”

  “Bad idea. Don’t you watch the news? The quickest way to get shot in a robbery is not to have any money on you. It makes robbers very angry.”

  “What does that have to do with this?”

  “Let’s say it was criminals who sent you this money by mistake. Let’s say they come looking for it. We tell them we don’t have it. They think we’re lying. They go berserk. Somebody gets hurt.”

  “But if the money is here, then what?”

  “We just give it back to them. They leave happy, and we go on living the way we’ve always lived. The chances of anything bad like that happening are probably zilch. But in the worst-case scenario, I don’t want any angry thugs accusing me of playing games. It’s best if we can just hand over the money right on the spot and be done with it.”

  Amy finished her coffee. She looked away nervously, then back. “I don’t know.”

  “There’s no downside, Amy. If it’s a gift, we’re rich. If some creeps come to claim it, we just give it back. Just wait a couple weeks, that’s all.” Gram leaned forward and touched her granddaughter’s hand. “And if things work out the way I think they will, you can go back to grad school.”

  “You certainly know how to push a girl’s buttons.”

  “So, you’re with me on this?”

  Amy smiled with her eyes, peering over her cup. “Where do you want to stash our loot?”

  “It’s already in the perfect hiding spot. The freezer.”

  “The freezer?”

  Gram smirked. “Where else would a crazy old woman keep a box of cold hard cash?”

  4

  Ryan spent the night in his old room, fading in and out of sleep. Mostly out.

  As the only physician in town, Ryan hadn’t taken a vacation in three years. For this, however, he’d managed to clear his calendar, referring all but the most pressing emergencies to clinics in neighboring towns.

  Actually, he’d spent the last seven weeks living with his folks. He and his wife were legally separated, just the crack of a judge’s gavel away from an official divorce after eight years of marriage. It was a classic case of unrealized expectations. Liz had wor
ked as a waitress to help put him through medical school, thinking it would pay off after graduation. His friends from medical school had all moved on to mountainside homes and his-and-hers BMWs. Ryan had completed his surgery residency at Denver General Hospital and could have gone on to an equally lucrative career. He’d never been interested in pursuing the profits of “managed care,” however, where HMOs and utilization review boards rewarded doctors for not treating patients. Over Liz’s objection, he went back to his hometown to practice family medicine, the only doctor in town. Most of his patients were the real crisis in today’s health care — children of lower-income workers or self-employed farmers who earned too much to qualify for Medicaid but who still couldn’t afford health insurance. Liz eventually posted a sign in the office that said “PAYMENT DUE AT TIME OF SERVICE,” but Ryan always looked the other way whenever someone needed credit. When the uncollected accounts receivable reached well into six figures, Liz couldn’t stand it anymore. Ryan was running a charity. She filed for divorce.

  So now he was home. His father dying. His wife moving to Denver. His boyhood memories staring down from the walls. With the end so near, he hadn’t the time or inclination to redecorate and dissolve the past. Posters of quarterback Roger Staubach and the Super Bowl Champion Cowboys still covered the walls, abandoned by the kid who used to dream there almost three decades ago. He wondered what had happened to the famous one of Farrah Fawcett with her feathered hair and thin red swimsuit. Gone, but not forgotten.

  Innocent times, he thought. Things didn’t seem so innocent anymore.

  Six A.M., and Ryan had hardly slept. He kept wondering, was it really the combination of booze and painkillers? Talk of blackmail and hordes of cash sounded like hallucination. But Dad was so damn serious.