"The action of the story flagged somewhat after that. Jane had a son and did her best to care for him. Common sense told her that she should give him up for adoption, hopefully to be raised in a good home. Two factors held her back from making that call. The first she knew was selfish. He was the only family she had now, and the idea of willingly giving him up was too hard for her to accept. The second reason was grounded in experience. The man who had organized the assault on her had been raised in a good home, by the standards of the community. She would not risk her son being placed in the kind of environment that spawned such a creature.
So, she did what she had to in order to provide. Fearing that she was being sought for questioning, she dared not risk the normal paths to income. She turned to a less reputable method of making ends meet. Jane was careful in her selected victims, staying away from decent people, choosing instead to target those who targeted others. She eventually came to fancy herself as a modern-day Robin Hood of sorts, although she rarely followed through on the give to the poor part of the equation."
He paused again. He'd had rehearsed this in his head dozens of times. Not just today, when he knew he would finally be telling the tale, but for years now in the anticipation of this moment. For all his preparation, it was proving to be considerably harder than he'd envisioned.
"Much as we are all finding the story –" Vin paused, looking for the right word, "enlightening, you don't need to go on with it all right now Ez."
Josiah seconded the comment. "You do look a little tired son. Maybe take a break?"
"And deprive Chris of the opportunity to hear the end of the saga of our flawed heroine? One look tells you he is most anxious to see where the story goes from here. I expect he has a notion of the path it will follow. It would not be fair to leave him wondering."
All eyes shifted over to Chris, who said nothing, never letting his gaze leave Ezra's face. After a moment of silence, Ezra gave the barest of nods and proceeded.
"As her son grew older, Jane knew that his presence was going to make her ongoing effort to provide for him, for them, increasingly challenging. She had, by this point, accumulated a reasonable sum of savings, while at the same time building up her inventory of contacts and connections. And, truth be told, she quite enjoyed the life she was leading. It had all the excitement and adventured she had so craved in the past. As the story had made clear in its early passages, Jane was both strikingly attractive and thoroughly charming, and well knew how to best utilize those attributes. Few of her conquests were angered by her manipulations, willingly parting with the sums she took in return for the pleasure of her company.
Don't misunderstand that comment. She did not sell herself. One horrific experience was sufficient to last her a lifetime. Her romantic conquests were chaste, unless she decided otherwise. Jane was most insistent on this fact, and any who challenged it found themselves deprived of both her company and a sizeable portion of their fortunes.
The story continued in this manner for several years, with Jane visiting her son at assorted boarding schools and academies whenever she could. Their relationship was described as both devoted and strained. The young boy could not understand why his mother had to leave, and as he aged, his growing understanding of her motivation left him both grateful and angry. Of course, the true nature of his parentage was not revealed, and he was left with a resentment for the father he believed had abandoned them, and for the mother he thought was in some way responsible for the act."
He could feel the emotions in the room, and feared for a moment they would be his undoing. All it would take right now were a few words, and he would lose the thread of control he was struggling to hold on to. He plowed ahead without giving any of them a chance to comment.
"Jane had issues and concerns of her own to deal with and failed to note this growing rift with her child. She had been keeping company with a very low-level royal family member in an unspecified European country. The lack of detail was, I found, one of the weaknesses in the story when I was first tol – pardon me, when I first read the tale." He was allowing the stress of the telling to affect his concentration and gave himself a moment to reset his focus. "Her presence at the noble's side allowed for the impression he was a lady's man, when nothing could have been further from the truth. The platonic nature of the relationship enabled her to become quite enamored of one of her consort's business associates and they began a clandestine relationship. I did warn you that the story had a decided soap opera feel, did I not?
Again, I will spare you much of the melodrama and sentimentality the author lavished on this part of the adventure. Many of the details would make our youngest associate blush. Some would likely make all of you react in such a manner. Alas, Jane was not destined for a happily ever after with this conquest. The hazards of spending much of your time with people of questionable honesty is that they tend to have far more enemies than is the average. One such enemy took exception to the outcome of a deal that had not gone to his liking and sought revenge. Jane found her paramour's body in the riding stables one morning. Within a week, the man responsible had met with a fatal hunting accident. It never was determined from where the shot had originated."
Ezra was no longer interested in watching for the reactions of the men he had, until this moment, been lucky enough to call friends. His mind provided all the image he needed of the disgust and disappointment he would see if he raised his eyes, and it was only going to get worse. Taking a deep breath, and another several sips of water, he moved to the conclusion of his talk.
"A few days later, as Jane prepared to leave town, she was visited by the brother of her lover. He professed his pleasure at the way matters had been handled and wanted to ensure she was properly compensated. She expressed nothing but confusion in return and refused any remuneration for an action in which she insisted she was not involved. She was, in turn, admonished for being foolish, not just in refusing this, but in denying her gift for resolving problems. He suggested that he'd hoped to be able to call on her again in the future, should the need arise.
Naturally she was shocked and deeply offended by the both the payment, and the suggestion that she would be willing to take up such an offer. A look into the envelope did a great deal to soothe her rage. Those funds would go a long way to ensuring her son got the full education she so desperately wanted for him, as well as provide them with a few of the luxuries she felt they both deserved.
Two months later, she received a message through an acquaintance, wondering if she had reconsidered the offer. There was a wealthy playboy sort who was stealing from Jane's recent benefactor, primarily for the purpose of keeping himself supplied with underaged sex workers. The letter made it clear it was an issue that could not be dealt with through normal channels. While she questioned the morality of a man willing to pay for murder, the character of the intended target went a long way to resolving any concerns she had. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was she would have been happy to take the slimy excuse for a man even without compensation. She was not foolish enough to share that thought with anyone.
Word spread, discretely and in only appropriate circles, of the new expert for hire. She was highly selective in the assignments she would take, insisting the targets met her criteria. Anyone who approached her with the intent of hiring a run of the mill killer found themselves regretting the error. Her ability to socially and financially destroy those who insulted her kept offenses to a minimum.
For years, for as long as her son was in school and dependent upon her, she had one additional rule. She took no job that would require her to work on American soil. She would not take the risk, however small it might be, of exposing him to the embarrassment should she be caught. Even greater was her concern he could be used for retribution if things went wrong. It was only when he had moved on in his own life that she took the chance to return home and try to reestablish a relationship. It turned out to be the one undertaking in her life that she was completely unsuited to perform."
He leaned back in the seat, still avoiding eye contact with any of them. He barely held his head high enough to allow them to see his face.
"And there ends my rambling for the evening. I rarely delve into books from the fiction side of the library, and this is an excellent demonstration of why. A fanciful yarn with a ludicrous plot and two-dimensional characters. More unanswered questions than there are resolutions, and an ambiguous conclusion. I suppose I should apologize to all of you for wasting your time with such utter drivel."
All six heard the faint hint of desperation in his voice, and none knew what to say. Ezra had always preferred keeping his history and his personal life will hidden. This went a long way to explaining that. Privacy was of paramount importance to him, and they knew that for him to open up, even in this backhanded manner was a testament to the trust he had in their judgement.
They waited for Chris to comment, but when he showed no indication he intended to speak, Buck did. "Tell me, Ezra. Just how and when did this boy of hers find out what his mother did for a living?"
"Those details were never a part of this story."
"Should they be?" Nathan asked as gently as he could.
"I cannot imagine they would add anything to the narrative, or the moral."
"Oh, so there is a moral to this?"
"All stories have a moral Josiah. Some are just harder to locate than others, and some not nearly as uplifting as one might hope."
"What do you see it as in this case?"
"There are several possibilities I suppose, depending on how you choose to interpret matters. 'You reap what you sow' comes to mind. Or perhaps 'justice is blind' to follow with the clichés of the story. Probably the most accurate, and forgive the common language please, 'life's a bitch'."
Nathan wasn't eager to ask for details, but there were still a few facts missing, and he knew if they weren't addressed now, they may well come back to haunt them all. "Sounds to me like there might be a few things missing here."
"Leave it be Nathan."
"No Josiah. If anyone wants further clarification, and it is within my range of knowledge to provide it, I shall willingly do so. Please, ask your questions."
Once he had the opening, he wasn't sure how to begin. "When did you - sorry - when did he find out the truth."
"Which truth are you wondering about? There is more that one to consider here. Are you interested in the truth about his father? He never was. None of the candidates would be worth the time or energy. It was a road best left untraveled. Or is it the second truth - when he learned of her actions. Her choices." He paused to regain control. This was not the time to give into his emotions. He had made it too far to fold now.
"If I am recalling the story correctly, she never told him. Circumstances and instinct led him to conclude something was amiss. Time, and a fatalistic sense of curiosity drove him to make discoveries he wished he had never found. He stopped will short of confirming beyond doubt, but that did not change the truth."
Vin was hoping the look on his face reflected sympathy, which Ezra might tolerate, and not pity, which he would despise. "Did this story say what became of the son?" He wasn't sure he was going to like the answer but needed to know how Ezra would spin that part of his history.
"The was a brief epilogue that gave a passing reference. There were some early forays to the disreputable side of life. Gambling and deception came naturally to him. However, in a mildly ironic, and another dreadfully clichéd response, the boy eventually turned his attention in a diametrically opposite direction and went into law enforcement. A startling lack of imagination from the author but not surprising given the predictability of the tale."
"Bet he's really a good cop." The enthusiasm and encouragement in JD's voice came close to being Ezra's undoing. He finally reached for the whisky to wash down the lump in his throat. The burn felt masochistically wonderful.
Chris stood slowly, crossing his arms tightly in front of himself and chewing pensively on his lower lip. There were a million questions he wanted to ask, details he wanted to know. His slow pacing was the only movement in the room as he mulled them over. Reaching the fire place, he picked up the poker, stirring the ashes as he stalled a bit longer. Finally concluding there was only one that he needed to hear the answer too he turned back to look at Ezra.
"Was there anything in that epilogue, anywhere in the story, that said the son ever used his contacts, his resources, to help his mother with any of her – jobs?"
There wasn't a moment of hesitation. No couching, no playing with language, no room for any alternate interpretations of the answer. "Never. She never asked. He never offered."
He met Chris's stare, never wavering. After almost a full minute, Chris turned back and stirred the flames again. He reached onto the mantle and retrieved the envelope that had been placed there at the beginning of the evening. Without giving it so much as a glance, he tossed it into the flames.
M7-M7-M7-M7-M7-M7-M7
The End