Free Torn by Chris Jordan Page A

lab. So I’ve got one more day’s worth of hope. Hope that he’ll find something, maybe just a hint that maybe the crazy mom is onto something.
    He did say an odd thing before folding himself into the big car. “You sure your husband told you the truth? That Arthur Conklin really was his father?”
    My first reaction, knowing Jed, was to blurt, “Why would he lie?”
    The big guy shrugged. “People have their reasons. Rich, famous people, it’s not exactly unusual when someone makes a claim to be related. They may even believe it. It happened with Howard Hughes, James Brown, JFK. Lots of famous and powerful people. I’ll bet, you go back far enough, it happened with the pharaohs.”
    “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 Jedediahhadn’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