Lost Richard -Part 3
“What do you mean by that?” I asked taking the opportunity that she might have some more information she was willing to tell in spite of her sister, but Catherine didn’t continue when Charlotte coming back in the room. She dropped a cream colored envelope on the table in front of them. The green cursive writing on the envelope might have passed it off for being a wedding invitation, except that the return label was for a company stationed in Quebec. I took out the letter and started to read:
Dear Ms. Charlotte Winston,
Thank you for your last letter in regards to Richard’s achievements. I appreciate all the news you have been giving me and I truly miss him, as you can understand. Both his father and I are extremely thankful for what you have done for the family, but we won’t be able to afford a payment this month. We hope you are getting enough money from your profession to get by. We are more than willing to pay double next month. Again, we are sorry for the inconvenience.
Now that the business is out of the way, how are you? I’ve been keeping up with the newspaper almost avidly and I make sure to see you on the cast list. I wish I could have come down and seen you in Macbeth, but, well, work comes first. I hope you understand and I’m sorry. I would have liked to see you again.
As to your previous question, the formality of the letter is necessary to the disguise of our correspondence. I hate using this language as much as you and the company I work with does not like a thief taking the envelopes. If I’m fired, I will still have to use these confounded envelopes! But I digress; I apologize for the inconvenience. But if it’s any consolation, you are such a wonderful actress.
Please send more of Richard’s work. We love to know about him. We would ask for custody back, but the shock of knowing the truth might be too much. I think it’s better this way; please let me know if you feel otherwise.
Sincerely,
Margaret DuQuay
I wasn’t sure what to do with this new information. It blew all of the other theories out of the water and surfaced new questions. I looked up at Charlotte who took in a shaky breath; Catherine flicked her cigarette out the window and came back to join us.
“Why were you sending letters to this Mrs. DuQuay about Richard?” I had a theory, but again, I wanted solid fact.
“I think you better start with Richard’s father,” Catherine said.
Charlotte sighed. “Margaret, Jack and I were friends in high school. Jacques, really, but everyone called him Jack. He and Margaret would fight a lot, but there was that one Christmas when she and I were out and ran into him. And it started with a fight, but I guess they realized they had a lot in common. I know Margaret had a lot of problems at home and it wasn’t really a surprise to me when she called me up that summer and told me she was pregnant. They love each other, they really, do, and although they wanted the child, they couldn’t keep him.”
“So they gave you their child?”
“This was the summer after she graduated from high school. I was two years older than her, so I had already been off to school. Margaret came one day in August after the baby was born and brought him over with the birth certificate, saying that he was named Richard and gave me an address where I could write. So, I somewhat had custody.”
“But you forget,” Catherine chimed in, “Mom and Dad were furious about you ending up with a son. Especially since you refused to come back home over breaks. And, oops, you end up pregnant without mother hearing about it? Believe me, you could have bathed in the tension.”
“I didn’t want to take him! I just couldn’t say no to her. Mar was almost a younger sister to me and she needed help. She was just a child. So I finished school and then came back here to live with Ri—”
“And where’s the part where the only call you got from Mom since was when Dad died. Isn’t that why you came back? You’re also forgetting the five hour yelling match you had when Rich was seven. That’s the first time he ran away. Forgive me for being harsh, dear sister, but you tore this family apart with this drama. You were more interested in a sister who you weren’t even related to than one who started smoking because she lost her father and had no one to comfort her.”
“I’m sorry to keep bringing up family issues,” I said as my head started to throb, “but I need to know what happened if we’re going to find Richard. What happened after that? Do you know where Margaret is now?”
“Quebec,” Charlotte said, “Jack went back to his home and he took Mar with him. She works for a perfume industry as a secretary. Jack is part of the tourism industry and works as a French announcer for the changing of the guard.”
“Rich’ll come back,” Catherine said standing up. “He didn’t bring any money with him and it’s a long walk to Quebec.”
“Is that what you meant ‘that he hasn’t really left.’”
Catherine let out a short laugh. “He used to come into the kitchen and steal some food before getting out again. I’ve seen him running from the house once or twice, but he hasn’t come back for at least twenty-four hours.”
“Why don’t you stop him?” Charlotte screamed.
“Because he needs to find a way home. He needs to find the truth, he needs to know his parents, he needs to start making decisions on his own. He needs to get away from here. If I make him stay, he’ll keep leaving. If you try and get the truth out of him, he’ll keep lying. Now that he knows what he does, he won’t go back to being the innocent, gullible, little boy. And for god’s sake, he’s fifteen!”
I cleared my throat and thankfully, it cut down the drama. “I believe whether or not you will let him see his parents is up to you, after he is returned home. However, at fifteen, he is still a minor and leaving him out of the house is considered neglect. For your sake, legally, I will pretend that you never saw him after he left and go on from there. Afterwards, you have to escort him to Quebec if that is what you want. Now, Catherine, do you know any places where he might be?”
She sighed. “He heads off to the woods northeast from here, through the yards in a straight diagonal. If he turns off before then, I don’t know. But he really likes the woods. He left with his house key and a compass in his pocket. But that’s it. He ran into his room, slammed the door and once Char was in hers, he was out the front. The entire escape took, maybe, a minute.”
“Well, thank you for your time.”
This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 4:45 pm and is filed under End of Childhood, Fiction Prose, Mystery, Realistic Fiction, Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.