Rise - Part Three (Rise #3)(10)

I stand when the guard enters the room, knowing my father is right behind him.

His shoe comes into view first. It's one of the sneakers he's always worn when we've gone for walks through his neighborhood in Los Angeles. Next I see the bottom of his jeans. They're too short for him. He only buys them on sale and by the time he gets around to going to the mall, the sizes are so picked over he settles for what is closest. I've teased him about it endlessly.

I finally get a glimpse of his face as he steps out from behind the guard. His eyes scan the sparse space before they finally settle on me.

My hands leap to my mouth, my eyes well with tears and he begins to cry. My father stands near the doorway. There are no cuffs on his wrists; he's not surrounded by an army of guards with their guns drawn at the ready. He looks just as he did when he blew me a kiss as I turned back to look at him standing on the curb when he dropped me off at LAX.

***

"I've done things." He holds my hands in his on the steel table. "There are things I've done that I'm not proud of."

I expected these words after he'd embraced me. He was shaking as his arms circled my shoulders. I'd held tightly to him until the guard reminded him that we only had a few minutes together.

The uniformed man had motioned for me to sit across from my father before he walked away to sit in a chair next to the door.

"What things?" I ask as I brush away a lingering tear. "Please tell me what's going on."

His eyes glisten as he studies my face. "I've always wanted you to be proud of me. I wanted your brothers and sisters to look up to me too."

"We do," I say quickly. There's no hesitation in my tone. "I'm very proud of you, dad."

His eyes dart around the room. "I knew this day would come. I knew that it would."

"You knew that you'd be arrested?" I feel a lump form in the pit of my stomach. "How did you know?"

He releases my hands as he takes a heavy swallow. "Your past will always catch up with you, Tess. I've told you that."

He has. It came in the form of a firm warning after I'd skipped so many history classes in high school that I failed the course. I spent the summer after my junior year in a building with no air conditioning taking the class again. It wouldn't have been that bad had I not missed my chance to travel to Australia with a friend's family. The trip was all expenses paid and I'd blown it.

The experience may have helped me get on a straighter, more focused, path but it clearly pales in comparison to whatever my father has done in his past.

"You're right," I agree. "The past does have a way of coming back to haunt you."

"Mine did." He leans back in the chair, tipping his chin towards the guard. "Mine came back in the form of Frederick Beckett."





Chapter 10


––––––––

"Did you work with him?" I cast my gaze to the floor as I ask the question. This is the point in the conversation when I should tell my father that I know Frederick's son. I should confess that he's the man I've been dating and falling for but I don't.

"No." His voice is husky. "We never worked together. Until I was arrested, I'd never heard of the man."

"He didn't work for Buckland Insurance?" I train my eyes at his face now.

He adjusts his glasses on his nose to keep them from falling forward. I watch the motion of his hand. It's a gesture he does countless times a day but I doubt he's even aware of it. "The police told me Frederick handled investments for a firm based in Boston. I never dealt with them."

"On the news they said that he told the police things," I stop myself because I don't want to sound accusatory. I can't ignore what I heard on television or what I've read online since my father's arrest but I want to hear the truth from him, directly. "They said that Frederick gave them information that helped them build a case against you."

"I suppose that he did." His posture stiffens in the chair. It's a slight shift but it's enough that I notice the change. "My lawyer told me that Frederick had thousands of documents in a safe deposit box. Some of those documents relate to me."

"What documents?" I ask impatiently. "Insurance documents?"

"I signed things." He pinches his index finger and thumb together as he sweeps them over the top of the table, mimicking a signature. "When I first made district manager, I signed so many things. I didn't read them all."

I sigh heavily. Maybe the only thing my father is guilty of is poor judgment. I know from my own personal experience, that attention to detail isn't his strong suit.

"Did you sign something back then that you shouldn't have? Is that what this is about?"

"It started that way." He glances back at the guard. "My secretary brought me stacks of things to sign and I did just that. Day after day I signed hundreds of policies without looking them over."

How can he be held accountable for a simple oversight? If something was amiss in one, or more, of those policies, that can't possibly warrant parading my father on television in front of photographers along with accusations that he's a mastermind behind some plot that involves a missing person.