Page 41 of The Session

“We’ll take care of everything, Mark. Call us tomorrow morning. We’ll make sure there’s somebody here tomorrow night to take the trash out and cover your shift.”

Mark laughed. “If only it were that easy.”

“It is for us,” said Tru. “Trust me.”

Scion

Carol Greenley sat at the kitchen table across from Mark and read the letter for the third time. It was morning. Mark had come over as soon as his shift ended to explain everything to her and find out what Tru had been alluding to.

His mother was still wearing the thick blue bathrobe she had worn when he was a child. It was a bit more faded now and had patches where she had sewn it back together. He understood it was her comfort blanket. And as grateful as she was for gifts of other bathrobes, she was never going to part with this one.

She looked up at him when she finished, tears in her eyes. “I’ve waited so long. I told myself it was in your best interest. Maybe it was. But I feel so much better now, being able to tell you everything.”

“I’m assuming they paid you—kept paying us to help with bills and stuff—as long as you stayed silent,” he said.

“That’s basically it. I felt guilty for taking the money. I felt bad about keeping it from you. But I was also afraid that knowing would hurt you,” she replied.

“They didn’t tell me anything. Is Ted Bundy my father?” Mark asked.

“No, not quite, although sometimes I think I would have preferred that. I was kind of hoping you would figure it out for yourself because it’s pretty much right in front of you.”

“I’m not that bright,” Mark admitted.

“Mark, your father’s Max Lightman,” Carol said.

“What?”

“Look at a photo of him when he was younger and then look in a mirror. That’s who I had the affair with. I would have thought that would have been painfully obvious to you by now. There had to be a dozen portraits and sculptures of him in their headquarters. God knows there were when I was there. And he’s too vain to have taken them down.”

Some small part of Mark had wondered if his father could have been one of the two founders, but his pervasive low self-esteem had pushed the notion away.

“So you did sleep with a married man,” Mark said.

“I wasn’t the only one. And the NDA wasn’t so much his idea as it was his wife’s, Marnie. She laid on the guilt. To her credit, she’s the one who made sure the checks were sent and you had new clothes under the Christmas tree. She’s a complicated woman,” Carol said.

“They all seem complicated,” Mark agreed.

“That isn’t the half of it,” she said. “They do shady stuff, but they also do good stuff. I liked working there. I miss feeling part of a team. And they were a kind of family to me. Leaving was hard. It was made clear to me—not by Marnie, but by somebody else—that if I terminated the pregnancy, I wouldn’t have to go. But I couldn’t do that. Some thought it was so I could have some kind of hold over Max. A piece of the man. I never wanted that. I just wanted you.”

“What’s he like?” Mark asked.

“Max?” Carol responded, pausing for a moment. “Brilliant. Charismatic. Full of shit. He’s a lot of things. But the closer you got to him, the more you understood he didn’t know who he was. I’m not sure he knows now.”

“Am I like him?” Mark asked.

“Baby, you’re the man he would like people to think he was. You’re the man he wanted Kevin to be.”

“Kevin—who’s he?”

“Marnie was pregnant at the same time I was, a few months before. Kevin was your half brother,” Carol explained.

“Damn,” Mark muttered.

“Yeah, I know. It’s a lot. I wish you could have met him at some point. I wish I could have met him,” Carol said.

“What happened?” Mark asked.

“He drowned, I think,” Carol said. “From what I understand, he had a bit of a drug problem. And they kept him out of the spotlight.”