“Yes, but it’s worthless. They didn’t even really do an investigation. My grandmother had just buried her husband of almost fifty years. When they came and told her that her daughter had been in a hotel room, alone with her illegitimate child, drinking wine and smoking marijuana, and decided to take a nosedive off the balcony, that was enough for her. She didn’t want to know anymore, and she definitely didn’t want a ‘scandal.’ Her whole life was about what our family looked like to the outside world, and she couldn’t have this getting out to the press. My guess is that she shut down any further investigation because as bad as it was to have ‘suicide’ on Kasey’s autopsy report, my grandmother decided that was better than the possibility of what they might find if they looked into her background. It was 1996 but the way her family was so humiliated by her getting pregnant out of wedlock, you would have thought it was 1949. My...aunt...she said that Grandmother figured if they were able to keep it out of the papers, people would just forget about it. Then she used her status in the community to pull strings with the newspapers to get them to bury the story, and Kasey’s obituary was even a lie. It doesn’t mention she had a child and all it says was that she ‘passed away’ at the tender age of twenty-three...then it goes on to talk about the family, how successful my grandfather was and everything my grandmother did for the church and the community. Sickening,” she said, tears forming in her pretty eyes. She focused them on Gabe then and said, “I didn’t know any of this, up until a few weeks ago. All I knew about Kasey was what little they’d told me. The woman claiming to be my mother told me Kasey was her younger sister and she’d died when I was a baby. There were a few pictures of her around my grandmother’s house, but other than that, no one talked about her. I believed the people who raised me were my parents, biologically. Then one day this young guy is transferred to my floor after surgery and I felt this really strong connection to him, to you. I liked you, Gabriel, right away. For me, that was strange and unusual. I’ve always been kind of hard on people, it’s why I’m still single, my mama...my aunt, she always said I was born suspicious.” Blackheart chuckled at that; he himself was one of the most suspicious people on earth. He didn’t trust anyone until they proved to him they were worthy of it.
Patrice kept her eyes on Gabe and said, “I set really high standards for myself, and I always have for the people I surround myself with as well. So anyway, this one day a few weeks ago when I was visiting my mother, I was telling her about you. She was genuinely happy for me, at first. She’d always told me I was too hard on people. But when I told her you were in a motorcycle club, things changed, and quickly. She wanted to know the name of the club, which I thought was odd because I doubted that my middle-class mother would know anything about any clubs other than what she might have read. When I told her the Jokers, I could literally watch the color drain out of her face. She told me I should stay away from you, but no matter how much I pushed, she wouldn’t tell me why...other than that she’d ‘heard’ things about your club. I was determined to find out for myself though, so the next day I went to that party with you at the club...it was the first time I saw him...” She glanced at Blackheart again then and after several long minutes she turned back to Gabe.
“I know you can see it. I have his face. I told myself it was just a weird coincidence at first. But I saw my mother another week or so later and she asked me point-blank if I was still seeing you. When I said yes, she started acting so weird again and I’m not even sure where it came from, but I heard myself asking her if she had an affair with Blackheart. I had been trying to figure things out, why she was so freaked out about me dating you, and why I looked so much like him, and I thought maybe that’s what it was. Maybe she’d cheated on my dad and that’s why I looked so much like this guy and not like my dad at all. The sound of his name though, when I said Blackheart, that sent her into a torrent of tears. It was bizarre and when she finally calmed down and I insisted she tell me the truth, about everything. Imagine my surprise when she began with, ‘You’re not really our daughter.’”
Gabe felt ashamed of himself at that moment because he could see the pain in Patrice’s eyes, but knowing she was interested in him before she found out about Blackheart and not because she was using him to meet his president was like a hundred-pound weight being lifted off his shoulders. “Why didn’t she ever tell you before?” Gabe asked.
She sighed and said, “They both, she and my...” another quick look at Blackheart and she swallowed hard and said, “my father. She called him and he came home and they told me the story together. They said that Grandma made them promise not to ever tell me. Then once she passed away, I was a teenager and they were afraid of how I’d take it. It was like the more time that passed, the harder it got. They knew I would be angry. I had a right to know.” Her eyes landed back on Blackheart’s face and she said, “Especially because I did still have a biological parent out there.”
“So what else did they tell you?” Blackheart asked.
“My father got this big box out of the safe. It was like Pandora’s box. They said that it was everything Grandmother had told them to get rid of. Inside this box was my mother’s diary...the one the police found in the room the day she died... her ID and some jewelry, and my real birth certificate. The one I’ve been using all of these years list my Aunt Cindy and Uncle Ron as my parents. I’m not sure how they pulled it off, or if they ever really adopted me...I didn’t get around to asking any of that yet. But the birth certificate in that box had my real mother’s name on it, Kasey Cormier. My name was Patrice Cormier; all this time I thought my last name was Leboux. Mom didn’t name you as my father,” she said, to Blackheart. “She listed him as ‘unknown.’ It was only in her diary that she talked about you, and that’s how my aunt knew your name, and about the club. But anyway, I was born in Portland, Maine and they told me that while they all thought my mother was in medical school, in Maine, she had taken a sabbatical, because she was pregnant with me. She had dropped the bomb on them about going to medical school in Maine at the last minute and then for a solid year she made excuses about why she couldn’t come home for holidays and things. Then my grandfather died, and she came home for the funeral. Needless to say, they were all shocked when she showed up with a baby. My grandmother was furious and wouldn’t even talk to her and told her she wasn’t welcome at the funeral. My mother died just a week later, and my grandmother and the people I thought were my parents all this time, did everything she could to make sure the memories of her died that day with her.”
The tears had begun to sneak out of her eyes and roll down her face. Gabe couldn’t stand to see her cry. He slid his arm around her, unsure if she wanted him to touch her or not, but she didn’t pull away. She leaned into him and reached up with one hand and wiped the tears off her face. It was several minutes before anyone said anything else, but Blackheart was the one who broke the silence. He stood up and said:
“Gabe you make sure she gets home okay. Patrice, I didn’t kill your mother, but if you want help finding out what really happened to her, call me. The only thing I’ll ask in return is that you don’t go around spreading rumors about me throwing women off balconies. I got a reputation to uphold.” Gabriel smiled at that and Blackheart’s lips twitched. Patrice didn’t say anything, but Gabe saw her watching Blackheart as he got on his Harley and drove away.