Truth Hates Delay

There was a catch. There was always a catch. Raindrops splattered the intricately scribed calligraphy, which, to an 18-year-old, looked like the ancient writing of ancient beings, akin to a lost art. Ophelia Reynolds pulled her hood up and darted to the porch. Page by page, line by line, she frantically scanned the document, hoping to find some other way, any other way, to complete the seemingly insurmountable task in front of her. The delicate pages with didn’t spew forth any secrets, nor did they offer any alternative ideas. Names, dates, land descriptions, measurements. All meaningless. Perhaps if she read the Latin phrase haphazardly scrawled in red ink on the inside cover, all secrets would be revealed. Ophelia read the inscription aloud “Qui totum vult totum perdit”. She squeezed her eyes shut momentarily. To her dismay, nothing extraordinary had happened, no magic revelation, and certainly no instant sense of enlightenment. She was going to have to do the unthinkable: she was going to have to speak to her father.

There I go again, getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind a bit. Ophelia’s mother, Lilly Halstead, had died 2 weeks prior. Shortly after, Ophelia received a voicemail from a Harold Lueger, Esq. A quick internet search revealed that the name and number matched to an attorney a few towns over. Ophelia assumed he was another debt collector, as in life they had hounded her mother relentlessly. Hell, they were probably still trying to contact her in the afterlife, those bloodsuckers were relentless. Nevertheless, it was odd that any debt collector would have Ophelia’s number.

Ophelia’s father, Winston Reynolds, had left when she was 2 years old, leaving her with no memory of him. It wasn’t until she went to school that Ophelia realized the other kids had a mom and a dad. She asked her mother why she didn’t have a father. “He was never going to stay, he’s gone, and we have to just accept it” was the closest thing to an explanation Ophelia would ever receive.

Her mother never spoke ill of her father, in fact, she never spoke of him at all. Yet Ophelia could comfortably say that she hated her father, despite having almost no recollection of him. She hated him for leaving, and for the lingering sadness that enveloped her mother. If he didn’t want to be a father fine, but he could have at least sent money to help them out. Ophelia recalled an incident a few years ago wherein she asked Lilly why she never pursued financial support. She recalled the fleeting look of panic that crossed her mother’s face before her mother curtly replied “some stones are better left unturned”. Idioms and innuendo were not Ophelia’s strong suit (as evidenced by her C- in English) but she understood Lilly’s tone enough to know it was best to drop the subject.

Prior to Winston’s abrupt exit, they lived a comfortable middle-class life, which her mother attributed to Winston’s income as a travelling salesman. After his departure, Lilly got job at a call. It barely paid the bills, but they survived. Despite everything, Ophelia and Lilly had forged an indestructible bond, it was them against the world. They stayed afloat, the life boat never sank, but dry land was always out of reach.

Curiosity got the best of Ophelia, and she decided to return the call to Lueger Law. The paralegal who answered the call advised that Mr. Lueger represented the estate of Lilly Halstead. This was puzzling to Ophelia for several reasons, first and foremost because that they were broke, and to her knowledge, her mother had no estate. After a brief hold, she was transferred to Harold Lueger.

Harold claimed that he had known Lilly since they were children, and 15 years ago she had met with him to discuss her estate and its’ distribution. Ophelia was convinced that Mr. Lueger had made a mistake, as they owned nothing aside from the contents of their 800 square foot apartment and a couple hundred dollars in a checking account. Harold remained cryptic, simply requesting that Ophelia meet him at 4:00 the following afternoon at his office.

Ophelia sat in the waiting area of Lueger Law and nervously twirled her auburn hair. After a few minutes, Harold entered the lobby and ushered Ophelia into his office. He was younger than she expected, close to 40 but still handsome, with creases around his eyes when he smiled. He shook her hand and commented how much Ophelia resembled her mother before getting down to business.

The meeting was brief and anti-climactic. Harold Lueger told her that what happened in the next few minutes would change her life, but from his tone, Ophelia inferred that the change may not necessarily be for the better. Harold handed her a small black notebook. It was bound in sumptuous black leather, with pages that fluttered as soft as butterfly wings when she flipped through it, the perfectly aligned black script becoming evident even while the pages whirred through her fingers, their contents an animated blur. This wasn’t the dollar store quality notebook Ophelia was used to, it was luxurious and aristocratic, two words that Ophelia never thought she would use to describe a notebook. His other parting gift was a folded piece of paper, far less lavish than the pages of the little black notebook, which was admittedly a bit of a letdown. She thanked Harold for his time, and left Lueger Law with more questions than answers.

Ophelia hurriedly walked the three blocks to her apartment. She wasn’t sure what she expected, nor how this notebook, exquisite as it was, could possibly change her life. She sank down into the armchair and unfolded the piece of paper. Ophelia recognized her mother’s penmanship, unremarkable to anyone but her. The paper simply read:

Winston and MaryEllen Reynolds

51 Mockingbird Lane

Sumter, SC

Take the notebook, they will explain everything. I’m sorry.

I love you partner.

Mom

Tears stung Ophelia’s eyes as she read the note again. If the address was correct, her father lived less than an hour away. Why had he never contacted her or tried to see her all these years? Though she had never been directly told so, she assumed he had run off to a far away place so as not to be burdened by her and her mother. Ophelia hated her father, the man who abandoned them and apparently started over with this Mary Ellen character. Did he just leave and start a new family? She didn’t care how “life changing” the nonsense in the notebook was, nor did she care to unravel its nonsensical secrets any further. She was going to Sumter, and she was going to let Winston Reynolds know that although Lilly struggled, they did just fine without him because they had each other, and her mother taught her all the life lessons she needed to know.

Ophelia left early the next morning, afraid that if she procrastinated any longer, she would lose her courage. The sunny skies in Florence gave way to a light drizzle as she approached Sumter. Forty-five minutes after departing, her GPS indicated that she had arrived at Winston’s house. It was a modest one story bungalow with a tidy yard. She clasped the notebook tightly to her chest to protect it from the drizzle and sprinted to the porch.

Fear is a funny thing, and as resolved as she was to confront her father earlier last night, she considered turning around and driving back home as she stepped onto Winston’s porch. She frantically took one last look through the book, hoping something made sense so that she could justify leaving. It was almost laughable that she thought this mysterious black book could just change her life. Remember, there’s always a catch. In this instance, the catch was that she would be forced to ask the man she had spent the last decade hating for help. Her musings were interrupted when the door suddenly swung open, and an attractive middle age woman with a friendly smile opened the door. “Can I help you?” she asked. Caught off guard, all poetic prose escaped her mind. All Ophelia could manage to stammer was “I’m Harold’s daughter”.

The woman looked shocked, then, to Ophelia’s surprise, overjoyed. She ushered Ophelia into the house, yelling for Harold to emerge from some unknown location within the tiny house. Harold emerged from what was presumably the basement, wiping paint from his hands. Upon seeing Ophelia, he dropped his brush, mouth agape. “Ophelia?!”. Tears welled in Winston’s eyes. “I assume she’s gone then, your mother? I’m very sorry for your loss”.

If Ophelia was confused before, she was downright baffled now. Why would Winston assume her mother was dead just because she showed up to see him? Words escaped her, so she simply thrust the little black book forward, accompanied by the note. MaryEllen gasped, and Winston sat down, and his shock was apparent.

Wringing his hands nervously, Winston began his confession. “I hope you don’t think less of your mother. I was just as much at fault, if not more, and from the minute you came into this world, you were her everything. I have lived in Sumter all my life, and my ancestors owned most of the land. I was in Florence on business when I met your mother, and I was instantly smitten. Problem was, I was married to MaryEllen here. I’m not proud of it, but I carried on with your mother for years, and when she got pregnant with you, I promised I was going to leave my wife and marry Lilly. I had just found out that I was owed a small fortune at that time, over $20,000, for land unjustly taken from my family almost 100 years ago. I just had to prove to the County that I was the rightful heir to the proceeds, which they were holding in trust pending proof of inheritance. I had the proof…it was all in this little black book here. Plot numbers, names,dates, and deed descriptions that could prove what the County couldn’t since the Courthouse burned down 30 years ago. I told your mother I was leaving MaryEllen, then we would take the book and cash in to start a new life. Well, she got tired of waiting, and I realized I couldn’t leave my wife and told your mother so. She waited until she knew MaryEllen and I would be out of the house for my mother’s funeral, and she took the book. She said if I ever tried to contact you or interfere in your life, she would burn the book and that once she was dead, she would send you to me. She didn’t care about the money, she just couldn’t let go of the life she thought us three were supposed to have. So here we are”.

Ophelia was dumbstruck, unable to believe that her mother had hid the truth from her all these years. MaryEllen picked up the notebook, admiring it’s opulence. She inspected the Latin inscription that Lilly had scrawled on the inside cover, much as Ophelia had. Unlike Ophelia, MaryEllen was a tenured professor and could translate the phrase and did so aloud: “Qui totum vult totum perdit…’He who wants everything, loses everything’”. And indeed he had lost everything for a time, but perhaps now it had been found again.