The cliff edge

The wind raged about her, tearing at her clothes and whipping hair into haunted eyes. She was not sure if it was the rain that made her wet or the torrent of tears streaming down her face. It didn’t matter now. She knelt on the rocks and checked the bag beside her. Satisfied everything was in order, she zipped it shut and stepped away. Redemption, so long overdue, was finally at hand. She closed her eyes and stepped out, feeling free for the first time in years.

Louis James lived an unremarkable life. He grew up an only child in a loving upper middle-class white family. He went to a good private school and was neither terribly bright nor terribly dull. He was passable at football but hardly worth mention in the school paper. Upon leaving school he was accepted into a good college, and after graduation got a good job at the bank and carried on working hard and being unremarkable.

It was while going through his second and particularly nasty divorce, that he found himself sitting in a van with a particularly large needle sticking out of his arm. He came, not out of civic duty, but to further aggravate soon to be ex-wife number two, who thought giving blood was abhorrent. Given his uneventful past he had never had occasion nor desire to have his blood drawn. As such it came as news to him that he had a rare blood condition. Not particularly dangerous but worth noting in the database should such information be needed in the future.

The following morning Louis was absently finishing his lukewarm coffee while devising other ways to aggravate his shrewish ex, when there was a knock at the door.

Having taken the day off work to fully dedicate himself to the task of annihilating his wretched wife in family court, he was neither expecting nor wanting company. Turning to the clock he scowled. It was too early for deliveries as his local UPS man, who was lazy and fat, didn’t even get out of bed before mid-day. No one else would expect him to be home. Not wanting to disturb his scheming mid-plot, he decided to ignore the visitor.

After a few moments the knock came again, this time more insistent and protracted. Louis decided this was a perfect time to stretch his legs and take a break. He stood and quietly trod to the spare bathroom at the back of the house. He didn’t want to risk walking past the front entrance on the off chance the caller heard him and renewed their efforts.

Assuming that whoever had been at the door had finally gone away, Louis detoured by the front door on the way back to the kitchen. He was not quite sure how to complete his argument and wasn’t ready to sit back down to his notes. He opened the door and peered out into the morning. As all of his neighbours also worked, the street was unsurprisingly empty. Looking about he was mildly intrigued to see a small black notebook on the mat. Whoever was knocking before must have left it behind.

As he picked the book up, a business card that had been tucked in the front cover fluttered to the mat. Retrieving it he recognised the name of a prominent law firm in town, and turning it over, found a hand scrawled message which read: “Please contact me at your earliest convenience, Horace Pince.”

His interest piqued, Louis felt a mystery had been quite literally dropped in his lap. Louis loved to win in love and the war that inevitably followed, but what he really adored was a good mystery.

The book, which was evidently old and well loved, turned out to be the journal of a young woman. Ordinarily Louis did not care for biographies or other dear diary type affairs, but as this was quite well written and he was fast losing steam on his latest scheme on the ex-wife front, he was looking for a distraction. Promising himself an hour before he would get back to the war room, as he had begun referring to the kitchen table, he made himself comfortable and turned the yellowing page to the second entry of May 8th 1983.

Louis stretched and blinked in the fading light. He had been so caught up in the wretched story that played out in the day by day account held in these pages, that his own day had disappeared. Wherever it came from it was a truly magnificent work of literature. He couldn’t fabricate a more miserable tale of woe if he tried and the woman had a rare skill of drawing you in to her writing. She was young, too young to be raising a child on her own. Without means or support from her family she looked elsewhere. A family longing for an heir but too impatient with the adoption process paid off the desperate and vulnerable girl and had paperwork drawn up that would ensure she would never see or contact the child again.

From the inky pages flowed grief and regret and self-loathing. Seeking to rectify her terrible mistake, the woman searched for her child, but her precious boy had been spirited away. Where other entries were long and articulate the final entry simply read:

“Dear little Freddy, my sweet, sweet baby, I cannot live with myself without you”

War room now thoroughly forgotten, Louis plonked the journal on floor at his feet and stretched out again. He felt ripped-off by the pesky old thing. Nothing irked him more than a cliff hanger. Wasting the day on a story like this, only for it to have such an unsatisfactory ending was quite frankly annoying. He supposed the woman, in a fit of melodrama had ended her life. While he had at various points in the day felt genuine pity for the girl, he now just felt cross that she should be so selfish.

Grabbing the business card that had acted as a bookmark throughout the day, Louis flung open his laptop and jabbed out an accusing email to one Mr Horace Pince to let him know what a horrid waste of a day off he had triggered. Though well after business hours, a reply dinged only minutes later.

“Dear Mr James,

I have set aside my 9 am tomorrow hoping that you would contact me. Please do not be late - we have much to discuss.

Sincerely Horace Pince”

So it was that Louis found his hand being firmly shaken by Horace Pince, who had be at least sixty but was impeccably groomed, with neatly cropped grey hair and an expensive-looking suit and being ushered into his well-appointed office.

“And so Mr James, I have been searching for you since she came to me. This woman in the journal, she is your mother. Frankly we had all but given up. The people who took you, your parents, did everything they could to make you disappear. Their forger must have been very good. It was not until your blood test the other day that I had the first glimmer of hope in all these years.”

Mr Pince went on to explain that when Louis’ rare blood condition was noted, a friend in the records office had let him know. It was, as it turned out rare and genetic. Only 1 in 1000 people are diagnosed with it. One of whom was the woman in the journal. His mother. This all seemed absurd and a little bit illegal with the way private medical information was being shared. Besides, Louis mused as Mr Pince waffled on, if this fanciful story was true it would be a moot point as the lady clearly jumped off a cliff.

Louis zoned back in to what Horace was saying in time to hear that so deep was her regret, she never spent the money from the adoptive parents. She promised herself she would give it back to the child, should she find him. After nearly going mad for trying, she stashed the cash and the journal in a bag and after addressing it to Horace made a determined effort to end her life over the edge of a cliff.

Mr Pince paused for effect. He then bent over and reached under the desk, “Mr James, I am finally able to carry out your mother’s dying wish.” Louis was certainly paying attention now as Mr Pince dropped a tattered old duffle bag on his leather topped desk with a dull thud. “Twenty thousand dollars in full Mr James, the price some lowlife put on a woman’s baby”.

Louis was still not convinced any of this was legitimate but who was he to argue with twenty thousand dollars. He reached for the bag and shouldering it got to his feet. Thanking Mr Pince he made for the door.

When he was almost at the door, Louis was sure he heard Horace speak, but it was so quiet he couldn’t quite catch the meaning. “What was that Mr Pince?” he asked. Mostly out of good manners, not because he really wanted to hear anymore.

“She is alive you know. The woman, your mother. She would like to meet with you.”

Louis paused at the door caught, for a moment, between fairy tales and reality. With the very real weight of twenty thousand dollars pressing into his shoulder, he offered a ghost of a smile.

“Good day Mr Pince.”