Shame

Leslie Van Doren. You remember that name?”
    Caleb’s mouth opened. He remembered.
    “That’s right,” Elizabeth said. “Farrell was Van Doren’s grown-up baby, the one she tried to pass off as your father’s son, the one whose original birth certificate listed him as Gray Parker Junior.
    “After your father’s execution, Van Doren left Florida and returned to Colorado. She kept the boy, whom she continued to call Gray, until he was twenty-one months old. By all accountsshe wasn’t a good mother. Her drug and alcohol use escalated, and her baby’s needs became secondary to her own.
    “The state intervened, declaring her an unfit mother. They took away the boy and determined that he should be put up for adoption. Van Doren didn’t attend any of the proceedings and never contested losing her child.
    “The boy was adopted by an older, wealthy couple, Thomas and Dorothy Farrell. They never discussed the adoption with John. He grew up thinking they were his biological parents. Apparently he didn’t learn differently until he was fifteen.”
    “He must have been incredibly angry,” Caleb said.
    “Yes.”
    “Did they tell him about his mother?” asked Caleb.
    “I doubt the Farrells were even aware of her history,” Elizabeth said. “That’s something I’m researching, but so far there’s been nothing to indicate they knew anything about her past, and it’s unlikely they were informed of her death. Van Doren died at the age of thirty-three of a drug overdose that might very well have been a suicide.”
    “What kind of a child was he?”
    Elizabeth shrugged. “I’m still finding out. Now that he’s notorious, lots of people are saying that Farrell was always bent.”
    “That’s what they lined up to say about me.”
    “I know that. That’s why I’ll need to apply my hindsight filter. That’s my euphemism for a bullshit detector. But one thing people seem to agree on was that Farrell was undeniably bright.”
    “Why did he hate us so much?” asked Caleb.
    “I don’t know,” said Elizabeth. “Right now I only have a few half-baked theories. That’s all I might ever have.”
    Caleb knew that before Elizabeth was through she’d have more than that, but he was also only too aware that sometimes even Elizabeth Line didn’t unearth all the secrets.
    “I think you were a target because he was insanely jealous of you,” Elizabeth said. “He hated you because you were the chosen child.”
    “Chosen? That’s a laugh.”
    “You got your father’s name, Caleb.”
    “It wasn’t something I wanted.”
    “That doesn’t matter.”
    “But Farrell wasn’t even my biological brother.”
    “He could have been. He was brought into the world with the name of Gray, but even that was taken away from him. Perhaps your choosing to lose the name Gray added insult to his injury. He didn’t have that choice.”
    “I never did anything to him.”
    “That doesn’t matter. This certainly wasn’t the first time you were targeted for the sins of your father.”
    “Sins? For once my father did the right thing. He didn’t have a child by this woman. He wasn’t the father.”
    “Try a logic jump,” said Elizabeth, “albeit a convoluted logic jump. By withholding his seed from Van Doren, your father also denied Farrell. He never gave him a chance to be his son.”
    “That’s crazy.”
    “It’s a theory. But I’m sure there were any number of factors that entered into Farrell’s equation of hate. By his thinking, your father betrayed the love of Van Doren. He humiliated her and made it clear that she wasn’t worthy of carrying his child. Maybe Farrell decided your father drove her into the arms of other men and made her what she was. And because Gray contrived with me to reveal Van Doren’s deception to the world, because he helped make her a laughingstock, Farrell might have decided he had to take up that gauntlet and avenge the death that he perceived we drove her to.”
    “Why? It wasn’t as if Van Doren was the Mother of the Year. She abandoned him.”
    “As you know only too well, you don’t get to choose your family. And for all her shortcomings, Van Doren was still his mother.”
    “It still seems crazy.”
    “I’m not ruling that out either. Farrell was fascinated with the criminal mind. He studied capital punishment at length and was attracted to notorious felons, especially those who exhibited a certain bravado. In many ways his curiosity was self-fulfilling. He was