I joined Julie at the little table in the kitchenette.
She leaned over and kissed me lightly and said, "I need to fill you in on a few things."
I felt of twinge of pain. Memories of the videotape flashed through my mind and I wasn't sure if I really wanted to get into it.
"You're parent's death was no accident." She continued. "Uncle Ralph was responsible."
"What?" I blurted out, trying to get my bearings on the situation.
I had never met Julie's Uncle Ralph and I hoped I never would. The whole town only mentioned Ralph Fantod in whispered tones of disgust as though saying his name out loud would cause them to catch the disease that had infected his side of the family. He was a bona fide lowlife from the other side of the tracks, as they say. His whole branch of the Fantod family was a herd of black sheep, a constant embarrassment to Earl and Jesse's side.
"Even though our side of the family wouldn't even mention his side, Uncle Ralph was strangely protective of us, especially of me. It was almost as though we gave him an element of respectability in an otherwise dismal life. He thought your father posed a threat to our respectability and wanted to scare him with a threat."
"Why would he think my father was a threat? Uncle Earl was a senior partner in my father's law firm."
Julie paused, and took a deep breath. "That's really hard to explain. You have to understand that Uncle Ralph was a little off balance."
"Go on." I said without judgement or emotion.
"Ralph saw your family as the symbol of everything his family wasn't. Your family was decent and upstanding. Your father had a good job. Your parents were respected in the community. Your family had everything that Uncle Ralph did not have. He resented it deeply and it ate at him constantly."
"But you don't kill people just because you are jealous of them," I countered.
"That's true," she agreed. "But you have to remember that Ralph was a little off."
"O.K., continue."
"Ralph decided that your father was trying to ruin Uncle Earl and my father by associating them with Ralph's side of the family. As far as we can tell, there was no basis for this. But when you have a few short circuits like Uncle Ralph did, you don't always need facts to back up your ideas. And he felt that it was his job to do something about it. He thought he was protecting our side of the family."
"So, he killed my parents, just to protect your family?" I asked incredulously.
"Not exactly. He knew that your father and mother had gone across county to dinner and that they would be coming back via the county highway that crossed the railroad track. Uncle Ralph had worked for the railroad and knew how the crossing gates worked. He planned to wait at the crossing till your parent's car stopped for the barrier. Then he planned to raise the barrier. When your dad's car began to move forward he was going to drop the barrier again, denting the hood and putting the fear of God into your father. After that he planned to threaten them further by phone."
For Ralph Fantod, getting his fork all the way to his mouth was a long-range plan. It was inconceivable to me that he would have been able to pull this off. "Clearly, it didn't work out the way he planned." I injected trying to keep the story going.
"Well, it didn't work out as planned." Julie went on. "First, there really was a train coming, but Uncle Ralph thought that would just make the whole thing even scarier. What he forgot was that the crossing barriers have a fifteen-second delay to keep them from crashing down or cars. So when he raised the barrier, your dad hit the gas and went straight into the oncoming train. Uncle Ralph panicked and ran. Apparently, he went on a weeklong binge back in the woods by his shack. When he finally showed up, he looked so terrible that nobody thought to connect him with the accident. Nobody, that is, except cousin Enos."
I hadn't met Enos either, but I knew that he had followed in the bad-side-of-the-tracks, lowlife, black sheep Fantod tradition. Rumor had it that there were cycles in the family tree and Enos was his own uncle, however that worked.
"As soon as Enos heard about the accident he was so afraid that it might be traced to Uncle Ralph, that he started rumors that your father had been involved in shady dealings to draw the focus away from him and Uncle Ralph. He did a pretty good job, too. Nobody ever managed to pin it on either of them. We only found out through family gossip because Ralph has a tendency to talk when he's drunk."
"And Ralph did this because he thought he was protecting you?" I pushed.
"Yeah." She said. "And that's not all he did."
I said nothing, still trying to digest what she had just told me.
"When you left town, I went into a deep depression. Uncle Ralph blamed you and went to the University looking for you to get even. He took cousin Enos with him. Apparently, they thought you were working at a mall and they went there looking for you. But they ran into a couple of security guards who stopped them. Uncle Ralph said he shot one of them, but I think he was making that up to cover what happened to Enos."
"What happened to Enos." I asked, pretty sure that I already knew the answer.
"One of the guards punched Enos in the nose so hard that it shattered the cartilage. It wouldn't heal straight and Enos' nose is half again bigger than it was before and sitting a little crooked on his face. The family teases him no end and he claims that he'll kill that guard if he ever sees him again."
I shifted uncomfortably in the chair. "Why did Ralph blame me?" I asked.
"He blamed you for my depression. He thought your leaving was further evidence of how your family was trying to destroy mine. He didn't see any connection between your leaving and the tape or he would have blamed himself."
"THE TAPE?" I asked, "How did you know about the tape?"
"Well, for one thing, you left it in the VCR," she said matter of factly. "Ralph and Enos put that tape in your parents attic to support their claims that your parents were involved in pornography. They made the tape themselves. And it was a pretty poor quality tape."
"And you're telling me that it wasn't you in the tape?" I asked.
"Of course it wasn't me," Julie said with a giggle. "It was probably one of my cousins from Ralph's side of the family."
"But I thought that was you," I blurted.
"We figured that out," Julie continued. "There was a slight family resemblance. After all we probably are related. And you were in such a state of confusion at the time that you just jumped to the wrong conclusion."
"Why didn't you tell me when you found out?"
Julie took a deep breath and continued. "It wasn't all that simple. I thought that you left because I wouldn't go steady with you. I had conflicting feelings at the time. I was a little older than you. You were sort of like family because you were living with us. And you were in a vulnerable state because of your parent's death. I didn't know if you were really interested in me, or just looking for somebody to latch onto. I had really mixed feelings and thought that you left in anger over my ambivalence."
"What about the tape," I prodded.
"We sold your parents house and everything that was left in it was boxed up. It wasn't until several years later that we were going through the stuff and found the VCR and the tape. It all made sense to me then, but it seemed too late to do anything about it."
"You should have told me," I persisted.
"Tad, don't be unrealistic. You were finished with college by then and I didn't even know where you were living. Besides, what am I going to do, call you up and say 'By the way Tad, I'm not the porno queen you thought I was. Whaddya say we go back to where we were five years ago.' "
I shrugged, "I guess not."
She paused and then giggled again. "It is a little funny when you think about it. Poor deluded Uncle Ralph. He lived his life driven by something that was only true in his head."
"Yeah, imagine that," I said with my voice cracking, "driven by something that was only true in his head."
I felt foolish and I felt liberated. I had wasted an awful lot of time and didn't want to waste any more. "We only have a few hours before your flight and I want to enjoy them. We still have a lot more catching up to do."
When you confront your fears they have a way of disappearing. With everything out on the table, the rest of the day was like that last day of summer as we strolled around the park. We walked through Georgetown, through Foggy Bottom and down to the Mall to see the museums. Julie asked me to join her on a few of her vacation assignments. We could travel as a couple for free and get paid to boot. I agreed on the condition that she visit me whenever she had time between trips.
I also found out that my parents' estate had been cleared. Uncle Earl managed the estate until his death, and then put it in a trust in my name. After I left college, I lost contact with my old town so nobody could track me down. According to Julie, I was quite well off and should claim my inheritance. Just think, Thaddeus Wentworth - Gentleman Gumshoe.
The time came too soon when I took Julie to the airport to catch her plane. I waited until the plane left the airport, watching the plane get smaller and smaller in the sky until I couldn't see it any more. I felt a deep longing and wondered how I would pass the time until her next visit. A drop of water hit my hand and I decided that should get inside before it started to rain. But I was already inside and tears were running down my cheeks. Thaddeus Wentworth - tough guy. Maybe I wasn't so tough after all.