A Gift of Time by Merritt Jerry

Author:Merritt, Jerry [Merritt, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2016-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

I found out later the Fields Medal wouldn’t come with any monetary reward. I had been remembering the later Able Prize with its million-dollar payout. But the awards in my current period were mostly prestigious. All I had wanted was money to begin investing. Still, that came soon enough.

Several days later, the phone rang at five in the morning. It was the math department at the University of Heidelberg. They wanted to book me as a keynote speaker at their mathematics conference in the spring. Mom told them I had school that day. But the phone kept ringing, and Mom wanted to know what was going on.

“Remember my science fair project. I solved a famous math problem. Now it seems everyone wants me to come tell them how I did it.”

“Well you always were good in math. Still, this seems a little overboard.”

“I just got lucky.” Then the phone rang again, and I excused myself to get ready for school.

By the time Arlene and I left for classes, Mom had gotten rather good at handling the whole affair. She booked a few speaking engagements for me along the West Coast less than three hours’ drive but told me my education came first. By that, she meant high school. Bless her heart. I didn’t argue. I knew she had less than a year left.

Meanwhile, I was finally entering a period when I recognized a few rapid-growth stocks coming onto the exchanges. My Holiday Inn stocks were now worth nearly four thousand dollars and Arlie had a like amount that wasn’t doing Arlene any good. I located the nearest stockbroker and went through all the wickets necessary to transfer my old Pensacola account. It seemed simple enough. But further reflection convinced me the stockbroker back in Florida must surely have realized the infamous missing son of a serial killer held an account with him.

I discussed it with Arlene. We both had the feeling there might be a trap set on that account, and any activity on it would trigger a call to law enforcement. The price of Arlie’s disappearance was the loss of his stock. But Arlene remained sanguine about the loss. “It’s a small enough price to pay, Cage. Don’t worry about it.” I think she was just so thrilled to finally be safe and living in a normal family, nothing else mattered.

Still, I worried about a loose end somewhere. Something we had overlooked. I knew Arlene would eventually need a birth certificate and I knew not to wait too long to get one. In those early, pre-computer days, there was no cross feed between death certificates and birth certificates in any state bureaucracy.

“Let’s head over to the library and look at some old newspapers on the microfilm readers.”

“And waste a good day like this?’

“It won’t be a waste. Trust me.”

It took us about an hour to find an obituary of an Arlene Trask who had died young and was born within a year of Arlene Quintin. From the library, we walked downtown to the courthouse and asked directions to the vital records section.

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