The Worst Kind of Secret

The job sounded crazy and was way out of her comfort zone. Marty, who had been booking her jobs for the last five years was more than aware of that so Liz was curious about why he’d even asked.

“You know I don’t do weddings. I get in, get the shots, get out. Then you hand over photos showing people having the time of their lives that end up on the customer’s website, brochures and event videos.” 

That was all she wanted. Take photos and make sure you haven’t captured anything that might detract from the branding or come back to haunt someone. Not only was this her favourite part, but also the part of her work that made her legendary in her field. Her ability to ignore the main subject in the photo and scrutinize everything that was there, meant that she had never sent a photo to a client that turned out to have anything embarrassing, offensive or off-brand in any way. 

She was there to capture the emotions the client was looking for, in the most flattering way possible. She wasn’t there to participate. She was the proverbial fly on the wall, as though she wasn’t even there. 

“Just think of it as a free vacation,” Marty said, “The entire resort has been rented for the week. Don’t think of it as a wedding, think of it as a retreat that just happens to end with a wedding. Although it doesn’t sound like the kind of photos you normally take, make no mistake, this is a marketing job.”

“I’m not working for the wedding planner or resort?”

“No, the client is the Father of the Groom. William Richardson is setting the stage for his son to take over his empire, these photos need to create envy in those who were not invited and loyalty with those who were. You are my best photographer and the only one I can trust with something like this.”

She didn’t know if it was Marty’s compliments, the enormous fee being offered, or the thought of a vacation at a resort she could never afford that made her finally decide to take on the project. Or maybe it was simply her ego, this was going to be the Canadian equivalent to a royal wedding and coronation of a new king all in the same week. Her photos would be part of history.

*********

Brian had kept tabs on his daughter throughout the years. He was aware that she hated him and did not want him in her life but you never knew when someone might be useful. So far, she hadn’t been. She was neither well connected nor well off financially. 

That was true, until the day Lucy met Matthew Richardson. Matthew was the son of business mogul, William Richardson, a self made man who built and empire so large, Brian wondered if William could even list all of the properties and businesses he owned. He had so much money that over the past few years, he seemed more focused on giving it away than making more.

That suited Brian just fine because he was currently in need of a benefactor. William was a great candidate and Lucy could be the connection he needed to make that happen. He just had to find his way back into Lucy’s life.

He knew it wouldn’t be easy. He had definitely done a number on the kid and her mom. This would have to be a slow play, one he approached with patience, humility and remorse. But that wouldn’t be enough, Lucy would have to believe he was a changed man, and since he wasn’t, he would have a lot of work to do.

He’d need to make sure Lucy saw him doing things that the old Brian would never have done, but it couldn’t look like he was doing it just because she was watching. It would have to be subtle, she’d need to randomly run into him just at the moment Brian would be helping a kid put the chain back on his bike, bringing a senior’s groceries in or dropping a few dollars into the hand of a homeless youth. 

It wasn’t actually random. But Lucy needed to think that he hadn’t expected her to be there. In fact, most times he pretended he hadn’t even seen her. It took a lot of planning and it didn’t always pay off. Sometimes she’d look away at the wrong moment or had arrived too early or too late and he’d have done a good deed for nothing. Brian hated when that happened but considered it a cost of doing business. 

And little by little, he made his way back into Lucy’s life and by extension, into the lives of Matthew and William.

*********

Everything William had ever built or done had been in service to his son. 

From the moment he met Stephanie over thirty years ago, he wanted to build a family. When they married, they tried everything but it became clear that Stephanie was not going to be able to carry children. They explored adoption and surrogates but Stephanie’s history of mental illness always derailed their attempts. 

William felt like he let Stephanie down as it was the one thing that they both wanted and even with all of his money and influence, he couldn’t seem to make it happen. Until he met Thomas. 

Thomas was not the kind of person William would normally have done business with but he was desperate to make this right for Stephanie and Thomas knew of pregnant women who had neither the resources or the desire to keep the children they were carrying. The children never ended up in the legal adoption system because these women weren’t giving up their children without getting something in return.

William and Stephanie agonized over the decision. Were they really prepared to buy a baby? But the more they talked, the easier it was to convince themselves that they were doing what was in the best interests of the child. It was really the only moral thing to do when the law was actually creating more harm than it set out to protect.

So, on the day after Mattie’s birth, William packed a suitcase full of money and traveled through the night to a rundown apartment and traded it for a baby boy. 

The first time he looked into Mattie’s eyes, he knew he had done the right thing. He knew his life was now complete. And it was, for about a month, until the the first time their secret threatened to bring everything down around them.

*********

For Brian, keeping up the appearance of a being a caring and compassionate father was a lot of work and he was getting impatient. It was bad enough playing the doting father to Lucy but somehow Brian, Lucy, Matthew and William were becoming a family. That meant weekly family dinners and a group chat that never seemed to stop, it was exhausting.

He was almost ready to give up but had decided to wait it out until the wedding. As he dragged himself to another insufferable family dinner, he couldn’t have known that his patience was about to pay off. At this particular dinner, they were selecting photos of the kids growing up that would be featured in the video that would play at the rehearsal dinner.

And there, on the top of the pile pictures William had brought, was a picture Brian would have recognize anywhere but never thought he’d see again. He was, after all, the one that took the very first picture of Ryan Torres. 

“Just in case.” He had said to Amy when she asked why he was taking a picture of a baby she wasn’t keeping.

Brian and Amy had run many cons together over the years. When she’d come to him after getting knocked up by one of her marks, he was the one who knew how to make it profitable. First, there was the easy money from the mark who thought he was paying for an abortion, but the true windfall came in the form of a suitcase of money that Amy had traded for the kid. 

It was more money than they’d ever had but he and Amy went through it so quickly, Brian needed a plan to get more. The problem was that they didn’t actually know who those rich folks were and Thomas wasn’t going to risk the rest of his business by giving them a name. Instead, Brian would need to scare them out of the shadows and that’s when Brian hatched the fake abduction plan.

People had seen Amy pregnant. The fact that they hadn’t seen her with a baby didn’t matter. All new mothers are overwhelmed and it’s not unusual for them not to be out in public with a new baby during the first few weeks. Even though the timing wouldn’t match up and it would be obvious they hadn’t abducted the boy, he knew the publicity would be enough to scare the rich folks into revealing themselves.

Not only would the story help bring another suitcase of money but there could be a book deal and of course all of those kind hearted people who would make donations so that a reward could be set up to bring baby Ryan home. All he had to do was stay in the background and coach Amy along the way.

It had been one of his best schemes he’d ever come up with and it worked for a while, but Amy got addicted to the attention and just didn’t hold up as a sympathetic, grieving mother for very long. 

But this time, he didn’t have to worry about someone else messing things up. All he had to do was keep the pressure on William and he would be set for life.

*********

When Brian first approached William demanding money, it caught William off guard. He felt that same panic he had on that day about a month after his trip to that rundown apartment when Mattie’s baby face filled their television screen.

“The search for Ryan Torres has expanded. Baby Ryan was abducted last Tuesday from his mother’s apartment. Police say they have exhausted all leads and are broadening their search. They are seeking the public’s help to bring Ryan home safely to his mother.”

William couldn’t believe what he was hearing. They had not abducted Mattie. It had all been arranged. The girl had voluntarily handed Mattie over and accepted the suitcase in return. Stephanie was beside herself and didn’t leave her bed for weeks.

William hired a P.I. to reach out to Amy and that’s when he found out that this was all about money. This time, he packed up a suitcase of money and gave it to the P.I. with instructions to make sure there would be no further requests for money. As time went on, the search for Ryan Torres fizzled out and William never wanted to know how he had dealt with the matter. All he knew was that after a few weeks the story faded from the public eye and William was finally able to breathe.

But now, it was like the wind had been knocked out of him all over again. It would be different if it was only William who would pay the price for what he had done so many years ago. He’d confess and take his punishment. He would never regret what he had done because it brought him Mattie, but he also realized that the secret had taken so much from him over the years, including his wife Stephanie.

But the truth couldn’t come out. It would destroy Mattie and Lucy and he’d lose both of them forever. So once again, William was filling a suitcase with money to protect his family. But he had also decided that this would be the last time. William had a plan, he just needed to get through the wedding first and then this would all be over. 

William knew how important it was to Lucy that her father walk her down the aisle and he wanted her to have that. He knew she would grieve for Brian, but she would never have to know the truth about why her father came back into her life. She could remember him as the man she thought he was and be comforted by the fact that she built a relationship with him after all these years. 

What William hadn’t planned for was Brian seeing this week as the perfect time to increase his demands and start taking bigger risks. William had spent most of the week assuring Brian that everything would be taken care of when they got home. He had thought he had things under control until that damn poster showed up under his door.

*********

Liz was happy to be up in her room, participating in her favourite part of the job, selecting the best photos and then painstakingly examining every inch to ensure there wasn’t anything that didn’t fit the client’s narrative, when something caught her eye.

In the background of a series of pictures, she had captured Brian and William in the midst of a heated argument. That in itself wasn’t unique, big events like these brought out the worst in people, but as she looked at the photo, she could see what appeared to be the subject of the argument, a poster in William’s left hand. 

As she zoomed in, it triggered a memory she had long since forgotten. She had only been a teenager at the time, but she would never forget the posters plastered everywhere and the two week period when she wasn’t allowed to leave the house unsupervised. Parents kept their children locked up for fear of them being taken, just like poor baby Ryan.

And as she looked at the poster, Liz knew she’d seen that baby picture somewhere else. She opened the video she was working on for tonight’s rehearsal dinner and instantly knew what the argument was about and that she was going to be faced with the decision of a lifetime. A decision that, no matter what she did it would change the course of history for this family.

Liz knew all about secrets and recognized that this was the worst kind of secret. This was the kind of secret that caused pain whether it remained a secret or the truth came out. She knew that no matter what she did, someone would experience pain. Unfortunately, she didn’t know which would be worse, the pain of the secret or the pain of the truth.

What she did know was that if this photo got out she would no longer be invisible, the thing she treasured most in her life. Even her photos never bore her name, only the watermark of Marty’s company. She had never wanted to be a part of anyone’s story but her own.

But was there a grieving mother who never knew what happened to her child? And didn’t Mattie, or Ryan, or whoever he was or wanted to be, deserve the truth?

As her finger hovered over the delete key, she knew that regardless of what she decided, she would never be able to look at a photo the same way again.