The Real Garcia Chapter 07
Her back was bent. She was barely fifty, but her hair was mostly gray.
In her arms, she carried a black urn. On the urn, a photograph. My grandmother’s ashes.
She walked step by step to the front. She raised her head and looked at Daniel Harrington.
That face. It was his face.
Silence. No one spoke. But the cameras flashed.
Then my mother held up a piece of paper. Her birth certificate.
It clearly showed 1976, the year Daniel Harrington left the rural West.
Birth date: June 13th. The date matched the one in his letters.
The comments exploded again.
“That face. DNA not needed. They’re identical.”
“What kind of monster abandons his pregnant wife in the rural West to become a professor?”
“And he stood up there talking about fairness. How does he live with himself?”
“And they taught their granddaughter this?”
The viewership peaked.
Daniel Harrington wiped his forehead, his voice shaking. “David! Shut down the live stream!”
But David Johnson did not move.
The stream had been promoted by the Harringtons themselves. Top placement. All the media were their invitees.
It was supposed to be my trial.
Now it was his.
My mother did not look at him. She looked down at the urn.
“Mom,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, “the man you waited for your whole life. I have brought you here today. Look at him. Look at the woman next to him. Look at the life they lived.”
Daniel Harrington swayed, gripping the back of a chair.
I looked at him. “Professor Harrington, you said you came from the rural West and understood fairness. But are you fit to speak that word? Every time you called your wife ‘Garcia,’ didn’t your conscience bother you?”
His jacket was soaked through. The last of his strength crumbled. His shoulders sagged.
“This is slander, slander,” he muttered.
Then his phone rang.
He looked at the caller ID. His hands shook as he answered, accidentally hitting the speaker button.
“Professor Harrington, this is the University Ethics Committee. An investigation has been opened regarding allegations of identity fraud, academic misconduct, and using your position to suppress student complaints. You
are required to report for questioning within twenty four hours.”
The line went dead.
Daniel Harrington collapsed onto the floor.
Decades of prestige. Gone.
He looked up at me. “At the time, I had no choice. It was her. She pressured me with her family connections.”
He pointed a trembling finger at Lily Jones.
She shrieked. “Daniel! Are you insane? This was all your idea!”
“Shut up!” He turned, veins bulging. “Your father forced me!”
“Forced you? You came to me yourself! You said that country woman wasn’t good enough for you!”
Fifty years of marriage. Shattered.
Then he fell to his knees in front of me. His voice barely audible.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked down at him. I picked up the urn and placed it in front of him.
“The one you need to apologize to is not me. It is her. Because of you, she has no grave. She has no place to rest.”
“Garcia,” he shook as if he were falling apart.
