Their new identities had been cemented over the years as LuAnn had taken great pains to establish the history Jackson had concocted for her and her daughter. The toughest part by far had been Lisa. Lisa believed her father to have been an extremely wealthy European financier who had died when Lisa was very young and who had left behind no family other than them. Charlie’s role, while never fully explained, was clearly one of family and the “uncle” label had seemed a natural one. There were no photographs of Mr. Savage. LuAnn had explained to Lisa that her father was very reclusive and a touch eccentric and had allowed none to be taken. LuAnn and Charlie had long debated whether actually to create a man, photos and all, but had decided that it would be too dangerous. A wall with holes punched through it would eventually fall. Thus, Lisa believed her mother to be the very young widow of an extremely wealthy man, whose wealth, in turn, had made her mother one of the wealthiest women in the world. And one of the most generous.
LuAnn had sent Beth, her former coworker, enough money to start her own chain of restaurants. Johnny Jarvis from the mall had received enough to pay for several advanced degrees at the country’s most prestigious universities. Duane’s parents had received enough money to keep them secure in their retirement. LuAnn had even sent money to Shirley Watson, a guilty reaction to having lashed the woman with a negative reputation in the only place where Shirley would ever have the ambition or courage to live. Finally, LuAnn’s mother’s gravesite was now marked with a far more elaborate monument. The police, she was sure, had done all they could to track her down through this largesse, but without success. Jackson had hidden the money well and there had been absolutely no trace for the authorities to follow.
In addition, half her yearly income had been donated anonymously to a number of charities and other good works that she and Charlie had identified over the years. They were ever on the lookout for more deserving homes for the lottery money. LuAnn was determined to do as much good as she could with the money to atone, at least in part, for the manner in which she had acquired it. Even with all that, the money came in far faster than they could dispose of it. Jackson’s investments had paid off more handsomely than even he had envisioned and the anticipated twenty-five million dollars in earnings each year had actually exceeded forty million per annum. All money unspent by LuAnn had also been reinvested by Jackson and the surplus had kept compounding until the assets LuAnn now held in her own name were almost half a billion dollars. She shook her head at the thought of the staggering sum. And the original lottery prize money, one hundred million dollars, was to be returned to her very shortly, the ten-year period having expired, as her contract with Jackson had stated. That mattered little to LuAnn. Jackson could keep it; it wasn’t as though she needed it. But he would return it. The man, she had to admit, had been utterly faithful to his promise.
Over all these years, every quarter the detailed financial statements had arrived, no matter where they happened to be in the world. But since only the papers and never the man showed up, LuAnn’s anxiety finally had passed. The letter accompanying all the financial packets was from an investment company with a Swiss address. She had no idea of Jackson’s ties to this firm, nor did she care to explore that area further. She had seen enough of him to be respectful of his volatility; and more disturbingly, of the extreme consequences which he was capable of causing. She also remembered how he had been prepared to kill her if she had rejected his offer. There was something not quite natural about him. The powers he seemed to possess could hardly be of this world.
She stopped at a large oak. From one of its branches a long knotted rope dangled. LuAnn gripped the rope and lifted herself off the saddle, while Joy, already quite familiar with this ritual, waited patiently. Her arms moving like wonderfully calibrated pistons, LuAnn swiftly climbed to the other end of the rope, which was tied around a thick branch almost thirty feet off the ground, and then made her way back down. She repeated the process twice more. She had a fully equipped gymnasium in her home where she worked out diligently. It wasn’t vanity; she had little interest in how it made her look. She was naturally strong, and that physical strength had carried her through many a crisis. It was one of the few constant things in her life and she was loath to let it disappear.
Growing up in Georgia, she had climbed many trees, run through miles of countryside, and jumped many ravines. She had just been having fun; the concept of exercise hadn’t come into the equation. And so, in addition to pumping the iron, she had built a more natural exercise course across her extensive grounds. She pulled herself up the rope one more time, the muscle cords in her arms and back tight as rebar.
Breathing hard, she settled lightly back into the saddle and made her way back to the horse barn, her heart lightened and her spirits raised by the invigorating ride through the countryside and the strenuous rope climb.
In the large storage building next to the horse barn, one of the groundspeople, a beefy man in his early thirties, had just started splitting logs with a sledgehammer and wedge. LuAnn glanced at him through the open doorway as she rode by. She quickly unsaddled Joy and returned the horse to its stall. She walked over to the doorway of the outbuilding. The man briefly nodded to her and then continued his work. He knew she lived in the mansion. Other than that, he knew nothing about her. She watched the man for a minute and then took off her coat, lifted a second sledgehammer off the wall, squeezed a spare wedge between her fingers, testing its weight, set a log up on the block, tapped the wedge into its rough surface, stepped back, and swung cleanly. The wedge bit deep, but didn’t cleave the log in two. She hit it again, dead center, and then again. The log broke clean. The man glanced at her in surprise, then shrugged and kept splitting. They both pounded away, barely ten feet from each other. The man could split a log with one swing of the hammer, while it continued to take LuAnn two and sometimes three blows. He smiled over at her, the sweat showing on his brow. She kept pounding away, though, her arms and shoulders working in precise unity, and within five minutes she was cracking a log with one blow, and before he knew it she was doing it faster than he.
The man picked up his pace, the sweat falling faster across his brow, his grin gone as his breaths became more painful. After twenty minutes, he was taking two and three strikes to crack a log as his big arms and shoulders started to tire rapidly, his chest heaving and his legs rubbery. He watched in growing amazement as LuAnn continued, her pace steady, the strength of her blows against the wood totally undiminished. In fact, she seemed to be hitting the wedge harder and harder. The sound of metal on metal rang out louder and louder. Finally, the man dropped the sledgehammer and leaned back against the wall, his gut heaving, his arms dead, his shirt drenched in perspiration despite the chilly weather. LuAnn finished her pile of logs and, barely missing a stroke, finished off his stack as well. Her work complete, she wiped her forehead and replaced the sledgehammer on the wall hook before glancing over at the puffing man as she shook out her arms.
“You’re very strong,” she said, looking at the substantial pile of wood he had split as she put her coat back on.
He looked at her in surprise and then started laughing. “I was thinking that too before you came along. Now I’ve half a mind to go work in the kitchen.”
She smiled and patted him on the shoulder. She had chopped wood virtually every day of her life from the time she had started school until she was sixteen. She hadn’t done it for exercise, like now; back then she had done it to keep warm. “Don’t feel bad, I’ve had a lot of practice.”