59. Liv
Liv
Even though I’d suspected the payoff of the farm couldn’t have an innocent origin, hearing the confirmation from my father’s lips made my stomach clench. “What do you mean, you did it to protect us? From whom? An elderly woman who deserved to claim her birthright?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Dad shifted his weight, a telltale sign of discomfort.
“Oh, really. Why don’t you tell me what it was like, then.
” My voice dropped into a dangerous register I’d last used when confronting Gray about his string of infidelities, and Theo slipped his arm around me in support.
He was letting me handle this, which I appreciated—but it was nice to know that, for once, someone had my back. It gave me the courage to go on.
“Well, Dad?” I said. “We’re waiting.”
He squared his shoulders. “I never believed there was any truth to the scandal about our family. But in business, getting ahead of the problem is the way to go. You know that,” he said to Theo, in apparent hopes of winning someone over to his side. “Right?”
My boyfriend snorted. “Hate to disappoint, but you and I are nothing alike. I would’ve spent every last cent to see my grandmother happy and make things right, not paid someone off to keep their mouth shut. Sorry, Russ, but you’re on your own.”
Dad’s gaze slid sideways, toward my mother, so I looked at her, too. Her expression was blank, like a mannequin’s, giving nothing away. I’d always thought my parents told each other everything, that they were a united front and I was the one on the outside. Was it possible that wasn’t true?
My dad took a sip, his throat working as he swallowed.
“Look,” he said, setting the glass back on the desk’s blotter with a thump.
“When you started all that nonsense about wanting to find your biological family years ago, then asking questions about my mother’s story, it made me uneasy.
There were DNA tests now, not like in the 1920s.
I knew if someone got their hands on the right evidence, it could be damning. And also…”
He gestured at the book I clutched to my chest. “When we packed up my mother’s apartment to move her down here, I went through the building’s storage unit and came across Charles’s old journals.
He’d stopped writing in them after Ella’s disappearance, then started up again when she came home.
” His eyes flicked to the journal again.
“I donated almost all of them to the Historical Society, but this one I kept, for obvious reasons. Though it didn’t contain proof, it held enough to make me wonder. ”
A fresh wave of shock washed over me. “You’re the reason this book is missing from the Society’s collection? And you didn’t say a word about what you read?”
“I spoke to Jamison.” He ran a rough hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “We agreed that, on the off-chance that there was some truth to Charles’s concerns, we should get in front of it. Do damage control. So I did.”
I took a deep breath, trying to rein in my anger. “I bet. What exactly did you do?”
As if to echo my rage, the wind picked up. The magnolia’s limbs scratched against the study’s window like fingernails, and I thought suddenly, stupidly, of a witch trying to claw her way in. Or a ghost.
Once, I would’ve said there was no such thing. But that was before pianos that played themselves, before dreams that revealed the past and foretold the future. Now, I didn’t know what to think.
If May and Ella were here somehow, I wasn’t about to let them down. “Go on, Dad.” I gentled my tone, imagining he was one of my clients who needed to be coaxed into sharing a difficult truth. “What did you do?”
He sighed. “Jamison and I hired a private investigator and kept him on retainer. For years—nothing. But then, as more records became digitized, he found a trail that led to Kansas. And then, the damndest thing happened.”
He paused to take another sip, then went on.
“The PI found a newspaper article about a woman whose daughter had won a pie-baking contest, of all things. When the reporter asked what her secret ingredient was, all she’d say was that she owed everything to her mother’s lucky key.
There was a photo of the daughter in the paper, holding it up.
” Dad tilted the glass back, downing its contents, then swallowed hard. “It was a key to Gramercy Park.”
Now I wished I had a drink, myself. “After all that time, they still had the key?”
“It had become a family heirloom, of sorts. And after that, we tracked the mother down.” My father shuddered, as if the memory were a painful one. “She was dying. We could have let it go. Maybe we should have. But I…I had a dream…”
He reached out to touch Charles’s journal. To my shock, his rock-steady hands trembled. But I didn’t blame him, because I was trembling, too. Next to me, Theo made a low, disconcerted sound. And outside, the wind rose, the branches lashing the window.
“What, Dad?” I asked, my throat dry. “What did you dream?”
He shook his head, like he was trying to shake the memory out of it. “About Charles. And her…May Dressler. I—it doesn’t matter. All I know is, I couldn’t stop dreaming about them. It got so I didn’t want to sleep at night.”
One of my mother’s manicured hands flew to her mouth. “Eighteen years ago…” she said, almost to herself. “When you spent all those nights in your study, then went to Kansas… I thought you’d broken your promise. That it was happening again.”
Guilt flashed across my father’s face, dissolving into irritation almost before I could track it.
“I know what you thought, Kate. But, no.” He rubbed a hand across his jaw.
“I wanted to let sleeping dogs lie. God knows, I did. And so did Jamison. But those dreams—” His shoulders sagged, and for the first time, my father looked old. “I just couldn’t.”
What was what my mother had thought? Yet another nasty suspicion took root in my gut, but I willed myself not to address it. One nasty secret at a time.
“You reached out to Ella,” I said. “Not the other way around.”
He nodded. “We did. She was very ill, then. Dying, as I said, and with little way to afford the care she needed. The family was in danger of losing the farmhouse and land that had been in their family for generations, selling it to pay for her medical bills. And so, after she agreed to have her DNA tested, we offered her a deal.” He shrugged.
“We had nothing to compare the DNA test against, but we kept it on file. The key, though, combined with the investigator’s findings… that was proof enough for us.”
“You manipulated a dying woman.” Theo’s voice was heavy with disgust.
“No! We tried to help her. Jamison and I offered to bring her to a major medical center, but she wasn’t interested in that.
She just wanted to die at home. The idea that she was the heir to the Carter fortune was no more than a fairytale to her.
And besides, at this point, the legalities…
to separate what would’ve been rightfully hers in 1927, versus what we’ve made of the company today…
” My father’s lips formed a grim line. “It would’ve been a nightmare. ”
I wasn’t sure how much of this I believed. “So she didn’t know anything about the kidnapping? She’d never heard any stories about it at all?”
“She knew she was adopted, that there had been some mystique around it, but at that point, all she wanted was security for herself and for her family. She had a daughter she loved very much, who’d gone through a messy divorce.
She wanted to secure her family’s future.
And Jamison and I”—his eyes flicked to mine, as if seeking absolution—“we could relate.”
My mother sucked in a breath. She was staring at my father like she’d never seen him before, with horror that stirred an unaccustomed sympathy in my gut. “Oh, God, Russ,” she whispered. “What did you do? Did you pay her to keep quiet?”
“In a way.” His voice was inflectionless.
“We offered her a deal, as I said. We would fund all of her medical care, set aside a nice trust for her daughter and grandchildren, and pay off the mortgage on the house and land, leaving it in her name. In return, she’d take her true identity to the grave.
” He lifted his hands, palms up. “She took the deal. A month later, she died.”
I stood in silence, trying to absorb the enormity of what he’d just told us. Next to me, Theo did the same. The only sounds in the room were my mother’s quick, uneven breaths, the ominous scrape of the magnolia, and the whine of the wind.
“Eighteen years,” my mother said at last, in a small voice I hardly recognized.
“For almost two decades, you’ve kept this from me.
All this time, I berated Olivia for digging into lies that ought to remain buried.
But you were the liar, Russ. And our daughter”—she sniffed, her eyes glossy with tears as she glanced at me—“we demeaned her and threatened to disinherit her for doing the same thing you did. Seeking the truth.”
“I—” my father began, but my mother cut him off, her voice rising with rage.
“You put me in an impossible position, sulking in your study while you tried to figure out how to spin this so you’d come out smelling like a rose. And you know the worst part? I defended you to our daughter. You made me complicit in your lie.”
“Now, wait just one second—” my father tried again, but she didn’t let him finish.
“You’re a hypocrite, Russ. You claimed to be protecting this family, but the only person you were really protecting was yourself.
Well, and your brother, but that doesn’t surprise me.
When have the two of you not been in on everything together?
” Her voice was sharp with scorn. “You’ve spent your life cleaning up his messes.
Perhaps it was only time for the shoe to be on the other foot. ”
“I was protecting our family!” my father thundered. “Everything I’ve ever done, every choice I’ve made, has been to safeguard what we’ve built.”