Chapter Thirty-Five
Sitting in the passenger seat of Scott’s car, Eliza felt mildly nauseous. She didn’t know if it was due to the prospect of seeing Carol or her brother’s driving. For a generally responsible, cautious person, Scott definitely enjoyed speed when he was behind the wheel. And given that he was a New Yorker whose transportation was usually managed by a subway engineer or taxi driver, it was hard to feel secure as he bobbed and weaved.
Eliza grabbed at the door as they changed lanes. “You know, it’s okay if we’re late.”
Scott glanced at her, and she cringed at the sight of his eyes leaving the road. “We’re fine. Don’t be such a baby.”
She closed her own eyes to see if blindness made it better. It didn’t, especially not when a horn suddenly blared nearby.
As they pulled into the parking garage, she sighed with relief. Scott lowered his window to snag a parking ticket from the machine and then rolled forward in search of a spot.
“Do we really have to do this?” Eliza asked, her stomach’s lurching increasing. Apparently, it hadn’t been Scott’s driving.
“Hey, you’re the one who wants to challenge her interpretation of the will.” Scott glanced in his rearview mirror as he paused to choose which way to turn.
Eliza waited until he made his choice and found a parking space. She didn’t respond until he’d shifted the car into park. “Scott. I need to know you’re with me on this. You’re not some neutral arbiter. You’re my brother.”
He nodded. “I am. I’m with you. I’d be lying if I said there isn’t a part of me that wants it all to just go away. But you’re right. This isn’t what Dad would have wanted. I mean, I’m still pissed about the whole situation, and no doubt Dad would have been, too. But you were his daughter in every way that counted. I can’t take my anger at Mom out on you.”
That was the part that Eliza was still struggling with: anger at Laura. It was so much easier to be angry at Ross. At Carol. Even at Jack, for dying without giving any advance warning. Laura had always been sacrosanct in Eliza’s mind, but her halo was definitely getting tarnished of late.
They found their way to the elevator and rode it to the top floor of the Westchester. Eliza had grown up coming here. This was where her mom had taken her to get her ears pierced when she was ten. This was where she and her friends were first allowed to go on an excursion alone, no adults humiliating them by their very presence. This was where she and Aunt Claude had shopped for the dress she wore to Laura’s funeral. But now that she was so used to Manhattan, the indoor shopping mecca felt alien.
Scott looked up from his phone, where he’d been texting Carol. “She’s here already. At a table near Melt Shop.”
Eliza suddenly stopped, feeling lightheaded.
“Liza? You okay?”
She took a deep breath. “Yeah. Just not looking forward to this.”
Scott draped his arm around her, and she appreciated the weight of it. The realness of his presence. “You’re gonna be fine.”
Vicky hadn’t been thrilled about this plan. She didn’t think meeting “outside the presence of legal counsel” was advisable, but, at the same time, she acknowledged that rules were sometimes hard to follow when it came to family disputes. Eliza spotted Carol almost immediately when the food court came into view. Her posture was perfect, and she wore a maroon sweater that looked like it could have been custom-made for her. No matter what Eliza was wearing, her stepmother always made her feel like she’d just rolled out of bed in her pajamas.
A coffee container sat in front of Carol on the table. “Can we get something to drink first?” Eliza asked, stopping again.
“I don’t think they serve alcohol here.”
“Ha ha.”
She let Scott talk her into a chocolate shake at Melt Shop and immediately got brain freeze as she took her first sip. Terrific.
Remaining a step behind him, she followed Scott to Carol’s table, where her stepmother greeted them with a chilly smile.
“How was your drive?” Carol asked, as if this were a normal day, instead of the potential start of World War III.
Scott fielded the question. “Fine, not much traffic,” he said, while Eliza pulled out a chair to sit. Scott followed.
Carol tapped her manicured nails on the white marble tabletop. “There’s probably not much need for small talk,” she said before taking a sip of her coffee. “Obviously, Eliza, I got your lawyer’s communiqué.”
Communiqué? Are we in Victorian England?
Carol continued. “I gather you’re questioning my interpretation of Jack’s will.”
No shit, Sherlock. Scott put his hand on Eliza’s in warning, clearly reading her mind. She dialed herself back. “Yes, I’m questioning it. Dad believed I was his daughter. And we were father and daughter in every way that counted. I can’t imagine you truly think he’d want you to disinherit me.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Carol’s voice was light as she swirled the coffee in the cardboard cup. “It’s not as if you and Jack were close. He was very hurt by that, you know.”
Eliza flushed with anger. “ He was hurt? News flash?—so was I. And I was the kid who’d lost her mom.” So much for keeping herself dialed back.
Scott scooted forward in his seat. “Look, I don’t think trying to measure who was more hurt is productive here.”
Carol put her cup down on the table again. “As executor, it’s my role to ensure that Jack’s wishes are carried out. Nothing more. Clearly, I have new information he didn’t have, and it’s my responsibility to consider how that information would have influenced his choices.”
Eliza took a deep breath. She was seething. She hated that Carol was holding herself up as the person who knew Jack best?—but if she were honest, perhaps at least part of her anger stemmed from the kernel of truth in her stepmother’s claim. No one could legitimately argue that she and Jack had been close?—but didn’t a lot of parents and children have complicated relationships? She tried to step back and focus on what Vicky had said instead.
“My lawyer tells me that you’re not going to win this battle. Overturning a will isn’t easy. And you’re admitting that Dad didn’t know he wasn’t my biological father. So as far as he was concerned when he wrote the will, I was his daughter.”
“Maybe so. But do you really want to put us in a position where we have to make your mother’s affair a matter of public record?”
So that was her trump card. It wasn’t surprising. Carol knew how much Eliza venerated Laura. So many of her snide remarks over the years?—always out of earshot of Jack?—had been aimed at knocking Eliza’s mom down a few notches.
Eliza gritted her teeth. “If I have to make it public, I will. It’s what’s right , Carol. I know you don’t like me. You never liked me. But that’s not reason to...”
Carol held up her hand. “Hold on there. I don’t dislike you. I didn’t come into this relationship?—this marriage?—hating you. I know that’s what you think. But it’s not true.”
Eliza raised her eyebrows in disbelief.
Carol dropped her hand again. “Scott. Would you give us some time alone?”
Scott looked at Eliza. “I don’t know...” he began.
Carol rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to beat her. You can watch us to make sure I don’t try anything funny.” She gave a quirky little smile to show that she was attempting humor.
“Liza?” Scott cocked his head.
The last thing Eliza wanted was for her brother to get up and leave. She suspected it would be the last thing Vicky would want, too. But wasn’t she supposed to be working on her self-reliance? She nodded. “It’s fine.”
Scott hesitated and then rose. “I’ll just be over there.” He pointed vaguely in the direction of the children’s play area before heading that way, Eliza watching him go.
Carol cleared her throat. “You may not know this, but I always wanted children.”
Eliza turned back to look at her.
“I actually thought Jack and I would have our own. We talked about it, but to be fair, he never made any promises. I knew going in that it might not happen.”
Eliza nodded, wondering where this was going.
“But things were so hard with you. And yes, I know, it was totally understandable. You’d lost your mother. But I thought I could help?—I didn’t expect you to just shut me out. And then I thought maybe a baby would bring life back into the house.” She stopped, looking up at the ceiling for a moment. “In the end, obviously I didn’t know how to connect with you. I don’t think you wanted to connect with me.”
Carol looked directly at her, and Eliza couldn’t deny it. I was sixteen years old when you moved in, and my mother had just died!
“And, well, Jack couldn’t see how we could bring another child into the family. It would have been too much, he said.” Carol took another sip of her coffee before playing her last card. “Maybe, if he’d known you weren’t really his, his answer would have been different.”
Ah.
Eliza managed to rein in her snort. “Seriously, Carol? Is that what you think?”
Suddenly, and to Eliza’s shock, her stepmother’s face crumpled, and she covered it with her hands, her shoulders shaking.
“Carol?” Eliza reached out and touched her arm. Where had her ice-queen stepmother gone?
Carol didn’t respond, but she didn’t move her arm away either. After a few moments, she pulled herself together, dabbing at her face with a napkin. “I miss him, Eliza,” she said simply. “And I have nothing left. I’m alone. I don’t know how I got here, but here I am. And when Adam told me about your mother’s revelation?—I don’t know?—it just hit me so hard. How different things might have been if Jack had known the truth.”
Would they have been? If Jack had known he wasn’t Eliza’s father, would he and Carol have had a baby? She tried to play this out in her head. But what she kept banging up against was the fundamental truth that she suddenly realized she’d known all along. Jack loved her. No matter what. No matter how hard things were with them. No matter what the DNA said. He was her dad and he loved her. And she loved him. Despite everything.
Her eyes filled with tears, and she struggled to speak around the clog in her throat. “I loved him, too, Carol. Whatever was wrong in our relationship, he was my dad and I was his daughter. And I’ve lost the chance to ever make things better with him. Don’t you think that crushes me? I can’t change what my mom did?—it’s a reality I have to deal with. But it’s not my fault, or Dad’s fault. It just is . And if you want to keep fighting with me, you can, but I’m not giving up. Maybe if you let it go, we can figure out where you and I can go from here. But if you don’t, well, obviously there’s nothing we can salvage. It’s up to you.”
Eliza’s face was wet, and she swiped at it ineffectually. This was the stuff dreams were made of?—crying at the food court. It could be the title of a book.
They sat silently for a few moments. A sniffly, tearstained standoff. Or maybe a truce. Eliza couldn’t tell.
Carol rummaged around in her purse, extracting sunglasses and car keys. Eliza recognized the engraved Tiffany’s tag on the keys: cLj?—Carol Jordana Levinger. “I’ll look into refiling the probate paperwork,” she said quietly.
“Thanks,” Eliza replied, feeling ridiculous for expressing gratitude to her stepmother for doing what she should have done in the first place?—but she could hear Jack’s voice in her head asking her to do just that.
And that was it. No apology. No further conversation. Maybe this was a new start for them. If this were the bestselling novel Crying in the Food Court , for sure it would be. But given that it was real life, it probably wasn’t.