Chapter 20 #3
“Yes, I believe you may be my biological grandfather.” Hearing her say it aloud made the possibility sound absolutely insane.
But she had proof. Of what she wasn’t sure, but it was something.
“I’ve been cleaning out my family’s house in Southold, getting it ready to sell, and have uncovered some surprising information.
” She paused. “I’m sorry, this is a lot. ”
“It’s okay.” He sounded sweet. Not at all what she expected. “I do have some questions, though.”
“Of course, anything.”
“When was your mother or father born?”
“My mother, Rose …” She heard Gene’s breath hitch.
“She was born May eighth, 1956.” There was silence, so she continued being careful not to jump to the end.
The last thing she wanted to do was overwhelm him.
“My grandmother raised her with my grandfather. Up until last week, that was the only truth I knew.”
“I see,” he said. “May I ask why you think it’s me?”
“I found a letter my grandmother wrote to you in 1965 saying as much. She took my mother to see The Best Man, not knowing you were in it.” Tiny fractures lined each word.
She was still angry, yes, but her heart ached over not knowing the truth sooner.
“It was a congratulatory letter that expressed her love for you.”
Again, silence.
“This may seem like such a shock. And I’m happy to send you everything I have to verify this.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said firmly. “When I saw the name, I knew. You see, a love like ours never really leaves your heart, even though the years go on.”
Tears flooded Dahlia’s tired eyes, and she tucked her feet beside her. She wanted to hear him out.
“I’ve never loved anyone the way I loved her.” His voice stuttered. “Never.”
Dahlia’s smile grew as she realized how real it was to him. Could a woman love two men at once? She was beginning to think it was possible. There were important questions to ask, but Gene needed to talk, so she let him go on.
“That summer, we would meet every night at the diner down the road from CBS Studios. I had my two cups of black Hills Brothers coffee, and she had her Lipton Earl Grey tea. It was at seven, after her father returned for the night shift,” he said, still sounding heartbroken.
“Night shift?” Dahlia’s brows furrowed. That seemed weird. Gran had been a grown woman at the time; she hadn’t lived with her father. Maybe she’d been trying to hide the affair.
“He worked on the set of Gunsmoke, your great-grandfather.”
A beep sounded on her end of the line. She glanced at the screen to see who was calling her.
Noah.
He’d finally resurfaced. But his timing couldn’t be worse. Her heart skipped with indecision. This is too important. Now he’d have to wait. “Oh, I had no idea. All I knew was that he was a set designer on Broadway.”
“He wasn’t a nice man, and he was a heavy drinker, which made it worse.”
“It usually does,” Dahlia said, thinking of Spence and all his drunken episodes where his verbal abuse reached an all-time high.
“Her parents didn’t like me. I was Jewish, came from nothing, and was older. I was just a gofer at the studio, waiting on all the big names at the time. I didn’t make much money back then. They didn’t see a future there.”
“Yeah, I figured that much from the letters I found in the basement,” Dahlia interjected.
“You found letters?” His voice rose.
“I did. Hundreds. All unopened.” Dahlia took a breath, realizing how shocking and hurtful this information must have been, even after more than sixty years.
“Someone went to great lengths to make sure they were hidden forever.” After hearing more about her great-grandfather, he would have been the likely suspect.
But after this conversation, it could have well been her pop who’d hidden them.
Especially if he knew the extent of their affair.
“Oh, my.” His voice cracked. “So she never got them?”
“No, she didn’t, Gene.” Dahlia’s heart sank. It was possible that she did get them and never opened them, fearing she might make another choice. But the letter she wrote in 1965 told a different story. She would have at least opened them and read them.
He was quiet. Too quiet.
“Gene?”
“Yes, I’m here,” he said.
“So, you never married?” Dahlia asked.
“Oh, I did. Many times. Too many times. But they just weren’t her.”
“I apologize if this sounds too forward, but did you have any children?” Dahlia rubbed the back of her neck.
“One with my second wife, a daughter named Ingrid, after the actress.”
From Casablanca, Lil’s favorite movie, she thought.
“She passed away a few years back, from cancer.”
“I’m so sorry.” There was a weight in her lungs. He knew loss too. She couldn’t imagine losing a child, no matter what the age. And now it seemed he’d lost two.
“That became the greatest heartbreak of my life after your grandmother.” His voice weakened.
“I know a thing or two about that.” Dahlia didn’t have the heart to tell him about her mother being gone just yet. But she did need to get something else off her chest. “Did you know she was married when you were together?” Dahlia blurted.
“Who?” he asked.
“My grandmother.”
“Dahlia, Lil was sixteen that summer. I was nineteen. Neither of us were married.”
“No, she wasn’t. She was …” Dahlia looked up and did the math in her head. “Twenty-six. Wait, did you say Lil?”
“Yes, that’s who I figured we were talking about.”
“But the letters, they were addressed to Lizzie,” she said.
“Her sister Lizzie covered for us, but that was all.”
Tears filled her eyes like a rising tide during a storm, and it became hard to find air. L was Lil, not Lizzie. “Are you saying you had a relationship with Lil?”
“Yes, and the age difference didn’t bother me. She was wise beyond her years. She saw life through a bright and beautiful lens. I never knew anything like it.”
Her heart pounded through her shirt. Dahlia couldn’t think straight. Her eyes darted around the room.
“When did she die? And how?” he asked softly.
“A few months ago, of cancer,” Dahlia said, barely able to think. It was like a tornado in her head and a cyclone in her heart.
She heard him start to whimper on the other end.
“Gene, I’m sorry.” This time, she felt sucker punched and left for dead. She couldn’t breathe. Her skin boiled, and the barn walls spun. “May I call you back tomorrow? I need to process this.”
“Sure.” His voice fissured as if he was going to break the moment they hung up. “Dahlia, I’m so glad you reached out.”
“I am too,” she said, feeling the heat rise higher in her body. “Night, Gene.”
“Night, Dahlia.”
Dahlia stood up and paced the rickety wood floor. She tried to steady her erratic breaths by inhaling over and over again, but that just seemed to make them worse.
Her grandmother hadn’t written that letter; it was Lil.
Had Lil actually been her grandmother? So, she had a boyfriend when she was a teenager that she never spoke about.
But why? Was it because of her mother? And Daisy had recently discovered that Pop didn’t share the same DNA.
It was all adding up, but there was no real proof.
Dahlia was drowning with no lifeboat in sight, and now she had even more unanswered questions.
If she was right, and Lil was actually her biological grandmother, why would she have let Gran and Pop raise Rose as their own and never tell anyone the truth?
There would have had to be a really good reason for it.
“I have to find that key if it’s the last thing I do.
” She wiped her eyes, making eye contact with the row of coffee cans on the top shelf.
She grabbed the stool and lifted them off the shelves one by one in a fury of blind fury.
Finding that key and maybe even proof had never felt so urgent.
Catching them as they fell, she peeked inside each one and tossed them to the ground. There was one left.
“Please, please be in here.” Dahlia inhaled the stale air one last time and reached for it slowly.
She peeked inside the worn old tin and started to weep.
Slowly, she reached in and pulled out a gold key, pressing the cold metal between her fingers.
She leaned her shoulder against the nearby wood beam, hoping it would hold her emotionally taxed body upright.
Whatever was in the box had better be an explanation—and a good one at that.