In the Blink of an Eye (38 page)

“If you stay I promise I'll take care of you.”

Oh, Nan.

Oh, Mama . . .

“
I'll work hard and I'll earn money, and I'll get us a nice place to live. A real home. I promise . . .”

The stark rasping of breath is drowned out by the sudden piercing ring of the doorbell.

A
S SHE DIALS
Katherine Jergins's number with a trembling finger, Pilar prays that the woman will be home to answer her call. According to the voice mail, the message was left hours earlier.

She deflates a bit when a male voice answers the phone. It isn't the man who answered when she called the other night. This voice is younger. More impatient.

Pilar asks for Katherine.

“Yeah, she's here, but I'm on the other line. Can she call you back?”

“I . . . Actually, this is a ship-to-shore call, and . . . I'm sorry, but can I please speak to her now?” Pilar can't stand the thought of prolonging the conversation with Katherine even another minute.

“Yeah, hang on. Mom!” the voice hollers, just before a click.

For a second, Pilar thinks she's been disconnected. Then she realizes that the boy—Katherine's son—must have picked up on call waiting and is hanging up the other line.

Sure enough, after an agonizing few moments, there's another click, and then Katherine's voice is tentatively saying, “Hello?”

“Katherine, this is Pilar. I just got your message.”

“My son says you're calling from a ship?”

“That's right. I'm on a cruise and I—I'm very anxious to speak to you about your parents.”

“I realized after you called again the other day that you might not be—” Katherine takes a deep, audible breath, then continues, “What I mean is, I thought you were some kind of scam artist until it occurred to me that you might have been talking about my other parents.”

Pilar frowns. “Your ‘other parents'?”

“Ms. Velazquez, my adoptive parents are both dead. But I realized that maybe you meant my birth parents—and that they might be alive, and looking for me.”

S
TANDING ON
R
UPERT'S
doorstep, Paine presses the doorbell again. Somebody has to be home. Rupert's car is parked in the driveway in front of Paine's rental, and there are lights on inside.

Paine shifts his weight impatiently, wanting to leave, but deciding to give Rupert another minute to get to the door. He promised to let the old man know what happened during the meeting with Ogden . . .

A faint sound reaches Paine's ears.

He listens in worried disbelief.

Somebody is crying. Loudly. It's an odd, eerie sound, and it's coming from inside the house.

Paine reaches out and turns the knob. It's unlocked.

“Rupert?” he calls, stepping into the house.

All he can hear is the blood-chilling sound of a grown man wailing.

“
O
KAY,
D
ULCIE.
H
ERE
it is.” Standing behind the little girl, Julia passes the urn to Dulcie, wondering if Andy can see her hands trembling.

Dulcie flinches beneath the weight. “It's heavy!”

Her abrupt movement rocks the boat.

“Careful!” Julia quickly steadies Dulcie, placing her hands on the orange life vest that seems too large for her small shoulders.

She returns her uneasy gaze to Andy, standing behind them. He's wearing sunglasses; it's impossible to read his expression.

The sun is almost down, Julia thinks, panic building within her. Why is he wearing sunglasses?

He does that a lot. Maybe it's just a habit. Or maybe . . .

Maybe he's trying to hide behind the dark lenses.

Let's get this over with and get back to shore,
Julia tells herself, trying to subdue another swell of panic. She tugs at the top of the urn, removes the cover.

“What do I do?” Dulcie asks in a hushed tone.

“I guess you . . . I don't know.” Julia looks over her shoulder again at Andy. “Should we say something, or just . . . ?”

He merely shrugs. “Whatever you think.”

“Maybe we can sing,” Dulcie suggests. “That circle song, from the service this morning. I liked that song.”

“I did too,” Julia says softly. “It was one of her favorites.”

“Can we sing it?”

Julia swallows audibly, looking out over the water. Her voice wavers as she sings, “I was standing by my window on one cold and cloudy day . . . when I saw that hearse come rolling for to carry my mother away . . .”

“
M
OM?
A
RE YOU
all right?” Christina asks, setting down her champagne flute as Pilar sinks into her chair at the table. Her daughter's dark eyes are concerned.

“I . . . I'm not sure what I am.” Pilar looks around. “Where are Tom and the kids?”

“Up at the buffet. Again. You're scaring me, Mom. What happened when you called home?”

“I got a message from somebody I never expected to hear from.” Pilar quickly explains about the Biddles' situation, and that she took it upon herself to track down their daughter, thinking she should be at her dying mother's bedside.

“But as it turns out, Christina, Katherine Jergins never even knew Rupert and Nan Biddle. They gave her up for adoption when she was born. Katherine's adoptive parents never even told her the truth before she died. She found out a few years ago when she needed a medical procedure and found out that her younger brother's blood was incompatible with hers—and that they couldn't possibly be related. She remembered her mother's pregnancy and knew that her brother was her parents' biological child. That was when she figured out that she must have been adopted.”

“Well, it isn't unusual for parents to keep something like that from a child,” Christina points out.

“No, but it's unusual for people to claim that they've raised a daughter, as the Biddles did.” Pilar is troubled. “I don't understand why Rupert and Nan would lie. They convinced everyone in Lily Dale that their daughter Katherine was raised there, and that they sent her away to boarding school. They've also convinced everyone that she still visits them. Off-season. When the place is deserted. No wonder nobody I've ever spoken to has mentioned meeting Catherine. Except for one person . . .”

“Who?”

“Lincoln Reynolds,” Pilar says uneasily.

I
N THE BEDROOM,
Paine finds Rupert huddled over his wife, sobbing like a child.

“Oh, Rupert . . .” Paine goes to him, laying a hand on his shoulder.

Rupert spins around with a start. “What are you doing here?”

“The door was open, so I—”

“Go away,” Rupert bellows. “Leave us alone.”

Paine can hear the woman in the bed struggling for breath.

“She's in agony, Rupert,” he says softly. “Shouldn't we call a doctor, or an ambulance?”

“I called the doctor. He says there's nothing he can do.”

“I'm so sorry . . .”

“Oh, Mama,” Rupert sobs, as though Paine weren't even in the room.

Mama? Paine's blood runs cold.

“Rupert,” he says gently, “that's Nan. Your wife.”

“Nan . . .”

“Your wife.” Paine realizes that Rupert isn't all there right now. He simply can't handle the anguish of losing Nan. His mind must be playing tricks on him. “Rupert, isn't there somebody I can call? You shouldn't be alone. What about . . . don't you have a daughter? Can I call her?”

“Kath . . . erine . . .” The word spills from Nan's lips.

The woman's eyes are open now, focused on Paine's. There is an air of desperation about her.

“Katherine,” Paine echoes. “She's your daughter? Can I call her for you?”

Nan gasps, erupts in a choking sound.

“No!” Rupert stands, wild-eyed, looking from his wife to Paine and back again. “No!”

“She's trying to speak, Rupert,” Paine says, reaching for Nan's hand, squeezing it. “Do you want Katherine, Nan? I'll call—where is she?”

It seems to take every ounce of Nan's strength to force the final words past her lips.

“Kath . . . dead.”

W
ITH DARKNESS, A
hush has fallen over the lake.

Dulcie sits on the seat, clasping the empty urn against her chest, her face turned toward the sky, her eyes closed.

“Can we go back now?” Julia asks Andy, struggling to keep her growing urgency at bay. As she moves toward the seat, she catches her heel on a fishing pole and nearly falls.

Andy reaches toward her.

Swiftly regaining her balance, Julia instinctively jerks away from him.

He freezes, his hand hovering in midair, inches above her arm. “What's the matter?”

“I just . . . I'm sorry. I thought you . . .”

“You thought I what?”

“Why are you wearing sunglasses?” she asks, her heart pounding loudly in her ears. “Can't you take them off now? It's dark out.”

Dulcie has turned toward them, a curious expression on her face.

“Julia?” she asks. “Is everything okay?”

Andy slowly removes his sunglasses. His eyes meet Julia's. In his intent green gaze, she sees concern. Confusion.

But nothing more.

Nothing threatening.

Julia exhales in relief. “Everything's fine, Dulcie. Let's go back to shore.”

“
Y
OUR DAUGHTER IS
dead?” Paine asks in sorrowful surprise, turning to Rupert.

“No!” Rupert protests. “No! Darling, please . . . don't . . .”

On the bed, Nan gasps for breath, looking up at them, both of them, her blue eyes pleading.

Katherine had the same blue eyes, Rupert remembers.

Big blue eyes that followed him everywhere from the moment she was born.

She adores her daddy, Nan used to say.

Katherine was Daddy's girl, all right. Rupert wanted to give her everything. Everything his father couldn't give him . . .

And everything Rupert couldn't give to her sister.

The first Katherine.

The baby girl who was born on a sweltering August day less than a year after he met Nan.

The baby girl who was born after Nan's mother told her pregnant teenaged daughter to leave and never come back; after Rupert struggled to support them with a couple of Wade's tried-and-true scams and succeeded only in getting himself arrested.

It was in jail that Rupert learned of the underground operation that arranged fast, illegal adoptions for wealthy suburban couples who were willing to pay big money for healthy newborns. If they signed the papers agreeing to give up the child, there would be enough money up front, before the baby was born, for Rupert to post bail. And afterward, when they handed over the child, there would be more than enough money to allow Rupert and Nan to make a fresh start somewhere else. . . .

What choice did they have? They were penniless. There was no one to help them. Nan's mother had disowned her. Wade was in prison.

Eventually, Rupert convinced Nan that they had no business bringing a baby into the world until they were able to get married and raise it together. She was devastated, but she realized he was right. She trusted him.

“We did what we had to do . . .” he murmurs.

“Rupert?”

The voice jars him back to the present

“Is Katherine dead?”

He stares at Paine Landry, trying to decipher the question. His mind is muddled.

Katherine?

Dead?

He shakes his head slowly, remembering.

Nan never got over the loss of her firstborn child. Giving up that baby for adoption broke her heart. And Rupert's too. But he was better equipped to cope. He was accustomed to heartache.

It was Nan who insisted on keeping track of their first child. An old friend of Wade's was willing to keep them posted—for a fee, of course. For years, Nan cherished the sporadic progress reports, the furtively snapped photos from a distance, of a blond little girl with Rupert's gray eyes. Her adoptive parents named her Katherine.

When Rupert and Nan were finally married and Nan delivered their second daughter, she insisted that they name her after the sister she would never know existed. It didn't seem like a good idea, but Rupert agreed. Nan wanted so much to recapture the child she had lost. Whatever Nan wanted, he tried to give her. Always.

That was why they came here to Lily Dale in the first place. Nan wanted to live in a small town. She didn't want Rupert to travel to make a living, the way his father had, and the way Rupert himself had, with Wade. There must be something he could do close to home . . .

There was.

Putting people in touch with the spirits of their dead loved ones turned out to be the easiest con of all. He always marveled at their willingness to believe, at their eagerness to dismiss anything that didn't ring true. In time, he had more hits than misses, thanks to shrewd research into his clients' backgrounds, luck, and a true knack for studying human nature.

Wade had taught him well. It was simple for Rupert to perfect his skills over the years, simple to trick his clients—especially lonely widows—into thinking he was giving them information courtesy of the great beyond. They never realized he was simply performing one of the world's oldest parlor tricks.

“Rupert . . .” Paine Landry's hands are reaching toward him. Coming to rest on his shoulder.

Rupert shakes off the gentle grip, dazed, lost in memories.

“I know this is traumatic for you, Rupert,” Paine is saying. “What can I do? How can I help? I'm so sorry I didn't realize that your daughter was dead. For some reason I had the impression—”

“Stop talking about her!” Rupert roars.

“All right . . . I'm sorry,” Paine says helplessly. “Should I go? I don't know what to—Look, I don't want to leave you alone, Rupert . . . I don't want to leave you and Nan . . . not now. I don't think she has much time, and she needs to talk . . . Maybe if you talk to her about your daughter . . .”