Sins of the Father (38 page)

Johnny’s chest puffed out a little bit.
“Damn right.”

My eyes rolled to the back of my head.
Men.

“You have money, certainly have the means,
so I don’t understand why you didn’t look for me,” I said. My hand
absently rested over my belly. “I would never stop searching for my
children.”

Her eyes brightened at the subtle reference
to grandchildren, but I squashed that too.

“He didn’t care if I was found, did he,
Kathleen? After all, I wasn’t a son.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“No? Then what was it like? Crevan says your
family is old money, that his father hasn’t worked a day in his
life, other than being an alleged philanthropist. Couldn’t spare a
few of the family coins to keep searching for his missing daughter,
though, could he?”

“I wanted to find you. But…”

My eyes narrowed to angry slits. “But
what?”

“He said I needed to focus on your
brother.”

“You couldn’t do both?” I struggled to
modulate a little bit of the fury from my voice. “Or is that how
things work in the Conall family, Kathleen? One child gets
everything, the other gets nothing at all.”

“He promised he would find you!” she wept.
“Weeks turned into months and then years, and I stopped asking him.
I stopped because it simply made him so angry that he couldn’t…”
her lips disappeared again.

“He couldn’t what, Kathleen? Couldn’t give
you any information because he never looked for me at all?”

Her eyes met mine. Kathleen shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He’s never talked about it, not since
the police told him that this woman, this nurse Martha Henderson
disappeared without a trace.”

My mind skidded and veered off in another
direction. “Kathleen, this is important. Do you remember Martha
Henderson?”

“I’ll never forget her,” she said. A little
spark of anger in her eyes looked so familiar, it broke my
heart.

Fuck the DNA. I could deny that until the
stars fell. Watching this woman, with her expressions and emotions
was like looking into a mirror at times. There was no escaping the
truth. She was my mother.

“I’ll remember that vile woman and
everything about her until the end of time.”

Tony stepped around the table. “If you
remember her so clearly, how come the cops never had a very good
description of her when Helen got snatched?”

I chuffed out a soft laugh, knowing yet
disbelieving at the same time. “Aidan wouldn’t let them question
you, would he?”

Kathleen nodded.

Johnny’s eyes met mine. His conclusions were
quickly matching mine. For whatever reason, Aidan Conall didn’t
want me found. A to B to C told me that it was a pretty good clue
that Aidan was involved in my alleged disappearance, if only
through refusal to look for me. But why? And how did Lyle Henderson
fit into all of this? It made no sense.

Marie was pregnant with Dad’s child. Why the
swap? Had something happened to Dad’s real child? What angle were
they playing? Dad didn’t even want children. So what was the point
in providing one, particularly since it wasn’t even his child?

Fingers dug into both temples. Dammit.
Johnny was right. As much as I love my father, facilitating his
escape was a stupid move. What if I couldn’t find him? What if he
really had the answers that I needed to figure out why all of this
happened?

Worse, what if he lied to me?

“Dear, are you all right?” Kathleen took two
brave steps toward me. When I didn’t retreat or shoot her with
daggers, she advanced into my personal space. Her hand rested on my
side. “Please tell me that you didn’t lie about having a good life,
Helen. I couldn’t bear it if I thought that you’d suffered.”

“Suffered?” I bristled. “Lady, you don’t
know the half of it.”

“Oh no. Please no.”

I glared at her. “My father died in Attica
Correctional Facility. He was a convicted felon. But you know what,
Kathleen? I’d take him any day of the week over the man you
married. My father loved me. He sacrificed his life so I could have
everything, a clean slate, freedom to live my life on my terms.
Have I suffered? Fuck yes, I’ve suffered. But only because I didn’t
have him for the past twenty years.”

One hand clapped over Kathleen’s mouth and
muffled her gasp. Maybe it was the truth about Dad or my well timed
f-bomb, I don’t know, but it got her away from me. Johnny took her
place. He wrapped his arms around me.

“We’ll figure it out, sweetheart.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and we’re starting right
now.” I pulled away from him. “She stays. You let her slink away
with her tail between her legs, and we’re back to square one New
York. You get my drift?”

He nodded. “Where are you going?”

“To get my baby book. I’m getting the truth
about Martha Henderson, once and for all.” I stopped at the bottom
of the staircase. “And you’d better get Crevan’s ass back over here
right now. This family secret bullshit is over. Are we clear?” The
words were technically directed at Johnny, but Kathleen understood
that the message was for her.

She sagged against the kitchen table and
nodded.

Maybe it was a relief for her to have
someone in the family strong enough to stand up to Aidan, I don’t
know. In a battle of wills, him against me, I had no doubt who
would win. Genetically, we might share a thing or two, but it was
Wendell Eriksson’s steel in my spine. Some things are learned. Half
of me hoped that Aidan was stupid enough to take his lessons the
hard way.

I jogged to the second floor and then up to
the attic, lost in thoughts. Mostly I questioned whether I would
ever learn the truth. At the bottom of everything was Andy
Gillette’s threat, his nasty insinuation that I was already sold.
If for no other reason than the safety of my children, I had to
push forward.

And wouldn’t it be ironic if I could rub
Crevan’s nose in the fact that his father wasn’t pure as the driven
snow in all of this either? He was so hot to lay the blame at Dad’s
feet. Well, we’d just see about that.

I dug the baby book out of its box and
flipped open to the first photograph. Dad, snuggling me in his
arms, unadulterated love and awe shown in his eyes. It was there,
the proof, the evidence. I had no doubt that Johnny would wear an
identical expression on his face when our children were born.

It wasn’t until I reached the end of the
first year that a picture of Marie was tucked into the one of the
tiny decorative frames. Someone thought it would be a good idea to
take a photograph of Dad and me, and include her in the shot.
Family photo. There weren’t a whole lot of them taken over the
years. I stared at the snapshot, faded with age. Dad held me, my
chubby little girl arms wrapped securely around his neck. Our eyes
were locked, and my face animated as I explained something to him
and held his rapt attention. Marie stood next to us, the
afterthought to a photo, very much representing what she was in our
lives.

It had always been Dad and me. She was
outside of us. Was it choice or guilt? Was she the devil I’d always
believed her to be? What lurked behind those vacant eyes in the
photograph?

There was so much more to this story. I had
no idea how we’d ever get to the bottom of it without exposing my
most recent crime. “Daddy, I need you,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry about what happened earlier,
Helen.” Crevan’s voice cut through my trip to the distant past.

My eyes rose slowly. Apparently, I’d been
lost in memory longer than I realized.

“Did you apologize to your mother for being
such an ass at lunch?”

He sighed and ambled over to where I sat. A
moment later, he sat cross-legged next to me on the floor. “Johnny
said the two of you talked, that she admitted that they’ve known
almost as long as I suspected who you really were.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that the aforementioned baby book?”

I nodded.

“Want me to leave?”

“Not really.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth,
Helen. It’s all pretty fucked up, huh.”

“Very,” breath shuddered from my lungs. “I
mean, how do you start that conversation? Hey, I think you’re my
twin sister who was abducted at birth?”

He laughed softly. “Not exactly the smartest
thing to say to someone with your credentials,” Crevan said. “I
could’ve wound up being Jerry Lowe’s roommate out at Dunhaven.”

“I would’ve thought you were crazy. All my
life…” Instead of struggling for the words, I simply flipped open
to the first page of the baby book and showed Crevan the
evidence.

“Looks like love to me,” he said.

“He worshipped me. I don’t know how else to
explain it. Crevan, my dad has money. Had. If I had used it to
fight the charges against him, I’d have never lost him all those
years ago. He’d have walked away, not unscathed, but he would’ve
had his freedom.”

“But it would’ve tainted you too,” he said.
“Look at all the families who have been destroyed because of a not
guilty verdict when everyone knows they were guilty of
something
.”

“Yeah, a certain miscarriage of justice in
Florida comes to mind.”

“So he took the blame and the sentence so
you had a chance, could distance yourself from him and be on the
side of the prevailing public opinion.”

“That’s what someone who loves his daughter
does, I guess.” My throat burned. “Not what a daughter who loves
her father does though. I should’ve fought for him. I should’ve
been unselfish and stuck by his side through the whole thing.”

Crevan’s finger traced the face on the
photograph. “A guy who loves his daughter this much would’ve never
permitted it, Helen. He’d have kept pushing you away until you
stopped trying.”

Except in the end, he had seen me. Not that
he knew he was seeing me. I smiled sadly. If I had showed up as
Helen Eriksson, Crevan was right. He’d have turned me away for my
own good. It was exactly as I’d realized at dinner the other night.
Dad took the freedom I gave him because I wanted it, not because he
did. I had no doubt. If he knew I needed him now, he’d risk
everything to be there for me. He’d hide my involvement in his
escape. He’d go back to prison if that’s what it took to be where I
needed him to be.

“So, can I ask why you’ve retreated up here
to the family photo archive?”

I nodded. “I think there’s a distinct
possibility that Kathleen might recognize someone in this
book.”

“Wendell?”

“No, Crevan. How many times do I have to
tell you that he wasn’t –”

“Sorry,” he interrupted. “I don’t want to
start another argument. Do you have pictures of your grandfather in
there?”

“He wasn’t my grandfather. He was Marie’s
step-father. Believe me, there wasn’t a long period of my life when
I even thought of her as my mother. And I never knew her parents at
all. Like I said, Daddy wanted nothing to do with them.”

“Because of the religious stuff.”

I nodded.

And then another thought occurred to me.

“Crevan, do you think it’s possible that
your parents knew Lyle Henderson through their nutty brand of
religion?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. I guess
anything’s possible. Dad knows a lot of people, Helen.”

“And your mother has never forgotten the
face of Martha Henderson. Which is exactly why she needs to see one
of the photographs in this book.”

“You think you have a picture of her?”

I nodded. “I think Martha Henderson might’ve
been my mother, Crevan.”

He rose slowly and offered his hand. “What
say we work together to get to the truth this time, Helen?”

“I think I’d like that.”

Chapter 36

I rolled my eyes into the stares when Crevan
and I descended from my most sacred storage. “Is it really so
weird?”

“Not when we’re looking at you
individually,” Dev said. “Side by side, yeah. Pretty freaky, Helen.
You really need to let your hair grow long again.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. “Johnny likes
it this way.
He
thinks its adorable.”

“Yeah, and I think you’d be gorgeous if you
shaved your head,” he chuckled. “Still not advising you to try
it.”

Johnny shot him a glare.

Crevan slipped back into the personality I
knew, the one I needed him to show all the time. “All right you
two. Dev, I’m flattered that you find us so gorgeous. Maybe if
things don’t work out with me and Alex –”

Johnny burst out laughing.

Mission accomplished. The tension
evaporated. It was nothing short of miraculous that Kathleen wasn’t
offended by her son’s odd way of diffusing my husband’s jealousy.
Instead of scolding him, she inched forward.

“Was there something you wanted me to see,
Helen?”

“There is, Mom. Helen told me what you said
earlier, that you’d never forget the face of the nurse who abducted
her the night we were born.”

She nodded, but avoided eye contact with her
son. I nudged him in the ribs.

Crevan sighed heavily. “Mom, I’m sorry I was
so angry at the restaurant earlier. It just occurred to me that if
you were face to face with Helen, that you knew the truth, that
you’d probably known, or at least suspected, from the very
beginning.”

“I’m sorry too,” she said. “I should’ve come
to you, but your father…”

“Yeah,” he said. “Well, that’s in the past
now. He can’t bully all of us, especially if we stick
together.”

I clutched the baby book to my chest. Pretty
sure my heart was pounding a dent into the front cover. What if
Kathleen recognized Marie? Would that unleash Crevan’s zeal to
incriminate my dad again?

Johnny appeared and tugged me against his
side. “Are you ready to do this, baby?”

What choice did I have? We needed answers.
This was the quickest way to get them. “There’s no other option.” I
sucked in a deep breath.