The Secret Life of Ceecee Wilkes (34 page)

T
he caller ID display showed a
Virginia
number, which usually meant that Dru was calling from her cell, so Corinne didn’t hesitate to answer the phone.

“Hi, Dru,” she said.

Silence greeted her.

“Dru?”

“I’m trying to reach Corinne Elliott.” The voice was deep. Masculine. Mature.

She held her breath. Something told her this wasn’t a reporter on the line. “This is Corinne,” she said.

“Corinne, this is Irving Russell.”

“Oh,”
she said. “Hello.”

“I received the report from the DNA test this afternoon. It shows that you’re definitely my daughter.”

Had his voice caught on that word?

“I’m so…thrilled,” he said. “I’m overjoyed that you’re alive, Corinne. I’d given up all hope.”

She closed her eyes. She’d been waiting for this call and now was unsure what to say. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Are you there?” he asked.

“I’m here,” she said. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m in shock. It suddenly makes everything my mother said so real.”

“The woman you
thought
was your mother,” he corrected.

“Yes.”
I hate her,
she wanted to add. She felt the hatred well up in her again.

“I’m sorry you never got to know your real mother,” Irving Russell said.

“Me, too.” She felt like crying. Finally, here was someone who had known her mother well. “I want to know everything about her,” she said.

“Of course.” There was a smile in his voice. “Vivian—that’s your sister—and I want to invite you up to Charlottesville for the weekend. We have more room than you could imagine. You can bring your fiancé, of course.” She wondered how he knew about Ken, but she guessed the world knew everything about her by now.

Even with Ken at her side, though, she didn’t think she could make the drive to Charlottesville. She felt fragile these days. She was to return to work the following week and had the feeling she’d be taking the back roads once again. “I um…I don’t travel very well,” she said.

“Are you ill?”

“No. I just…it’s a silly phobia.”

He was silent and she had the feeling he was a man who had never been afraid of anything in his life.

“We’ll come to you, then,” he said. “I don’t mean we’ll stay with you,” he added quickly. “But we’ll drive to Raleigh Saturday and spend the day with you, if that’s all right. Then drive back in the evening. How’s that?”

“That would be good,” she said. “If you give me your e-mail address, I’ll send you directions.”

He gave her the information, and she wrote it down with trembling fingers, knowing that once again, her life was about to change. This time, it would be for the better.

A
Lexus pulled into the driveway at noon on Saturday, and Corinne was glad that the reporters were no longer staking out her neighborhood. She’d prepared chicken salad—the fancy chicken salad her mother had long ago taught her to make for company—along with croissants and fruit. She wouldn’t be able to eat any of it, though; her stomach filled with knots as she watched Irving Russell and his daughter get out of the car and head toward the front door.

“Are you all right, Cor?” Ken asked, his hand on her back. “Do you want me to get the door?”

She shook her head, waiting for the bell to ring. She suddenly wished Ken were not with her. This moment felt too private to share, even with him. Despite how kind he had been recently, her feelings for him had shifted since the revelation about his divorce, or rather, his lack of divorce. She couldn’t help it; he was not the person she’d thought he was.

The Russells knocked instead of ringing the bell. She opened the door and faced a woman who looked so much like herself that she felt light-headed at the sight of her.

“Oh, my God,” Vivian said. She stepped inside and pulled Corinne into an embrace, holding her close, her shoulders heaving slightly. Corinne felt love pour into her from the woman, a love so real and pure that it could be mistaken for nothing else. Her own eyes filled with tears.

“It’s okay,” she said, patting Vivian’s back, but she didn’t want to let go, either.

“I’m Ken Carmichael, President Russell,” she heard Ken say.

“Call me Russ,” Irving Russell said.

She and Vivian drew apart as the two men shook hands. Then she looked into the face of the man who was her father. His eyes were dry, but reddened from days of uncertainty and hope and disbelief.

“You are so much like her,” he said softly. Resting his hand on her shoulder, he leaned over to kiss her cheek, an awkward gesture. For a moment, no one said a word. Then he smiled. “I’m overwhelmed,” he said, as he had on the phone.

“He is,” Vivian agreed. “Dad’s never at a loss for words.”

“Well, it’s understandable,” Ken said. “Come in and have a seat. We’ve got iced tea or soda or wine.”

They moved into the living room, and Vivian sat close to Corinne on the sofa and took her hand. It was a gesture both odd and welcome, and Corinne felt as though her heart was beating in sync with her sister’s. Their palms were pressed together, and she couldn’t tell if it was her pulse she felt beneath her fingers or Vivian’s.

Russ smiled, tears welling in his eyes as he studied his two daughters. “Where do we begin?” he asked.

“We want to know all about you,” Vivian said. “What your life’s been like. Though,” she glanced at her father, “I think we’re a little afraid to hear about it. To hear everything you’ve been through when you should have been with us.”

Everything she’d been through? She shrugged. “It was actually a pretty normal life,” she said.

Ken shook his head. “I wouldn’t call it that,” he said. “Her parents are…they’re nice people. Her father—at least the man she’s always thought of as her father—”

“Jack Elliott,” Russ said. “He’s a fine professor, from all reports. I don’t think he knew.”

“He was deceived by her mother,” Ken said. “Just like the rest of us.”

“It…distresses me beyond words that you had to spend your life with a kidnapper,” Russ said. “And she says she didn’t kill Genevieve, but I don’t think we’ll ever know that for sure. She kept you, so it looks to me like she wanted a baby. I’ve been reading about women who long for a baby. They find a pregnant woman and cut the baby out of them.”

Corinne was horrified by the thought. “Oh, I really don’t think so,” she said. “My mother isn’t that sort of person. And she was only sixteen.”

“How do you know what sort of person she was, Cor?” Ken asked. “Would you ever have guessed she could be involved in a mess like this to begin with? I think she was mentally ill back then. Who knows what she was capable of?”

“If she hadn’t wanted you desperately, she could have found a way to get you to us,” Vivian said. “Where you belonged. Where you still belong.”

Vivian’s eyes filled with tears again, and Corinne wondered if it could be true. Eve had stolen her, that much was known. Could she have intentionally killed her mother in order to take her? It was unthinkable.

“Well, I’ll make sure she’ll pay, one way or another,” Russ said. “I can’t believe the university’s had her on staff—as a counselor, no less—for all these years.”

I think she was good at it,
Corinne wanted to say, but she had the feeling Ken would disagree with her again and she didn’t want to hear it. You could be lousy at raising your own kids and still be great at helping others find their way.

“Listen, Corinne.” Russ nodded to the briefcase at his side. “Do you want to see pictures?”

“Pictures?”

“Of Mom,” Vivian said. “You won’t believe how much you look like her. We both do.”

“Yes,”
she said. “I tried to find pictures on the Internet, but could only find the one that’s been on the news.”

“You poor girl,” Russ said, lifting the briefcase to his lap. “Reduced to finding pictures of your mother on the Internet. We should have gotten in touch sooner,” he said, looking at Vivian, who nodded. “We needed to be sure, though. If Eve Elliott could lie about one thing, she could lie about a lot of things. I hope you understand why we didn’t get in touch right away.”

She opened her mouth to say she understood, but Ken beat her to it.

“Of course she does,” he said.

Russell pulled a large, fat envelope from the briefcase and walked across the room to give it to her, his hand trembling. He touched her arm before pulling away, and she had the feeling he wanted to embrace her, to hold on to her forever. She smiled at him.

Vivian took the envelope from Corinne’s hand. “Don’t overwhelm her, Dad,” she said. She pulled the messy stack of photographs out of the envelope and handed one to Corinne, leaning over to look at it with her. “This is a picture of Mom and Dad on their honeymoon,” she said.

The picture had a yellow cast to it, but the redheaded woman was a combination of Vivian and herself. “You definitely got her hair,” Vivian said. “Mine’s more like Dad’s.”

“Like Dad’s used to be.” Russell offered a weak smile as he ran his hand over his thinning, graying hair.

“I never looked like anyone in my family,” Corinne said in a near whisper. “Not even a little.”

“And that was a good thing,” Ken said with a laugh.

“Ken,”
she said. “That’s mean.”

“You don’t sound like a fan of the Elliotts,” Russ said.

“Well, Jack is a nice guy,” Ken said. “He can be kind of a buffoon. The perennial actor. And Dru is nice. Dru’s really nice.”

“Dru is your…sister?” Vivian asked.

Corinne nodded. “I thought she was my half sister, but now I realize we’re not related at all,” she said with some sadness. “She’s great, though.”

“Eve, on the other hand…” Ken looked at Corinne. “I don’t know how much to say.”

“Ken’s never really liked my mother,” she admitted.

“I had an instinct about her,” Ken said. “And…well, you know how Corinne said she couldn’t drive up to Charlottesville?”

Russ nodded.

“She’s got a whole slew of fears. Some she’s overcome and she’s working on the rest of them. But I blame her mother for them.”

“She was overprotective,” Corinne said. “Pathologically overprotective. She made me afraid of the world. I’m much better than I used to be, though.” She was worried she was sounding pathetic.

“At least she didn’t neglect you,” Vivian said. “That’s what we were afraid of—that she was an incompetent mother.”

“There are all kinds of incompetence,” Ken said.

“You’re a teacher, right?” Russ asked.

She nodded.

“Isn’t that amazing?” he asked. “Your mother was a teacher all her adult life. She didn’t need to work, but she loved teaching and wouldn’t give it up.”

“I love it, too,” Corinne said.

“And next year she’ll have a special position training other teachers in a reading program,” Ken boasted. “As long as she can get the travel phobia under control.”

“I can,” she said. She wished he’d stop trotting out her fears in front of her brand-new father and sister. She was more than her phobias. They had always been Ken’s focus, she realized. He liked to think of himself as her savior.

“She had to separate herself from her mother to grow up,” Ken added.

“What does that mean, you separated yourself from her?” Russ asked.

“We’re…basically estranged,” she said. “We’ve hardly spoken for the past few years. She came here with my father…with Jack…right before she was arrested to tell me everything, and that was the first time we’ve really talked in a long time.” She winced, remembering that night. “If anything, she was
too
good a parent to me. Too protective. She was suffocating and even my therapist told me to break ties with her for a while.”

The Russells were quiet, and Corinne wondered if the word
therapist,
used so easily in the Elliott household, might be taboo in theirs.

“Well.” Russ shifted in his chair and let out a long sigh. She thought there were tears in his eyes again. “I’m so sorry, Corinne. I feel like I failed somehow. Like there was something I should have been able to do to save you.”

“Dad, what could you have done?” Vivian looked at Corinne. “He’s always asking himself the ‘what-ifs’,” she said. “What if he’d picked Mom up from the university that night? What if he—”

“I hated her walking in the parking lot at night,” Russ said, “but she always insisted I was being silly. I was making too much out of it, she’d say. And then if I’d agreed to commute that girl’s sentence right off the bat, maybe they would have freed Gen—”

“You couldn’t do that, Dad,” Vivian argued. “You couldn’t give in to that kind of terrorism or you’d have people kidnapping other people left and right to get what they wanted.”

“I just wish I could have spared you.” Russell leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, his gaze on Corinne. “I could have raised you the way you should have been raised.”

“I think she turned out fine,” Vivian said, as though she knew her well.

Corinne wondered how she and Vivian looked, sitting there like near-twins. They sat so close together, she was certain her hair was tangled with her sister’s.

“I…” Russ reached into his briefcase again and pulled out a slim white envelope. “I want you to have this,” he said, taking a few steps across the room to hand it to her. “I know this doesn’t make up for all the lost years, but I would have sent you to the best private schools, like I did with Vivian. You would have had your pick of universities. So I want you to have this. And I’m giving it to you with Viv’s blessing.”

Vivian nodded. “Absolutely,” she said.

Corinne opened the envelope and peered at a check made out in her name for three hundred thousand dollars.

She felt the color drain out of her face. “Oh, no,” she said. “I can’t possibly take this.”

“You have to,” Russ said. “Please don’t be insulted by it. I know you’re a teacher and your…Ken here is a reporter, and you’re well able to support yourselves. That’s not it. It’s—”

“I went to all private schools,” Vivian said. “And then to Sarah Lawrence and grad school. Dad would have done the same for you.”

“I’m just not…comfortable with this,” Corinne said.

“I’m sorry,” Russ said. “I should have held off on giving it to you. I just…I want to give you everything I can.” He smiled at her with such kindness. “Think about the money,” he said. “You don’t need to take it now. Just know it’s yours whenever you want it.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That’s so generous of you.”

The men stayed in the living room, while Vivian helped her set the table.

“I’ve missed you,” Vivian said, smiling. “I know you were raised with a sister and got to do all these simple sisterly things, like setting a table together.” She nodded at the basket of croissants. “But I never had that and I knew what I was missing. Even though I was so young when Mom was pregnant with you, I fantasized about all the things we’d do together. They even let me help decide what to name you.”

“What was I going to be named?”

“Lara,” she said.

Corinne tried to imagine living her whole life with that name. “Pretty,” she said. She started back to the kitchen, but Vivian caught her arm. “You have to understand something about Dad.” She smiled. “He’s like a lot of guys. He doesn’t really know how to express his emotions, so he does it with money. With gifts. We thought you were dead, and we’re so glad you’re not, so now he wants to give you the world. It’s the only way he knows to show that he loves you.”

“He doesn’t even
know
me yet,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter. You’re his daughter. That’s enough for him.”

They’d given her several pictures of Genevieve to keep, and she carried them to the table and spread them out around her plate, unable to stop looking at her. Russ talked about the first time he saw her. He’d been the escort of another young woman at a country club dance, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Genevieve. She wore a royal-blue dress, and between that and her red hair, he could find her anyplace in the room. His own date grew annoyed at him for his inattention to her. The next day, he called Genevieve and asked her out. Their first date was to the movies, where they saw
Midnight Cowboy,
and she’d cried inconsolably. He’d held her hand to comfort her and knew he wanted to be with a woman so free with her emotions.

“The opposite of me,” Russ said, “as Viv will tell you. I needed someone different from me to express that part of myself. When she was gone…” He ran a finger around the rim of his glass. “I withdrew for a long time. Just focused on work and on Vivvie. It was like I didn’t know how to operate in the world without Genevieve. I was only half a person.”

Vivian was wrong about her father. He did, too, know how to express his emotions. He was doing so right now in a way that brought tears to Corinne’s eyes.