The Unknown Daughter
The topic of his mother had been off-limits for him from the moment she’d abandoned his family a year after Tony was born. Off-limits, that was, until he’d met Carrinne, and she’d seen straight through the rebellious hatred that had ruled his life back then.
He’d told himself he didn’t need family or friends. That he wanted nothing more to do with anyone saying that they loved him. Love meant pain and loss, and he was determined to live without it. By the time Carrinne came into the picture, he’d done a good enough job of being a hard-ass that most everyone in Oakwood, except his father, had written him off. But Carrinne’s sweetness had wormed through his anger, straight to the pain he was fighting to forget. She hadn’t been afraid of the darkness driving him to hurt himself and everyone who cared about him.
An orphan raised by a cold-hearted old man, she’d survived her own version of rejection and emotional abandonment. And she’d been determined that Eric would, too. She hadn’t left him alone until he’d opened up about his mother and shared what he’d never discussed before or since, not even with his brother. He’d begun to trust that the future could be different than the past, that not everyone who loved him was going to leave him.
Then his dad had died, abandoning Eric all over again. And the shaky belief in love that Carrinne had helped him build hadn’t stood a chance. Eighteen, alone, and saddled with the responsibility of raising Tony, the last thing he’d been able to handle was Carrinne’s unshakable hope that tomorrow would be better. He’d needed to be angry until he’d burned out the rage and no longer felt any of the pain.
So he’d pushed her away. And when she’d left, she’d taken her sweetness and his last taste of love with her.
Eric blinked back to the present. Carrinne’s puzzled expression shimmered into focus. He made himself step away.
Carrinne’s eyes, pools of green that still haunted his dreams, softened with the very empathy he’d run from. “It’s easier for me not to hate my father the way you do your mom. I never knew him.”
“Lucky you.” His lips wouldn’t smile, so he gave up trying. “But I still don’t buy it.”
“What?”
“The break-in. I backed you up with Lurch.” He caught her smirk at his use of the nickname they’d shared for Brimsley. “But his suspicions were dead on. Maybe if you’d called first and the old man had refused to cooperate, it might make more sense.”
She crossed her arms. “Are you having a good time?”
“Trying to get you to come clean?”
“Playing detective because there’s nothing better to do in this backwater town than butt in where you don’t belong.”
“I want to help.”
“I stopped needing anyone’s help forever ago.”
“Well, unless you’re itching to end up in jail, I suggest you find a more legal means of going after whatever you’re really looking for.”
“Thanks for the advice, but I figured that one out on my own.”
Eric bit back his next retort and ran a hand through his hair. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. “You can go. But don’t do anything I can’t get you out of, Carrinne. I’d hate to have you arrested, but I’ll do what I have to do.”
“Haven’t you always?” Her eyes were suddenly moist. She pushed past him to leave.
Stricken by the hint of weakness beneath all that grit, he grabbed her arm. “Wait. I’m just trying to be a friend.”
“Let me go.” She yanked away, her hand rubbing where he’d touched her. “You’re not my friend, and I don’t want your help. I don’t want anything from you.”
“If this is about how I ended things when we were teenagers—”
“This is about me being dead on my feet and needing some sleep,” she said calmly. Sparks still smoldered in her eyes. “You were very helpful with Brimsley. Thank you. And I’ll sort things out with Oliver in the morning. I can handle the rest on my own.”
Eric scrubbed his hand across his face. The idea that she might still carry scars from their breakup made him feel like the class-A jerk he’d been to her. He had no idea if he could help her with whatever she was up to, but he was sure as hell going to try. She was in trouble, and it would take a lot more than a handful of uncomfortable memories to turn him away. He had to make sure she was okay.
Besides, she’d pegged his life right on the nose. It wasn’t like he had much else but paperwork and small-town bureaucracy pressing for his attention these days.
“I’ll have Tony meet you out front,” he finally said. “He’ll drive you back to your car.”
“Thanks.” She turned with a sigh and headed toward the front of the building.
Tomorrow, he promised himself as he went to search for Tony. Tomorrow was soon enough to help the last person in Oakwood who wanted his help.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN I can’t go in?” Carrinne asked the elderly woman dressed in starched pink cotton.
It was early Saturday afternoon. She’d meant to get to the hospital hours ago. But after collapsing into bed around four that morning, thoughts of Eric and Maggie had kept her tossing and turning for hours. Once she’d nodded off, she’d slept like the dead until after eleven.
Nurse Able, according to her name badge, stepped around the nurses’ station and attempted to lead Carrinne into the visitors’ lounge. “I’m sorry, Ms. Wilmington, but we only allow one visitor at a time. If you’ll just wait over here.”
“But I’m his granddaughter.” Carrinne evaded the nurse’s grasp.
“Oh, I know who you are, dear.” The nurse clasped her hands in front of her and smiled. “I’m sure you don’t remember, but I used to change your diapers every Sunday when I worked in the church nursery. You’re just as beautiful now as you were then.”
Carrinne fought to keep her eyes from rolling heavenward. Hadn’t anyone else moved away from this place in the last seventeen years?
First, the clerk at the motel had been one of the varsity football players all the cheerleaders had fawned over back in high school. Then the volunteer at the welcome desk downstairs had turned out to be the lunch-room lady who’d sneaked Carrinne extra pudding in elementary school. Now Nurse Able.
“When can I see my grandfather?” She tried to smile, she really did.
“Oh, call me Glinda. It sure has been a long—”
“It’s really important that I see him as soon as possible.” Carrinne let her voice roughen, shamelessly harnessing the emotion swimming ever closer to the surface of what used to be her composure. “It’s been so long, I don’t want to waste another moment.”
“Of course you don’t,” Glinda replied. She took Carrinne’s hand. “Tragedy brings us together in the most difficult way.”
“It would really mean a lot if you could get me in to see him now.”
“I’m sure you have a lot to talk about.” She squeezed Carrinne’s fingers. “Let me go see what’s keeping Mr. Brimsley.”
“Brimsley?”
“Why, yes. He usually stops by on his lunch break. He has your grandfather’s power of attorney, you know. Sometimes they meet for hours, going over all kinds of paperwork and whatnot. I can’t tell you how many times the doctors have warned your grandfather to slow down, but he says he wants to stay up-to-date—”
“You said you could check on what was keeping Mr. Brimsley?” Every minute that man was with her grandfather was a minute too long.
“Of course, dear. Let me see what I can do.”
Carrinne watched her go, clenching her fists and trying not to stomp with impatience as she stared down the brightly lit hallway. The reality of her surroundings seeped through her frustration. The antiseptic smell. The beige and green tiles on the floor. The hum of hushed voices and whirring medical equipment. This could just as easily be a hallway at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, her home away from home for the last few months.
Her need for Oliver’s assistance was the only thing short of a medical emergency that could have coaxed her into yet another hospital. And running into Eric had red-lined the necessity to get what she’d come for and get the heck out of Oakwood. She needed her grandfather’s help now. Whatever it took.
Glinda returned, her affronted scowl dampening what Carrinne had assumed was chronic perkiness. “That man! He—”
“I’ll take it from here, nurse.” Brimsley appeared behind Glinda, his stern frown directed at Carrinne.
“You let me know if you need anything,” Glinda said to Carrinne as she marched to her station. Her eyes shot daggers at Brimsley the entire way.
“You do have a way with people, don’t you?” Carrinne’s skin crawled as the lawyer sized her up. He could still make her feel like the six-year-old he’d once caught doodling all over some important business contracts he’d laid out for Oliver.
“I want to know what you’re going to say to him.” Brimsley pointed a finger for emphasis. “Your grandfather’s a very sick man, and he doesn’t need you unsettling things even more.”
“Unsettling things? This meeting was your idea.”
“Because I want whatever you’ve got to say out of the way with the least amount of stress to Oliver. The first thing he heard when he woke this morning was that you were back in town. He was in a frenzy when I got here, demanding that I track you down and bring you over. Though why he cares after all these years, I can’t imagine.”
Oh, but she could. It was too much to ask that her grandfather would dismiss her out of hand as Brimsley had. A cold, disinterested Oliver Wilmington would have been so much easier to handle. But true to form, as soon as he’d heard she was in town, he’d expected her to present herself upon demand.
And here she was.
“What I have to say won’t take long.” She reined in the urge to run and moved to pass Brimsley. “So if you don’t mind—”
He grabbed her arm. “Why are you back?”
Yanking away, she looked him up and down. “Maybe I’m here to remind myself why I fled this insufferable place and everything connected to it. Maybe I needed a good dose of Southern bad manners to remind me how good I have it up north.”
A giggle to her right caught Carrinne’s attention. Glinda smothered another laugh as she straightened the files scattered across the station counter. With a wink to Carrinne, the nurse answered the phone that never seemed to stop ringing.
Carrinne turned on her heels and headed down the hall, mentally pulling herself together. Her steps slowed as she neared her grandfather’s room. She’d left Oliver Wilmington’s warped brand of control and manipulation behind years ago. Since then, she’d proven that she had the nerve and the brains to succeed when he’d been so sure she would fail without him. She was successful and sophisticated, where she’d once been painfully timid and shy. She’d earned the right to face him with confidence.
Instead, she felt only dread.
She needed Oliver’s help. And that gave him far more leverage than good sense told her was wise.
“I WANT TO SEE my great-grandchild,” Carrinne’s grandfather repeated from his hospital bed.
In the five minutes since she’d stepped into his room, Oliver Wilmington had refused to talk about anything else. His imperious tone was everything she remembered, though time and illness had done their dirty work on his diminished frame. He struggled for every breath.
“And I’ve already told you,” she repeated. “That’s not possible.”
“I’m an old man. I’m paralyzed down one side, and my heart’s giving out. I’m dying.” He pushed himself up and yanked at the sheet, as impatient with his infirmities as he’d always been with anything he couldn’t bend to his will. “I think I’m entitled to meet my only great-grandchild before I go.”
“Well, I’m thirty-three, and I’m dying.” She threw her purse into the guest chair, watching her revelation sink in as she played the only ace up her sleeve. Oliver lapsed into silence for the first time since she’d gotten there. “Does that mean I win?”
CHAPTER THREE
“WHAT ARE YOU talking about?” No longer fussing with the sheet, Oliver grew unnaturally still.
“Primary sclerosing cholangitis.” A chill raced down Carrinne’s spine as she said the full diagnosis out loud. “It’s chronic, and it’s degenerative. And if I don’t find a liver donor in the next year or two, it’ll most likely be fatal. They’ve put me on the national transplant registry, but my rare blood factors make the chance of finding a match outside of the immediate family minuscule. I’m hoping my father will agree to be a living donor.”
“Is that what this is all about?”
Carrinne stared at her shoes. This was about so many things, things she had no intention of discussing.
“Carrinne Louise, look at me.”
When she did, her heart lurched with the same appalling spasm of emotion that had struck when she’d first walked into the room. Medical equipment surrounded his bed, beeping and whirring, creating a symphony of life support.
She’d thought hatred was all she’d feel when she saw Oliver Wilmington again. Yet what consumed her now was sadness and regret. He’d lost his wife to cancer when he was far too young. They’d both lost her mother. They’d been all the family either of them had left, yet the only way he’d been able to deal with her had been to control every aspect of her life. And she’d needed so much more.
“It’s not just your illness that’s brought you home after all these years, is it?” he asked. His eyes narrowed. “If you wanted to find your father, why not hire a detective?”
“Hiring a detective is my next step,” she explained. “But someone wandering around Oakwood asking a lot of questions might have made you suspicious. I came for the diary myself, hoping I could get in and out without you ever knowing I was here. I hadn’t planned on being even a blip on this insufferable town’s radar.”
“Oakwood is your home, Carrinne. This town and the people you’ve cut out of your life, they’re a part of you.”
“This place was never a home for me.” She gripped the bedrail. “You made sure of that. I’m back because I have no other choice. The question is, can you put someone else’s needs before your own for just once in your life? Tell me what you know about my mother’s last diary. Tell me who you think my father might be.”
With a look of grudging respect, Oliver pushed himself higher on the pillows. “It seems we’re at an impasse. We both want something very badly, something we can’t get without the other one’s help. I want to meet my great-grandchild, and you want to meet your father.”
“Do you know who my father is?”
“No.” He looked away. “I never could get your mother to tell me, and once she was gone… It just didn’t seem to matter.”
“It mattered to me. It always mattered to me. And you wouldn’t lift a finger to help me look for him. You forbade me from even trying, and now it may be too late. Mother’s diary is probably the only shot I’ve got.”
“Yes, Angelica’s diary.” He cleared his throat. “Brimsley mentioned that’s what you were looking for at the house. I told you when you were a child—I don’t know anything about her diary. She was sixteen years old when you were born. That seems a little old to be keeping a diary, I don’t care what your nanny said. What makes you so sure you can find it now, or that your father is even mentioned in it?”
“I’m not sure. But if there’s even the slightest chance it exists, I have to look.”
“I’d like to help.” A shocking warmth laced his statement. Compassion wasn’t the right word for the expression on his face, but there was something close to yearning there. Something she’d never seen before. Then his gaze hardened. “Provided…”
“Provided what?”
“I want to see my great-grandchild.”
She dropped her hands from the rail and stepped away to make sure she wasn’t close enough to wring his neck. “You don’t know how to do anything but control people, do you? You make them bend until they break, and you don’t even bat an eye. Not as long as you get what you want.”
“One man’s manipulation is another man’s just cause,” Oliver said in a pained whisper. Then he cleared his throat again. “I’m not asking you for anything that dire. Your child is a Wilmington. As your grandfather, I have a right to know him.”
Of course he’d assume his grandchild was a boy. The male heir to the great Wilmington legacy, no doubt. What did it say that a man of his power and influence hadn’t cared enough to bother finding out the gender of his only great-grandchild?
“This is the child you wanted destroyed,” she reminded him.
“That was a mistake.” A grimace of shame flashed across his face. “I’ve always regretted how I overreacted. After losing your mother the way I did, I was afraid something might happen to you, too…”
“If that’s your way of reminding me that it’s my fault my mother’s dead, don’t bother. You made it perfectly clear when I was a child how much you blamed me.”
“That’s not true. I never blamed—”
“Save it.” She held up her hand. “It doesn’t matter now.”
After a moment, he nodded. “You’re right. That’s all in the past. I made my share of mistakes, but haven’t I paid enough of a price? The child’s almost grown, and I’ve never seen him. Would it be so terrible, granting me this one request?”
It would be a disaster.
Maggie couldn’t come to Oakwood, not as long as Eric was here. Maggie thought her father was dead. Carrinne had charmed her with stories about how much he’d cared for them both, how he would have loved watching his daughter grow up. Maggie kept Carrinne’s only picture of Eric with her everywhere she went. She was the perfect female reflection of her father.
Carrinne had never dreamed they might one day meet.
“So, what will it be?” Oliver smiled. He was clearly enjoying his status as the only person Carrinne could turn to in town. “I’ll make sure you have unlimited use of the house, that you have anything you need as you search for your father. Whatever I can do. All I ask is this one small thing in return.”
“I’ll consider bringing her back—”
“Her? It’s a girl?”
“I’ll consider bringing her back.” She studied the parking deck below his window, making him wait. “But only after I find my father. Totally contingent on your cooperation while I’m here, as well as your silence.”
“My silence?” Her grandfather’s confusion lasted less than a second. “Ah. You mean about why you ran away.”
“Tell me you haven’t told anyone.”
“Why would I? It was a family matter.”
“You mean I was an embarrassment, and you were thankful no one had to know.”
“I mean I won’t have more of our family problems become fodder for small-town gossip. No one knows you were pregnant.”
“Good.” She took her first deep breath since seeing Eric last night. “I want to keep it that way.”
“I assume you’re worried about our illustrious Sheriff Rivers. It would prove inconvenient for him to find out about his child after all these years, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You made it my business. Everyone in Oakwood knew you were going with that young man. Skipping class together, sneaking out all hours of the night. To this day, I’ll never understand why you felt it necessary to pick the one person in town I thought was least suitable for you.”
“Not everything is about you.” She reached for her purse and slung the strap over her shoulder. “Do I have your word or not?”
“I get to see my great-granddaughter?”
“Help me with what I need, and I’ll find a way to make it happen.” Just how she’d make it happen while keeping Eric and Maggie apart, she had no idea. But that was a worry that could wait. There were so many others in line before it.
“Then you have my full support. Whatever I can do to help. Although, I don’t know anything more about your mother’s diaries than you do.” There was that look of almost longing again, the hint that there was something more he wanted to say. Then he gave a wry chuckle. “I’d offer you my liver, but I don’t suppose a wasted old body like mine would be much use to you.”
“No.” She swallowed the but thank you that almost slipped out. “The donor needs to be healthy, and preferably under the age of sixty.”
“What about your daughter? Could she be a donor?”
“Not an alternative.” She made herself walk slowly toward the door, when what she really wanted was to bolt from her grandfather’s penetrating gaze.
“Carrinne?”
“What?” She didn’t turn back.
“I’ll alert Robert that you’ll be moving back home.”
Robert had been the Wilmington butler since before she was born. The man must be almost as old as Oliver.
“My home is in New York. And I’m staying at a motel while I’m here. Tell Robert I’ll be by first thing in the morning. I need to get back into the attic.”
“When will I see you again?” he asked, his voice gravelly. She looked over her shoulder, and the reality of the lonely, fragile old man in the hospital bed slid past her defenses once more.
“I’ll be in touch,” she finally managed to say.
“It’s good to see you.” His mouth curved upward, but smiling still didn’t sit well on his face. “You’re so beautiful, just like your mother.”
“I’ll be in touch,” she repeated. She jerked the door open and stepped into the silent hallway, horrified by the emotion stinging her eyes.
Striding away, grateful that Brimsley was nowhere in sight, she ignored the buzzing that filled her ears. It shouldn’t matter that her grandfather thought she was beautiful now. Why should she care? But damn it, unbelievably, something inside her did.
As a child, she’d done anything and everything to earn Oliver’s approval, to grab just one crumb of praise to go along with his never-ending stream of rules and regulations. But whatever capacity the man had had to love had died along with first his wife and then Carrinne’s mother. All that had remained for Carrinne was a rigid shell of a man and the hollow pretense of a happy family.
She hadn’t been allowed to wear makeup, because he wasn’t raising one of those girls. No pants, either, because she was a young lady. No skirts shorter than a certain length. No dating, no dances. And the list went on. But regardless of how hard she tried, no matter how many hoops she jumped through, he hadn’t doled out the first smidgen of love. Instead, she became a disappointment, a constant reminder of all he’d lost with her mother. Until finally, she’d stopped trying and had gone to look for someone else to love her. The worst possible person, in her grandfather’s opinion.
She wiped at her eyes, furious at the unwanted emotion controlling her. First Eric, now Oliver. People didn’t push her buttons like this. Not anymore.
She rode the elevator to the second level of the hospital’s parking garage, forcing her mind to clear. By the time she’d reached her rental car, deep breathing and determination had returned some measure of control. Starting the engine and cranking the barely adequate air conditioner, she secured her seat belt and headed for the nearest exit. She should be planning her next move, but forming a coherent thought was light years beyond her at the moment.
She left the parking garage, driving down the steep hill to Crabapple Street. The light at the bottom turned yellow, and the urge to run it nagged her. She applied the brakes with a growl, the thought of bottoming out on the uneven pavement below and damaging the car—the thought of spending one more minute at the hospital while she waited for a tow—overruling her impulse.
As she slowed, a large shadow in the rearview mirror drew her attention away from the road. The vehicle behind her seemed to be accelerating. She checked the light, now red, and rolled to a stop. Then she glanced over her shoulder to make sure the driver behind her had followed suit.
The other vehicle’s front bumper slammed into her car a split second before her scream rent the air. The car and her body pitched forward. Her seat belt caught, but not soon enough. The side of her head snapped against the steering wheel. Through the fuzziness that followed and the painful echo of bells ringing, some disengaged part of her brain had the capacity to curse her small-town rental. It was clearly so old it predated the standard issue of airbags.
