A Family Affair: Winter: Truth in Lies, Book 1 (4 page)

From the moment she’d heard Lily Desantro’s name, she’d thought of the second when she’d see the woman and a name and a face would merge, one breathing life into the other to form a person, a memory, a past where all supposition would fade into features and voice and realness.

Christine followed the road to the edge of town, to the street on the back of the business card Thurman Jacobs had given her—1167 Artisdale Street. The houses on this street were older, larger, more dignified, with scattered roof peaks, high shuttered windows, and grand porches. They spoke of memories, family and tradition, some with sturdy pillars along the front porch, others boasting wide steps and wider walkways. She was drawn to one halfway down that had pillars and walkways, crisp white with black shutters, an expanse of window spreading up and out, covering first and second stories. The number above the door read 1167 Artisdale.

She parked the BMW and shut off the engine. Holly bushes filled the front beds, scatterings of evergreens clustered in between. To the right, blocking the tan house next door, stood a copse of pine trees, draped in white. Two wind chimes, one a Christmas tree painted bright red and green,
the other a snowman plastered in white, hung from the porch, dangling rhythms of sound and sequence.

She should have sketched brief pointers for this meeting, a flow chart of sorts, similar to what she did when she analyzed stocks. Her stomach clenched, bits of sweet roll rising to the middle of her throat. What was there to analyze? Her father had kept a mistress named Lily Desantro at 1167 Artisdale, and this was most likely where he’d come during his monthly trips, not the cabin in Tristan with its ringed sink and empty refrigerator.

Maybe Uncle Harry had the right idea after all; never settle for one, just plow through them like a tractor in a field of hay, one after the other. Multiple, meaningless relationships.

She took a deep breath and opened the car door.

Nate Desantro thought about ignoring the doorbell and would have if he thought his mother wouldn’t try to get out of bed and answer it herself. Why couldn’t everybody just leave them alone, mind their own business, not his family’s?

He couldn’t count the number of people who’d been here since the accident, well-wishers offering fresh baked rolls, wedding soup, baked ham with pineapple and cloves. What about peace and quiet? Did any of those do-gooders ever think about offering that? His mother needed rest, not a crowd of people hovering over her. He’d kicked them all out last night. Lily hadn’t liked that.

In another week or so, he’d be able to get back to his own place, back to seclusion, where the loudest noise at night was a flip between a screech owl and a log crackling on the fire. Just the way he liked it. The majority of the human species was nothing but an annoying intrusion on his state of mind and, other than the times when he had to interact with them, he preferred to be alone. Of course, family didn’t fit into that category, just everyone else. His mother said he was afraid to open up after what happened three years ago. She was wrong; he didn’t care about Patrice anymore, didn’t even think about her, not since the day the sheriff delivered the divorce papers. Nate heard she was remarried to some bank president in Palm Springs, drove a Lexus now. Probably silver; she’d always had a fondness for silver.

The doorbell rang again, twice, rapid staccato. “Hold on, hold on.” Damn intrusive busybodies. He reached the front door, preparing the same speech he told all the well-wishers.
 
She’s fine... needs her rest... she’ll be in touch when she’s up to it.
 She’d be furious if she had an inkling that he was blowing off people like Father Reisanski and Judge Tommichelli, but hell, did she have to be best friends with half the town?

He opened the door.

It was her.

“Hello. I’m looking for...”

Her voice was softer than he’d imagined, more breathy...

“...this is a bit awkward...”

Her eyes were bluer than her picture...

“Lily Desantro. Is she here?”

That brought him around fast. “Who are you?” Stupid question, but damn if he’d let on he knew who she was.

She hesitated, a split-second extra air exchange. “Christine Blacksworth. I’m... are you Nate Desantro?”

He said nothing. 
Let her squirm.

“Is Lily here?”

“No.”

“May I come in?” She tried to look around him, into the house, into their lives.

He blocked the door. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“You...you know who I am, don’t you?”

He stared at her, refusing to acknowledge the man or his daughter as hatred seeped through him, brought back the days, months, years, his mother spent alone, except for four damn days a month for fourteen years.

“You called my mother’s house...about my father.”

Her voice wobbled. 
Good, feel it, Christine Blacksworth, feel what I’ve felt for the past fourteen years every time I saw your father’s bathrobe hanging in my mother’s closet, saw his razor in her bathroom, his glasses on her nightstand. Let it strangle you...

“I have to speak with your mother.” The words were firmer, part congealed.

“She’s not available.”

“Can’t you work with me so we can get this over with?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Do you think I wanted to come here? Do you think I would be standing here if there’d been any other way?”

“I don’t know, would you? Maybe come to see for yourself?”

“This is just as hard on me as it is on you.” Her voice dipped, faltered. “At least you knew. I had no idea. All this time, and I had no idea.”

He almost felt sorry for her but years of living with Charles Blacksworth’s comings and goings wiped any pity from his soul. “You think so; you think we’re in the same boat, Christine? What do you think it’s like to see a man coming out of your mother’s bedroom in the morning, one who’s not her husband? And then the bastard leaves her, every month, goes back to his rich family in Chicago, his prestigious job, his three-piece suits. And he does it year after year after year and she cries when he leaves, every goddamn time.”

She looked away, pinched the bridge of her nose.

“You think you had it worse? You don’t have a clue.” He gripped the door handle, forced himself to stay still when every cell in his body wanted to jerk her head up, make her acknowledge his words, feel his hatred. “Go home, Christine Blacksworth. You’re fourteen years too late.”

***

Gloria accepted the fluted glass bubbling with Dom Perignon and smiled at the young man dressed in black who hadn’t left her side all night; Jeremy something or other, investment banker. He couldn’t be more than twenty-eight, a year older than Christine, and yet she hadn’t missed the way his dark eyes took in her pale blue gown, moved from the swell of breast to shoulder, settled on the smooth, tanned skin of her neck. Men had looked at her that way her entire life, from the time she was fourteen and discovered that if she smiled wide and long, dropped her voice a few decibels, and glanced instead of stared at other boys, she would gain not only their attention, but their admiration. What a ridiculous game it all was, one she’d never succumbed to, preferring intellect to sexuality. But then she’d met Charles.

She sipped her champagne, tried to concentrate on what the young man was saying.

“Have you ever heard Bocelli?” Jeremy something or other was saying. “I saw him in New York. He’s exquisite, not Pavarotti, but still quite good.”

“And blind.”

“Incredible, isn’t it?” He took her comment as interest, moved closer, his breath fanning her ear. “I’d love to take you. We could have dinner at The Presidio first. Next Saturday.”

She took a step away, met his dark eyes, sparkling with one too many Dom Perignons. “I don’t think so, but thank you for the invitation.”

He flattened a hand over his chest. “You wound me, beautiful maiden. Please reconsider.”

Oh, Charles, how could you have left me to deal with this?
 “I could be your mother.”

“But you’re not.” He took her hand, stroked his fingers up her arm.

“I just buried my husband two weeks ago.” Was there no respect for the grieving process?

“I know.” He
nodded, his handsome face solemn. “All the more reason.”

“Indeed.” She shrugged his hand off, stepped away.
“All the more reason.” Gloria lifted her glass, saluted him and turned away.

She almost hadn’t come tonight, not after last year’s debacle. The West Mount Memorial Banquet had always been Charles’s love; he was one of the original organizers, a major contributor and a staunch supporter of the hospital’s research facilities. But this love blinded him, too. When last year’s president asked Charles to double his annual pledge,
 
to help fund research for cancers like your sister’s
...Charles readily agreed.

Tonight they were honoring him and had invited Gloria to accept an award in memory of her late husband. How could she refuse such a request? She’d chosen a pale blue Chanel and a clasp of diamonds for the occasion, the muted coolness of color and stone giving her a controlled, untouchable presence, elegant but not overstated, determined in a mask of subtlety but still appropriate for her newly widowed state—her life without Charles.

She worked her way past the fringes of the ballroom to a tiny sitting area papered in heavy cream. There was a smattering of ornate chairs, cherry, she thought, done in burgundy and cream stripes set up in a half-circle around an oval glass table. And in the center of the table was a huge spray of red roses, more than two dozen, maybe three, spilling out of a gold vase, tufts of baby’s breath tucked in between.

Her gaze followed a petal that had fallen on the slick surface of glass, landed on the edge of a bright blue ashtray. Gloria walked up to the table, studied the ashtray: shiny, clean,
unused. She hesitated, fingers hovering over the single petal, its red brilliance not diminished by its solitary state. So much beauty, so much promise...She brushed it away in one quick motion, mindless of where it landed, her concentration fixed solely on the gleam of the blue ashtray. Then she flipped open her bag, pulled out the black case decorated with needlepoint roses, and tapped out a Salem Light. Her fingers shook as she lit it.

“Now this is a sight.”

Gloria swung around, pulled the cigarette behind her back. “What are you doing here?”

Harry Blacksworth saluted her with his drink. “I was invited.”

“As though you cared about contributing to anyone’s charity but your own.”

He ignored her. “I saw you with that young boy a few minutes ago.”

She took another puff on her cigarette, held it, blew out a thin cloud of smoke. “Since when did it become a crime to engage in casual conversation?”

“Don’t embarrass yourself, Gloria.” He emptied his glass and added, “And don’t taint Charlie’s memory.”

She stubbed out the cigarette in the center of the blue ashtray, grinding the butt to a third of its size. “You have nerve, Harry Blacksworth,” she said in a low voice, moving her lips just enough to push the words out for his ears alone. “You’ve disgraced this family for years and now you have the nerve to question my actions?”

“You’re Charles Blacksworth’s widow. Act like it.”

“I intend to.”

“See that you do.”

He turned away from her then, before she could tell him that he was the real disgrace no one had ever wanted to acknowledge, especially Charles. She wanted to scream at him so loudly that the entire room would turn and stare at Harry. 
You! Yes, you, you’re the disgrace!

But, of course, she couldn’t because he was already gone and even if he weren’t, she wouldn’t. And he knew that.

***

Nate Desantro was not going to stop her from tracking down Lily. He might think he had a fourteen-year edge, but she’d been competing in a man’s world long enough to know how to fight and win.

When the sign for Magdalena shriveled to a dot in her rearview mirror, Christine opened her mouth and pulled in puffs of cold air, greedy to clear her mind. She should have been the one flinging accusations back there, making demands, not him. But he’d been vicious, the hatred pulsing in the cords of his neck, spreading to his throat, spilling out of his mouth. He’d hated her father.

She drove on, mindless of the new snow falling heavy around her, white, pure, forgiving. What had life been like fourteen years before? She tried to remember, tried to pull it back through the haze of work-filled days at Blacksworth & Company, four years of college, senior prom,
further still to family trips in Vail, Palm Springs, even middle school. But she could only snag scraps of memories, a half-formed picture of a girl in braces and pigtails, a blue spruce brilliant with lights and ornaments, a black dog named Jesse.

Fourteen years of good-byes, promises to be home for Sunday dinner, returning with smiles and warm embraces, and all the while, going to
 
her
. How had she not known? How had she looked into her father’s eyes, listened to his words, and not been able to see the truth?

Did he really love me? And Mother, what about her?

They were his family, but had he really loved them or merely felt duty toward them—obligation—as one does to an old pair of tennis shoes, scuffed and ripping at the seams, that should be tossed out on garbage day but somehow never make it there. Instead, they get relegated as something else—garden shoes, lawn mowing shoes, anything to avoid being discarded completely. Maybe that’s what he’d done, relegated them to “something else,” a lower position, in order to avoid the costly, damaging choice of permanent separation.

She thought of all the days he’d been with Lily Desantro, all the years he’d let his real family believe he was somewhere else. Her father was the only one she’d ever truly counted on, the standard for everyone else in her life: friends, boyfriends, business associates, even, and she hated to admit this, her mother. Had it all been a grand lie?

Christine drove the remainder of the trip replaying the conversation with Nate Desantro. Part of her wanted to go back to Chicago, forget about the cabin and Magdalena, and most of all, Lily Desantro. The other part worried that the woman would not be so easily forgotten. What if she showed up in Chicago asking for Gloria Blacksworth?

Her mother would never be able to handle this. The thought of the two women, face to face, gave Christine renewed strength to drive back to Magdalena in the morning, confront Nate Desantro again if she must, though she hoped Lily would answer the door. Then Christine could tell her about the will, the enormous amount of money that would be hers, uncontested, and all she had to do was forget she’d ever heard the Blacksworth name.

It was early afternoon when she reached the cabin. She’d stopped off at Henry’s Market, a small grocery store that wasn’t much larger than a 7-Eleven, and picked up a quart of skim milk, four raspberry yogurts, a box of Multi-Grain Cheerios, a bag of red licorice, and a small bottle of Palmolive Dish detergent. She’d almost asked the wrinkled man at the counter if he knew Charles Blacksworth. 
You probably saw him about once a month
, she’d wanted to say. 
He came to stay in the cabin up the road. Of course, you’d remember him if you saw him...medium build, silver hair...distinguished...very polite.