Private Entrance (The Butterfly Trilogy) (31 page)

     "Ophelia, you're upset. I understand. Now, listen to me. Come in for testing on the amniotic fluid. If it's positive, we can terminate at once."

     Terminate! "No."

     "Right now it's just an embryo. It isn't even a fetus yet..."

     
Fetus.

     It's a baby! My son or daughter! Not something you dissect in a high school biology lab.

     She hung up.

     She felt numb. She felt crazed.

     Her eye fell upon the work spread out on the ornate, glass-topped coffee table, her current book-in-progress:
In Defense of Our Ancestors.
And suddenly she despised her ancestors, those distant Jews who had handed down their bad blood. Because of
them
Ophelia faced giving birth to a doomed child.

     Abortion was wrong. It went against Nature's law and God's law. The prehistoric woman attempting to cause a miscarriage would have been ostracized by the clan, because the death of a child meant the death of the clan. Survival was the only law. How many abortion clinics had Ophelia picketed? Handing out leaflets. Carrying signs. Shouting at the women who walked through those doors. Calling them murderers because she refused to believe there was "another side" to the issue.

     But now she was suddenly on the other side.

     She paced furiously, back and forth between the Louis Quinze chairs, wringing her hands.

     How could she possibly go through with the pregnancy?

     Ophelia was thankful now she had won the mysterious contest and come to The Grove. This was something she had to sort out on her own, away from the influence of her very opinionated family. Away from the suffocating compassion of David.

     As she pulled her swimsuit out of the shower, where she had hung it to dry, deciding she would swim laps to clear her head, Ophelia caught the scent of white narcissus again. But it was impossible! There were no flowers in her room.

     And yet the fragrance was there, thick and cloying, making her sick to her stomach. Frantically she went through the oils and lotions provided by the resort, dumping shower gels and body washes down the drain, rinsing the bottles. She went through the drawers and shelves—had a prior guest left behind a rotting bouquet of white flowers, now turning brown, decaying, filling the air with their sweet death-scent?

     She found nothing. And finally she realized the perfume was in her mind. But why? What did the white narcissus mean?

     
Zayde
Abraham, that day many years ago. Ophelia sitting on his lap. What had happened?

     "Ophelia has been a fighter since she was very little," Mrs. Kaplan proudly told David when the two had started dating. "Always competitive. Even at age six. Had to be the best at everything."

     As Ophelia now fought the fragrance that was making her ill, she realized that her aggressiveness somehow stemmed from that moment on her grandfather's lap.

     She suddenly couldn't breathe. She needed to get out, into the fresh desert air, and think. She didn't want to lose David. The one man with whom she could be weak and vulnerable. The one man who saw through her Amazonian bravado and recognized the lost little girl underneath. David, who might head for the hills if he knew she was pregnant.

     Seizing bathing suit and towels, and seating her sunglasses in place, swallowing for courage and praying that the answers would come, Ophelia opened the door and there, in the hall, with suitcase in hand, stood David.

S
ISSY DIDN'T WANT TO HAVE DINNER WITH
A
BBY
T
YLER
. S
HE
wanted to get on a plane and fly to Chicago, march into Ed's room at the Palmer House and say to Linda Delgado how
dare
she steal another woman's husband.

     She had obtained Delgado's phone number. It appeared numerous times on Ed's secret phone bills, coinciding with his stays at the Palmer House. Which meant Ed called her the night before he went to stay there.

     Sissy had done nothing with the new information. Instead she had gone to the Village with Ed's secret credit card and enjoyed a shopping spree, treating herself to new and exotic treats she never would have looked at before, returning to her room with shopping bags full of Godiva chocolates, Hermès scarves, perfume and jewelry, and had sat down for one last, cleansing cry before she dried her eyes and vowed she was going to get through this and on with her life, come what may when she returned home.

     One thing was certain: Ed was not going to get the kids. Two mothers might have rejected her, but Sissy was not going to be like them. Adrian and
the twins were going to know a mother's love. But first she was to have dinner with Abby Tyler. After that, Sissy was going to start planning her new life.

     Well,
after
she had tried one of the resort's fantasy companions. Or two.

     The private investigator's report said:
Baby girl, born Odessa, Texas, May 17, 1972, sold to Johnson family in Rockford, Illinois. Given the name Sissy. In 1990 married Ed Whitboro of Rockford.

     The table in Abby's private dining room had been set with cold dishes—prawns on minty papaya salad with Thai peanut sauce on the side; chilled potato soup; eggs in tomato aspic—so that they would not be disturbed by people serving them. Finally, Vanessa brought Sissy to the bungalow, made introductions and then left.

     With a racing heart, Abby looked at Sissy's eyes and saw the eyes of a hippie drifter thirty-three years ago. And did Sissy also have Jericho's smile, the laugh and dimples of the grandfather Abby had so loved but had driven to an early death because of scandal?

     Abby decanted frosty white wine and invited Sissy to sit. The china and crystal sparkled; a delicate fragrance came from the floral centerpiece. "Ms. Nichols mentioned something about family problems," Abby said as she took the other chair and unfolded her napkin. "Nothing serious I hope."

     "I don't know yet. I think my husband is cheating on me." Sissy wasn't in the habit of divulging personal problems to strangers, but Abby Tyler had a way about her, like a good therapist, listening as if she cared, inviting one to unburden oneself. "I know it's devastating news for any woman, but for me, it's like a triple curse."

     "In what way?"

     "I was adopted when I was a baby."

     Abby's fork stopped halfway to her mouth. "Adopted?"

     Sissy chose a plump prawn, dipped it in the peanut sauce. "I knew from early age, but I didn't know the details until I was older. When I turned eighteen my mother believed I should know the truth. It explained a lot. My mother was a cold woman—my adoptive mother, that is. It wasn't her fault. She couldn't have children and hoped that adopting one would bring out the maternal love. It didn't. I had felt rejected by her all my life. And of course I was rejected by my birth mother."

     "You don't know that," Abby said cautiously, keeping her trembling hands in her lap.

     "Yes, I do. My mother said I wasn't adopted through legal channels."

     Abby sat in frozen silence.

     "My mother told me that the day I was brought to their house, by a man and a woman, the man asked for extra money, which made my father suspicious. My parents had thought the adoption was legal. But the man wouldn't hand them the baby until my father paid an extra five thousand dollars. So he went to the bank and got the cash. He tried to get more information from the couple—where I was born, how my birth mother decided to give me up—but without success. And then a week later the woman showed up on our doorstep and said that for five hundred dollars she would give them the information they wanted."

     Sissy took a sip of wine and Abby struggled to remain calm. Tell me, she thought, tell me you are my daughter.

     Sissy resumed: "The woman gave my father an address in Odessa and he flew there to find my birth mother. It was a home for unwed mothers and the girl had already gone home. More money changed hands and he got the girl's address. She was only sixteen and her parents had forced her to give up her baby."

     Abby felt her hopes start to fade—but she stopped herself. They were dealing with baby brokers, how could they believe anything they were told?

     "My father didn't give them his name or where he lived. He told them he didn't want the girl changing her mind and wanting her baby back. She assured him she wouldn't."

     "And that was it?" Abby said, unable to help herself. "I mean, how can you be sure...?"

     "When I turned eighteen my mother told me the whole story, including my birth mother's name. She said she wouldn't blame me if I wanted to meet with her. And so I did."

     Abby stared at her.

     "I found her in Dallas. When she opened the door and took one look at me, I thought she was going to faint. She let me come inside but it wasn't a happy reunion. She had since married and had more children. She showed
me their pictures. Her daughters looked like my twins. She showed me a picture of herself when she was eighteen and it could have been me. But other than the strong resemblance, there was nothing between us. She had never loved me and never would. So I went away, leaving her in the past."

     "I'm so sorry," Abby said, for Sissy as well as for herself. This woman was not her daughter.

     "It's all right. Since I've been here at The Grove, I've been finding out things about myself. I'm stronger than I thought I was. Ms. Tyler, I don't know how I managed to win that contest, but I am awfully glad I decided to collect the prize."

     Abby offered dessert—chocolate-brownie cake smothered in hot fudge sauce—but Sissy declined, saying she would have dessert later, in her cottage.

     After Sissy left, Abby enjoyed a slice of the rich cake in the solitude of her bungalow, feeling strangely disappointed yet upbeat at the same time. Sissy was not her daughter. That left Ophelia. And now that she thought about it, the resemblance was there.

     But Ophelia had declined all invitations to meet, even for coffee. Abby looked at her watch and considered going to Ophelia's suite, and then remembered that the fiancé was there. He had telephoned that morning and asked for a seat on one of the flights. He wanted to surprise his fiancée, he said. So Abby wouldn't intrude, not tonight. But in the morning she would call over there, invite them both to breakfast.

     Taking the dessert plate into her small kitchen, she returned to the living room to find an envelope on the floor. It had been slipped under her door.

     An ordinary white envelope, no name, no writing on it. Sealed. She was about to open it when she was startled by a knock at the door.

     It was Jack. And she felt the familiar jolt at his sudden appearance.

     "Is this from you?" she asked, holding up the unopened envelope.

     "No."

     She looked up and down the path. "Did you pass anyone?"

     He shook his head. "What is it?"

     "I don't know. I just found it under my door. Please, come in."

     But he remained on the threshold. "I just came to apologize for my behavior this morning. It was unfair of me to treat you that way. I was angry and shouldn't have taken it out on you."

     Jack had hurried back from his drive into the desert with Zeb, eager to talk to Abby, to listen to her accent. But she had been unavailable, involved with resort matters that demanded her attention, and then an evening dinner date.

     Was she purposely avoiding him?

     There was only one thing to do. He had walked straight up the path to her bungalow and knocked on the door.

     She looked up at him now and moonlight sparkled in her eyes—a
warm
sparkle, Jack thought, marveling that only Abby Tyler could make moonlight seem warm. "You don't have to apologize," she said. "It was a terrible thing that happened to your sister. I can understand it must be difficult to talk about."

     And there it was, just as Zeb had speculated: the barest Southern accent. As if she worked at overcoming it.

     After returning from the drive, there was a fax from county records informing Jack that the previous owner of The Grove was Sam Striker. A quick phone call to marriage records and Jack had what he needed. Samuel E. Striker and Abilene Tyler. Married at Los Angeles County Courthouse in 1988.

     Her place of birth was listed as Bakersfield, California, but a call to their courthouse disclosed no birth record for a baby by that name. She must have been born somewhere else, a town she was keeping a secret.

     As she spoke now, suggesting he talk to someone about Nina, saying she knew an excellent grief counselor, Jack listened to the cultivated speech of someone who has overcome an accent. No, not Southern, he decided. Not exactly. Jack would bet the farm on Texas. Because the facts suddenly fell into place.

     Abilene. Tyler. Two Texas towns.

     "Well, that was all," he said, "I just wanted to say I was sorry," and when she invited him inside again, he saw behind her, in the living room, the roll top desk with the folders on it. He still didn't understand why she continued
to lie about knowing Nina. Not just knowing her, but collecting data on her. Jack wanted to just come out and ask, yet he could not as it might jeopardize his investigation. What if Tyler were connected to the murderer? She could tip him off and the man might never be found.