Secrets (42 page)
Lance sighed. He did not find it morbid to rest his hand on the skeleton’s chest. The flesh had been eaten away, and the bones and remnants of clothing were dusty and dry. If this was his great-great-grandfather’s skeleton, he felt only sadness and reverence.
He swallowed the sudden thickening in his throat. Quillan Shepard deserved better than this. But if he exposed the skeleton now, he’d have to reveal it all. He wasn’t ready yet. He hadn’t found what he needed. Surely Nonna sent him for more than this—too many questions surrounded her sudden disappearance from her home, Vito’s death, and the other inferences in the article.
Lance shined the flashlight on his watch. No time for more. He had to wash up and prepare lunch. Regretfully, he left the bones as they lay and went back through the tunnel to the opening. Climbing out, he realized he was more shaken than he’d realized. Emotion built inside like a tide.
Quillan Shepard left to die in a dark tunnel. His family deprived of their home, their property. Had Nonna intended to come back? Was she prevented? What ugliness lay as buried and forgotten as Quillan’s skeleton? He had to find the truth.
Meeting Sybil suddenly took preeminence. He wished he hadn’t alerted Star. But his actions with Rese required integrity. He’d learn what Sybil had and explain his position. He only hoped what she had was enough.
Gunshots through stone and earth.
Papa!
Nonno falling. Falling, falling.
Cannot catch him; cannot hold them.
Useless arms. Useless hands.
Need. Anger. Pounding sorrow.
R
ese cruised over the Golden Gate Bridge past the tollbooths into the city. Before buying the property in Sonoma, she had lived in Sausalito with her dad. An easy drive across the bay would have brought them in to see her mother. She didn’t understand.
Even if her hospitalization was warranted for a time, why cut her off completely? And why lie? Rese shook her head. That was what she couldn’t forgive. The deception of it all.
And then she recalled her mother’s fear. At first she had thought the whispered threats were part of the game.
“He’ll lock us up if he knows, Theresa. It has to be our secret.”
In the same way, she’d built the suspense in her spooky stories when the lights were low and the house still and silent.
Dad didn’t know how to play. She knew that at a very young age. He came home serious and suspicious. But she loved the way he smelled of sawdust and varnish, his callused hands and strong muscular arms. She loved the size and breadth of him, the look in his eyes when he approved. She didn’t believe he would ever do something to hurt them. The hurting part, that was the game … Walter’s game.
Rese shuddered. Sometimes she’d begged Mom not to invite Walter.
“Let’s play without him, Mommy.”
But Walter always came. Sometimes she imagined him in her room, long after he should have gone away, lurking in the shadows of her closet. That fear was unequivocal, but had she missed the other one she should have feared?
She gripped the steering wheel. Dad took her mother away. He locked her up. All these years, she could have known her, seen her, talked to her. All these years she had missed her. And he never said one word.
Even as he lay dying in her arms he had not spoken of it. As his life drained away, could he not have told her? The memory poured in, Dad gripping her arm, his last words, “Be strong.” Was that it? Mom had not been strong? No one could ever believe her strong. Just soft and beautiful and tingling with mystery.
Everything Rese was not. She’d become the woman Dad expected her to be. Nothing like her mother. She drew a long painful breath. Day by day, moment by moment, he’d annihilated every aspect of Mom from her. How he must have hated her, hated them both.
Sybil wore a simple suit with a clingy silk shell and heels. Very professional, chic, and savvy. Lance hated that it affected him. It was how she moved inside the wrapping, how she caught him with her smile and that hint of wickedness in the eyes. This was the last time. As soon as he knew what she had found, he’d tell her where he stood.
“Something smells good.” She slid him a smile.
“Risotto with shrimp and fresh bay scallops.”
As he led her back to the kitchen, she said, “I was hoping to see you in action.”
“I didn’t want to keep you waiting.” He eyed the envelope she held. “Is that for me?”
“Maybe.”
“What is it?”
“Something that corroborates the first article.”
His chest clenched. So it was true. Vito had been shot down. “From the archives?”
“Not the paper’s.”
He raised his brows. “The police files?”
Smiling, she stroked the envelope with her perfect oval nails. “I was thorough the first time. The police don’t have this; the paper doesn’t have it. Only I do.” She stepped in close, the shell falling loosely enough to demonstrate her intentions. “You should have told me it was personal.”
His heart jumped. “What do you mean?”
“Michelli.” Her gray eyes darkened. “Marco Michelli.”
He swallowed.
Nonno Marco?
Before he could speak, she reached behind his neck, pulled him forward and kissed him.
Head spinning, Lance pulled back. “What are you doing?”
She smirked. “I know you’re an altar boy, but I don’t believe for a minute you’re as innocent as you pretend.”
A purely destructive fire coursed his veins. “I never said I was.”
She slid the envelope to the counter. “Then show me.” She slipped off her jacket and tossed it atop.
His heart pounded. “What does Marco Michelli have to do with Vittorio Shepard?”
She pressed into him. “It’s all in the letter.”
“A letter to whom? And who’s it from?”
“I blocked out those names.”
He searched her face. There was a glimmer on her eyelids, subtle and exotic. Even her freckles added to the allure.
“Let me see it.”
“You can do more than look.”
She had twisted his words and her thought drew his gaze down. He shuddered. “I thought you wanted lunch.”
“Let’s start with dessert.” She took hold of the waist of his jeans.
He caught her wrists. “Sybil. I didn’t mean to give you the idea—”
“My ideas are my own. And I’ve had some very creative ones about—” she pressed in close and whispered against his neck—“right here where you cook.”
The flames torched him like a sinner at the stake. Was this how Rese felt that day with the molesting employees? There was nothing good, nothing right in it. Even as his blood pounded to have her, he felt sickened. He put her back from him. “You misunderstood.”
She dropped her hands to her sides with a knowing glint. “Misunderstood?”
“I thought we were friends.”
“Friends?”
Conviction swept him. He had let her believe whatever she wanted, to get what he wanted. She’d made herself clear from the start. But he had to salvage this somehow. “Sybil…”
“It’s very simple, Lance. You give me what I want; you get what you want.”
He was in over his head. “Sybil … I’m involved with Rese.” She would take that for more than it was, he knew. But the heart of it was true.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Her face was the picture of scorn.
He swallowed. “No.” He wished he’d never invited her into the kitchen. It was Rese’s place, and Sybil did not belong. He saw it so clearly now he could hardly believe he’d made the mistake.
Her eyes took the appearance of glacier ice, and he was the insect frozen inside. But the corners of her mouth tipped up. “I only want—”
The back door opened and Star breezed in. Sybil might remember her from the jazz festival or not. In her funk, Star had been all but invisible that night. He prayed now she wouldn’t make things worse. She fixed Sybil with an utterly guileless smile. “Hello.”
Sybil gave her a withering glance. “Who are you?”
“Lance’s fairy godmother. You must be the wicked stepsister.”
He closed his eyes, then looked again as a noise came from Sybil’s throat. Freckles stark in her paling face, she snatched her jacket from the counter, gave him a deadly stare, then swiped the envelope and stalked out.
He had lost it, the letter that mentioned Nonno Marco. A critical piece, he knew, if Sybil had blocked out names and connected his own. His quest was crumbling, but he looked at Star, her face the image of radiance.
Star power
. He couldn’t blame her. In a very real sense she’d saved him.
Rese entered the facility with dread. Her expectations had made the place more ominous than it was. Attention had obviously been paid to the reception and waiting areas to portray a level of comfort and ease. A privately run facility with quality care at a cost. No wonder she and her father had never gotten ahead.
As she was ushered into the administrator’s office, everyone was friendly and professional.
The office smelled of stale coffee and vinyl blinds. The woman offered her a seat in one of the comfortable chairs in muted hues of green and beige. The nameplate on the desk read Dr. Elsa Whittington. Good thing, because Rese had forgotten the name the moment they were introduced. Dr. Whittington offered her coffee.
“No thanks.” She presented her birth certificate and picture ID, which had been requested as proof of her relationship to Elaine Barrett.
Dr. Whittington poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down. “I must say I was relieved to receive your call. I hated the idea of turning your mother’s care over to the state.”
“I didn’t know she was here.” Didn’t know she was alive.
The doctor sprinkled a packet of sugar substitute into her cup. “Elaine’s been in our care a long time.”
“Fifteen years.”
Dr. Whittington nodded. “I naturally assumed you knew.”
“That would be the expectation.” In a normal scenario where people told the truth. “I thought she had died.”
Dr. Whittington raised her brows delicately.
Get it all out on the table. “The person from Health and Human Services told me she was here. I’m still adjusting to it.”
“It must have been a shock.”
Rese wished she’d taken the coffee. Her mouth was sawdust. “Why is my mother here?”
“Many of the patients here come for rehab or assistance through a difficult time. Others spend their lives under the careful treatments they need.” Dr. Whittington opened the file that lay on the desk. “This is a copy of the court order granting your father guardianship. Also the commitment papers.
It was considered in her best interest to have the level of care she receives in this facility.”
Rese swallowed. “Did the court commit her?”
“Your father, acting in conjunction with the court’s recommendation.”
A surge of injustice. Couldn’t he have defended her? “What did they say is wrong with her?”
“Paranoid schizophrenia.”
Rese ran the words through her mind. They made it sound so … disturbed. “What does that mean?” She’d never studied psychology.
“In lay terms, she doesn’t have a grasp on reality. Her mind creates voices and images that aren’t there, and she interacts with them in dangerous ways.”
Rese’s head whirled.
“I don’t want him to come, Mom. Can’t we play by ourselves?”
“We wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings. We must never hurt his feelings.”
“But he isn’t real!”
She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. That was the first time Mom had slapped her face. Rese swallowed. “Is she cured?”
Dr. Whittington slid more papers toward her. “These are some articles and other materials about the disorder. They’ll help you understand the work we’re doing, the strides made through medication and behavioral counseling.”
“Can I see her?”
The doctor folded her hands. “Ms. Barrett, I’d like to know your expectations.”
“I want to take care of her.” As she had before? She’d been the one protecting, soothing, and comforting as much as Mom did her. They were … equals.
“Take care of her, how?”
“Bring her home.” She hadn’t thought through the details, had simply imagined freeing Mom from the place Dad put her.