Birthright (22 page)

Once Aaron was seated, Harrison settled into his chair and lifted a document from a folder on his blotter. He skimmed it, then lowered it and assessed Aaron. “I’m not sure how well you knew Mr. Steele.”

“Not well at all,” Aaron admitted. “I mean, I knew who he was. I talked to him a few times. He used to come to all the high-school basketball games. I played for one year on his son’s team, when Jacob was a senior.”

Harrison nodded. “I thought it would be best if you came into the office to hear about your bequest, rather than my writing you about it in a letter. It just…well, it may surprise you.”

“It’s money, right? You said in your letter—”

“Yes, it’s money.”

“Steele and I had talked about his contributing to
a summer basketball program I’m running. I figured that’s what this is about.”

“He left you one hundred thousand dollars,” Harrison said.

Aaron blinked. Coughed. He glanced toward the window overlooking the square, then turned back to the lawyer, who continued to gaze steadily at him. There was no sign the guy was joking, no evidence he was delusional. No reason to believe this was anything but reality.

“Excuse me?” Aaron asked. He must have misheard. It made no sense that Steele would have left him—

“One hundred thousand dollars.”

“For my summer basketball program?”

“For you, Mr. Mazerik. To do with as you wish.”

“One hundred thousand dollars?”

“That’s a one with five zeroes after it.”

“I…” Aaron sank back in his chair, too stunned to find that number anything but preposterous. “I don’t get it.”

“It was Mr. Steele’s wish that you receive this.” Harrison opened the folder, pulled out a check and handed it to Aaron. “There may be some tax ramifications to a bequest this large, so you’ll want to discuss it with your accountant.”

Aaron didn’t have an accountant. He hadn’t needed one—until now. He stared at the check lying before him on the desk. It was made out to him, all right, “Mazerik” spelled correctly, and the figure on it was just as Harrison had described it: a one followed by five zeroes.

“I don’t get it.”

“There’s nothing to get, Mr. Mazerik. Mr. Steele made some unusual personal bequests. Yours was one.”

“Who else got an unusual personal bequest?” he asked. Lily obviously hadn’t. Being left a few paintings from Steele’s collection made perfect sense. Being left
anything
made sense, since her family had a relationship with Steele. She’d gotten her first paints from him as a four-year-old.

Aaron had never gotten anything from the man. Now, Steele was dead and…Something cold nipped the length of his spine. Something cold and eerie and ominous.

“Mr. Steele included many Riverbend citizens in his will. He was very close to this town, and he left a lot of people bits and pieces from his estate.”

“A hundred thousand dollars isn’t bits and pieces. It’s a small fortune.”

“He obviously had a special feeling about you,” Harrison said, shrugging. “I assumed he was close with your family. Your mother picked up her bequest this morning.”

“My mother?” Aaron struggled to breathe, to remain in his chair as suspicion closed in on him.

“Evie Mazerik?”

“She is your mother, isn’t she?”

“What did Steele leave her?” Suspicion closed in on him.

Harrison must have read the change in Aaron’s mood. His manner changed, as well, transforming from amiable to uncomfortable. “Money,” he said quietly.

“How much?”

“I think you’d better discuss that with her.”

A deeper chill gripped Aaron, an icy bite at the base of his skull. He stared at the check for another moment. It seemed malevolent to him, tainted, the multicolored anti-forgery printing of the numbers, the double signatures on the bottom line, Aaron’s name across the center of it: Pay to the Order of Aaron Mazerik…It scared the hell out of him.

Without taking the check, he shoved out of his chair, spun on his heel and stalked out of the office. By the time he reached the front door, he was running.

A
RMED WITH HIS OWN KEY
, he didn’t bother ringing the doorbell. He unlocked the front door, charged up the flight of stairs and jammed his key into the door at the top. His mother opened it before he could twist the knob.

“Aaron!”

He couldn’t tell if she was surprised or dismayed to see him. To decipher her enigmatic expression would have taken more time and patience than he had at that moment. He simply stared at her fluffy red hair, her surprisingly delicate lips, the creases fanning out from the corners of her eyes and etching the skin of her throat.

“How much did he leave you?” Aaron asked.

Evie averted her eyes. “You come barging in, you don’t even say hello—”

“How much?”

She sighed and stepped away from the door, a tacit invitation for him to enter the apartment.

As usual, the dim babble of the television came from the living room, roiling the cigarette-scented air. As usual, dirty dishes were heaped in the kitchen sink. A thick porcelain mug filled with tea stood steaming on the table. He could have pointed out that the late afternoon was too sweltering for hot tea. But
when he saw the sheet of thick creamy stationery lying unfolded next to the mug, he forgot about her choice of beverage.

Two long strides carried him across the small kitchen. Her letter was essentially the same as the one he’d received from Nick Harrison yesterday—that there’d been a bequest and to please make arrangements to come into the lawyer’s office….

“How much?” he asked her again, lowering the letter to the table and turning to her.

“How dare you come in here and ask me these questions?” she shot back. “This is my home, Aaron. You haven’t lived here for fifteen years. You can’t just come in here and act like—”

“He left me a hundred thousand dollars,” Aaron said.

That shut her up. She limped past him and sank into her chair, her gaze still avoiding him. With trembling hands, she shook a cigarette out of the pack on the table and lit it.

“How much did he leave you?”

“He was a very generous man,” she said wearily, facing the window, aiming her smoke at the screen.

“We should just be grateful that for whatever reason, he decided to remember some of the people he met along the way. It’s a kindness, Aaron. I’m not going to question it.”

“I am.” He leaned over her, resting his fists on the table and glowering down at her, even though she stubbornly refused to look at him. “I’m going to question it. Why would a man like Abraham Steele leave me a hundred thousand dollars? Tell me, Mom.”

She shrugged unconvincingly. “How should I know?”

“Did he leave you a hundred thousand dollars, too?”

“Of course not.”

“What do you mean, ‘Of course not’? There’s no ‘Of course’ about any of this. He left me all that money for a reason. He left you money for a reason, too. What were you to him? The lady who refilled his coffee cup when he went to the Sunnyside for breakfast? How much was that worth to him, Mom? Eighty thousand? Seventy-five?”

“Stop it, Aaron.” He heard a plea fraying the edges of her voice. Staring at her profile, he saw tears glimmering in her eyes. “He was a good man.”

“Tell me,” Aaron demanded.

“Tell you what? He left me a much smaller amount. It doesn’t matter.” A few tears escaped and slid down her face, leaving shiny streaks. Not bothering to wipe her cheeks, she took another drag on her cigarette.

“He was my father,” Aaron said, because she wasn’t going to say it. He hadn’t even realized
he
was going to say it until the words came out—and then there they were. Spoken. Almost tangible, four cold, solid links in a chain of truth.

Hearing them astonished him. Hearing her silence, her inability to deny them, astonished him even more. He sank into the chair opposite her and struggled to breathe.

Abraham Steele. The town patriarch. The richest, most powerful man in Riverbend, direct descendent of the town’s founder, bank president, erstwhile
mayor, mover and shaker. Abraham Steele, who’d sat on the bleachers at every damned home game Aaron played in, even after his son Jacob had graduated from high school and the basketball team. Steele had sat through the games, well-groomed and quiet while all around him people were screaming and cheering, flirting and fooling around. He’d come to the games to watch his other son play.

Abraham Steele. Who had never acknowledged Aaron, never come to his house, never waved to him on Main Street. Who had never smiled at him, never touched his arm, never ruffled his hair. Never taught him how to dribble a ball or repair a clock. Never bailed him out of jail or any other kind of trouble. Never sat beside him in the living room and asked him what he was learning in school.

One hundred thousand dollars. Was that the price of an unwanted son? Was that the money Steele had paid to bail himself out of fatherhood?

“I loved him,” Evie murmured, her tears falling freely now. “I loved him, Aaron. Okay? The rest doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” he retorted, shock and rage constricting his throat, making him hoarse. “How could he buy us off like this?”

“He didn’t buy us off. He left you money because you’re his son. He left me money because I’m your mother.”

“He left you money because you kept your mouth shut all these years. You protected him. You let him off the hook.”

“I loved him,” she repeated, her voice dissolving into a moan, her hand still shaking as she lifted the
cigarette to her lips. She inhaled, then shook her head. “Don’t you see? He was a gentleman. He was good to me. He talked to me. He told me I was beautiful, treated me like a lady.”

“You weren’t a lady. You were his whore.”

His mother slapped him. He heard the blow more than felt it, a sharp clap of sound in the stuffy kitchen. “Don’t you ever say that. He loved me!”

One slap wasn’t going to stop Aaron. The agony inside him was so bad the sting of her fingers went forgotten. “Sure he loved you. He loved you enough to abandon you when you got pregnant. He paid you to keep your mouth shut. What is this inheritance supposed to be? A final thank-you for staying out of his life and leaving me in the dark? He could have done anything he wanted! He was Abraham Steele. This town revolved around him! If he loved you, he would have accepted you into his life. And accepted me, too.”

“He was married! How could he have accepted me?”

“He accepted you just fine when he was having an affair with you. Then what? You told him you were pregnant and he took a powder? Or did he tell you he’d give you some money to go see a special doctor in a distant city and have ‘the problem’ taken care of? Was that what he asked his beautiful lady to do? Or was he a real gentleman, saying you could go ahead and have me, as long as you went to that distant city and put me up for adoption? Let me guess—you were a lady until you decided to stay in town and have me here. Then you just became an
expense. A cheap woman who threatened his nice, comfortable existence.”

“It wasn’t like that!” She was sobbing. “He loved me! If I hadn’t got pregnant, he would have kept seeing me.”

“I ruined it for you, huh?”

“What could he do? He was married! He was a good man, Aaron.”

“He was a son of a bitch. He used you and he discarded me like a piece of trash.”

“He was the best thing that ever happened to me.” She cupped her hands over her eyes as she wept, her grief deeper than Aaron could comprehend.

But he comprehended this: Abraham Steele was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Aaron was not. No wonder she had protected Abraham from him. In all the years since Abraham had deserted her and her bastard son—
his
bastard son—she still believed her affair with Abraham had been the best thing in her life. If his will hadn’t slapped Aaron in the face even harder than his mother’s hand, she would have kept Abraham’s secret forever. She never would have told Aaron.

She loved Abraham. Their son had never mattered to either of them.

He shoved away from the table, knocking his chair over from the force of his anger. Not bothering to right it, he stalked out of the kitchen. The muted sounds of his mother crying followed him out the door.

B
Y EIGHT O’CLOCK
Lily gave up. The coq au vin had been done an hour ago, the rice steamed and cooled.
She wrapped everything, put it in the refrigerator and tried to keep from panicking.

He’d given her his phone number that morning, and she’d dialed it four times in the past hour. No answer. She’d tried his office at the high-school gym. No answer. She considered phoning the police and asking if there had been any accidents—but if there had been, if Aaron had been hurt, her father would have contacted her. He was the doctor with seniority in town. He’d know if someone had been injured in a car accident, and if Aaron had been injured, her father would have gotten word to her.

So Aaron hadn’t been in an accident, at least not in Riverbend. Had he left town? Why would he? And why without telling her? Just that morning he’d cuddled up with her in bed, holding her as if she was precious to him, as if their love was the most precious thing in the world. She’d told him she was going to make an amazing chicken dinner for him, and she had. He’d promised to sleep late with her tomorrow.

He’d told her he loved her, and she understood that
love
was a word that didn’t come easily to him. He wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t meant it.

So what had happened? Where was he?

Standing in the doorway of her dining room, she pressed the redial button on her cordless phone’s handset and lifted it to her ear. While it rang, she surveyed the beautifully arranged table, the candles waiting to be lit, the elegantly folded napkins and silverware, the empty crystal wine goblets. She’d wanted tonight to be festive, a treat for them both, a celebration of their love.

At the tenth ring she pressed the disconnect button.

She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to fall apart. Something was wrong, but until she knew what it was, she saw no point in becoming hysterical.

Instead, she carried the phone back to the kitchen, gathered her purse and keys, and left the house.

The late-evening air was cool, but she kept the top down on her car. She wanted the dark breezes to press against her face. She wanted to hear the distant chatter of irrigation systems spraying the fields. She wanted to smell the damp earth and the green of flourishing crops. She wanted the night to envelop her.

She drove to River Road. Loose pebbles bounced against the underside of her car. She would check Aaron’s cabin first. Perhaps he’d slipped in the shower and was lying unconscious on his bathroom floor. Or he’d gotten stuck somehow—a bookcase had fallen on him, pinning him—and he’d been going nuts, unable to reach his ringing phone. She would rescue him. She’d save his life. They’d eat the chicken another night.

His cabin was nearly dark; she almost drove past it before catching sight of the unpaved driveway in the beam of her headlights. She coasted slowly to the end by the shed where he stored his firewood and shut off the engine. His car was there. She wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.

Night sounds settled gently around her—crickets, frogs, wind sifting through the trees—as she got out of her car and walked the path to the house. Through the front window, she spotted only a single lamp burning inside, one small amber dot of light in the
house. Pushing past her anxiety, she knocked on the front door, then twisted the knob. Locked.

She shielded her eyes and peered through a window. All she saw was the glow of that one lamp, which stood on the counter separating the front room from the kitchen. No sign of life in the house.

But his car was in the shed. Had he gone off somewhere in someone else’s car?

Sighing, she turned back to her own car. If she got into it, she wouldn’t know where to drive, where to look. She swallowed the worry crowding her throat. What if he’d hiked to the river and fallen in? Surely he could swim, but what if he’d banged his head? She knew the perils of hitting one of the rocks that jutted up from the riverbank.

Aaron,
she thought, her heart thumping.
Aaron, where are you?

She strode around his cabin. Dead twigs and mulch crunched under her sandals; underbrush tugged at her shins and knees. The stairs to his deck beckoned. She climbed them, not sure what she hoped to find at the top.

So little light reached the deck it took her a minute to make out the motionless body on the hammock. A minute longer, and she discerned one long leg dangling over the side of the canvas, the bare foot reaching the floorboards. An object was propped on his stomach, held in place between his hands.

“Aaron?”

He slowly turned his head toward her, then pulled the object toward his mouth. As her vision adjusted, she saw that it was a bottle. She heard the scrape of metal against glass as he unscrewed the cap, and the
gurgle of him drinking. She caught a whiff of alcohol, pungent, much stronger than the refined smell of Tyler’s martinis.

What crowded her throat was no longer worry. It was bile.

“Aaron, what are you doing?”

His eyes seemed to take their time focusing on her. He pushed himself higher on the hammock so he was halfway between reclining and sitting. Then he took another swig from the bottle, meticulously screwed the cap back on and shoved himself higher. “It’s been one hell of a lousy day,” he said.

Oh, God, please don’t let him be drunk,
she prayed, although it was probably too late for prayers.
Please, don’t let him be like Tyler.

“You were supposed to come to my house for dinner,” she reminded him, cringing at the shrewish undertone in her voice.

“I forgot.”

Obviously. “What happened?”

“I found out who my father is.” He toyed with the bottle cap, loosening it, tightening it. She closed her eyes and sent another prayer heavenward that he wouldn’t open the bottle all the way, that he wouldn’t drink any more. “It’s not Coach Drummer.”