Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) (36 page)

“And once Nick was dead, the only person who knew about the will besides Quinn and the Hunters—was Zale.”

The front door opened and the uniformed policeman poked his head in. Bright sunshine was shining on the cars at the curb, and a group of people was standing behind the cop.

“Detectives, there are several individuals out here who insist on talking to these folks. They say they’re family.” Molly had been moving her head from side to side, trying to see who was standing outside her door. Suddenly she called out, “Gramma Josie?”

B. J. accompanied Josie into the house, and behind them came my brother, Pit. We all hugged and carried on while the cops stood off to one side and watched, their hands scratching and fidgeting as though this display of affection made them nervous.

B. J. explained that he had been over at my cottage taking care of Abaco and waiting for me to return home when Pit arrived. The two of them were there at my cottage at something like two in the morning when Gramma Josie called, saying she’d had a dream about her great-grandson and needed to come to Fort Lauderdale.

“Pit and I got in my truck and went out to pick her up. We didn’t know what else to do,” he said. “She insisted we drive her here, and here you all are.”

Pit and Molly were smiling shyly and talking, saying the “Hello, gee, you sure look good” stuff that people say when they haven’t seen or spoken to each other in years. It sure looked like my brother was having an easier time of it than I had.

The detectives told us that they were leaving then, that they would probably be calling on us again for more statements and certainly later for testimony, but for now, they knew we needed some quiet time with family. Detective Mabry walked over and whispered something to Jeannie, and though it was hard to see past the two of them standing side by side, from the way he jumped a little and grinned at her, I swear, I think she grabbed his ass.

As all the adults hovered around the door, I helped Josie to a chair. I could have sworn she was staring at Zale across the room, sitting at the dining room table, but I didn’t think she could really see that well. Her interest in the boy, though, made me look, and now that I had, I realized he was reading some other papers from his father’s case. In one hand he held a stapled sheaf of papers that had been inside a manila envelope, and in the other hand he had what looked like a letter. He turned from the letter to the group of adults, and I realized he was staring at my brother.

“Zale,” I said. “Are you okay?”

Molly looked at her son. “Honey? What is it?”

Pit walked over to the boy. “Hey, man, I hear you pulled off quite a feat of sailing skill last night.”

Zale handed him the letter. Pit cocked his head, shrugged his shoulders, and started to read. As he read, he reached out for a dining room chair without taking his eyes off the page and lowered himself into the chair. When he got to the end of the document, he looked up at Molly.

Molly said, “Would somebody tell me what’s going on here?”

Gramma Josie chuckled as though she already knew.

Molly glanced at Josie, puzzled, then said, “Pit, what is that?”

Pit looked back down at the document in his hand and started to read.

Dear son,

If you are reading this, it means I am gone. I want you to know how much I love you and how proud I am to be your father. You made me a better man than I ever would have been without you. I always told you I would never lie to you, so there is a final truth I want you to know.

Last year when you had your physical for the International Sailing Association, I asked our doctor to run some other tests. The results of those tests are in the report enclosed with this letter. I hope you will always consider me your true father, but the tests confirmed something I had suspected for several years. You have another father. Your mother was in love with another man when I first met her. I believe he is your biological father. Now that I am gone, the truth will come out, and I wanted you to learn about this from me.

Some people will remember me as a real son of a bitch, but others have always seen me as a generous man. I want you to be happy, son, so always look on my death as a time not when you a lost a father, but when you gained a new one.

Love always,

Dad

When Pit finished reading the letter, everyone in the room turned to look at Molly. She stood with her head lowered, staring down at her hands, rubbing the palm of one hand as though there were some sort of stain she could rub off.

“Mom?” Zale said. “Is that true?”

When she did look up finally, she didn’t look at her son or at my brother. She looked at me.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s true. When I found out I was pregnant, I panicked. Pit,” she said, turning to face him. “You weren’t ready to settle down with a baby and a wife. You’re too much of a free spirit. It would have killed you.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but stopped. I knew it was true, and I think my brother was too honest with himself to say otherwise.

“Nick had been giving me the hard press for weeks,” Molly said. “He knew I was going with Pit, but he always used to say I was the girl he was going to marry. So I went out with him once and we eloped the next day. I’m sorry about the lies. I’m sorry about all the hurt I caused. But I was young, and I did what I thought was best.”

Pit dropped the letter and turned to Zale. “Hey, I don’t know what to say. That’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?”

Zale nodded, looking at my brother as though afraid of what would come next.

“You’ve just lost your dad, and I know that still hurts. And I know that I couldn’t ever presume to take Nick’s place in your heart or in your life. But I just found out I’ve got a son.” He paused at hearing the words come out of his mouth. “I’ve got a son.”

It was impossible to say which one of them moved first, they just came together and hugged, my brother and his son, both of them laughing and crying at the same time.

I don’t think anyone else noticed the tears on Molly’s cheeks.

I stood up and crossed the room and took my friend in my arms. “I’m so sorry for all those years lost,” I whispered.

“Me, too,” she said.

We didn’t have to say the rest of it. It was as though some muscle in my body that had been holding tight in a cramp for thirteen years just let go.

We looked across the room at Pit and Zale standing next to each other talking. “Look at them,” I said to her, knowing that she would know I was talking about the resemblance. “How did we not see it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I figured Nick knew.” Maybe if I had seen the kid as a baby and looked at his Greek father and part-Seminole mother, I would have realized this fair-haired boy was something strange. But meeting him as I had, and under these circumstances, I never guessed. Maybe that had been part of Molly’s plan.

Jeannie was sitting on the couch, and she picked up the will that was resting on the coffee table. “Hey, Molly,” she said as she read down the document. “This will is different than the first one Nick wrote right after your divorce. Significantly different.”

“Really?” Molly said, though she didn’t sound all that interested.

“Yeah, really. Like, for example, you and your son inherit Pontus jointly, and you are expected to run the company.”

“What?”

“Yup, says so right here.”

“No!” Molly said, and everyone laughed.

B. J. said, “You must be the only person in history who ever acted like that when told they were about to inherit millions.” B. J. turned to me and draped his arm across my shoulders. “I knew I liked this friend of yours.”
 

“But I’m not a businessperson,” Molly said.

Zale laughed. “Mom, you sound like me when I complained that I was just a kid. It’s like Seychelle told me. We’ll hire people to do that.”

After that, B. J. and Molly went into the kitchen to make pancakes for everyone. I volunteered to go in B. J.’s place, but he made some comment about everybody having lived through enough life-threatening situations for one day, and he shooed me away.

When we’d eaten our fill, Gramma Josie called out my name and motioned for me to go sit next to her. I sat in the chair Molly had just vacated.

“What is it, Gramma Josie?”

“I need to show you something. You brother, too. You drive.”

“I can’t right this minute, Gramma Josie. I don’t have my car here.”

“I do,” Jeannie said, and given the way she was smirking at B. J., I had the feeling this was something the two of them had planned. In the end, everybody wanted to go see what Gramma Josie wanted to show Pit and me, and we all piled into Jeannie’s minivan.

Josie told Jeannie to drive downtown, onto Las Olas, heading east. Just after the shopping district, she told us to turn into the neighborhood on the right. After a couple of blocks, past a large church, she directed Jeannie toward an old vine-covered house I recognized. It was squeezed in between the larger, more luxurious estates, but on the other side of the house, it fronted on the river. I had motored past this house a hundred times in
Gorda
. Though I couldn’t see it when we got out of the car, I knew there was a beautiful classic wooden sailboat moored on the other side.

Gramma Josie took Pit and me by the hands and led us through a side gate that led through a small courtyard and on to the back of the house. Everything was overgrown and unkempt. Whoever lived in this house had really let it get away from them.

When we walked into the backyard, we saw a group of several chairs, but there was only a single woman sitting alone. She rose and turned when she heard us approach, and I was astonished to see that it was Mrs.Wheeler, who had tried to avoid me whenever I tried to speak to her. Now, she was frowning at the sight of us. Josie walked up to the woman and took her hand without saying a word. I thought maybe Josie had brought us there to thank her for her part in identifying Nick’s killer, but when I saw the way the women held hands, the way they communicated without having to use words, I suddenly realized that Faith Wheeler was the little white girl who had taught Josie how to speak English at the trading post.

Josie turned to Pit and me and said, “Seychelle, Pit, meet your grandmother.”

XXX

Of all the things that I had been thinking on the drive over and the walk around the house, that didn’t even come close to being something I’d considered. “What?” Pit and I said in unison.

Mrs. Wheeler stepped forward and offered us her hands palms up. We grasped her hands and tried to look enthusiastic. I wasn’t too sure about how Pit felt, but I felt like we had just fallen down the rabbit hole. She asked us to sit with her and listen, and it wasn’t like we could say no. Besides, I thought, glancing at B. J.’s smug expression, I was waiting to hear the punch line.

We all sat out on the old wood deck chairs. Zale and Molly sat side by side cross-legged in the grass.

“I’ve been watching you for a long time,” she said. “All your lives, really. You lived just up the river, but it was always a distance I couldn’t cross. My second husband thought maybe I should tell you all after Annie died, but I knew your father would never forgive me.”
 

“I don’t understand,” I said. “We have a grandmother we’ve never met? Why? What happened?”

“It’s a long story, and it’s not one I’m particularly proud of.” Her veined hands fidgeted in her lap. She looked over in Josie’s direction. The old Indian woman was nodding' and rubbing her lips over her teeth. “I’ve imagined this day so many times. Now it’s here and I just don’t know where to begin.”

“We have so many questions,” I said. “Who are you, and why haven’t we ever met you before?”

“Okay,” she said. “Well, my name was Faith Hitchings when my daughter Annie was born right here in this house,” she began, and with those words, I suddenly realized it was true. This woman
was
my grandmother. “Your grandfather and I, we’d been trying to have a baby for years, but God does not always provide. When we finally did get pregnant, she was the most beautiful little baby girl you’d ever seen. But we soon learned that our Annie was a headstrong girl, too. We were so happy to have her, we indulged her. More often than not, she got her way. Her father died when she was in high school, and I spoiled her even more after that. When she was a grown girl and off in college down at the University of Miami, she came home one weekend and met a fella over at the Elbow Room.
 

“I thought he was a common boy, not good enough for her, and I told her so. We argued. She said she’d fallen in love with her sailor and wanted to marry him. I told her if she did that I would never speak to her again as long as she lived. They ran off to the Bahamas the next week and were married, and for once in my life, I kept my word to my child.”

At first I swallowed hard, unable to speak.
 
Then I said, “
Oh my God
,” and shook my head from side to side. “Mom knew you lived right here and she never spoke to you? She never brought us to visit you?”
 

She’d taken a handkerchief out of her pocket and was twisting and pulling at it in her lap. She nodded. “Annie and Red lived in an apartment when you children were little, but I knew from realtor friends of mine that they were looking for a house on a canal. I bought the house and had the realtor offer it to them at a steal of a price. They never knew it was me—never would have bought it if they’d known, and once Josie’s daughter moved there too – from then on I’d get news about you all from Josie or from a few other friends I had who knew about my family. I’ve always watched you on the river ever since you were both such little things scrambling all over that boat of your daddy’s. I knew the sound of
Gorda
's engine, and whenever she passed, I’d watch from behind the curtains.”

“Is this the house you grew up in?” I asked.

“Yes, my daddy had this house built for us in 1920. Josie wasn’t allowed to come here when we were girls, but later, after mother died, Josie visited whenever her family came to town. It was after the war when your mother was born. Things were different then. Fort Lauderdale was booming. Your grandfather bought that boat,” she indicated the little yawl with the varnished trunk cabin and teak decks, “and we used to go on lovely sails with Annie, when she was young. In fact, we named the boat for our daughter. Would you like to see her?”