Crossing Hathaway (22 page)

Very fucking funny, Ben.

I took a step forward but hesitated. “Can I at least sit in the front with you so I don’t feel like an idiot?”

“Um…” He shoved up his hat to scratch his head. “He didn’t say anything about that so I suppose it’d be all right.”

I climbed in the front and buckled myself in while Bill rushed around, yanked open the driver’s door, then plopped down beside me. The engine purred as we drove into the street.

“Aren’t you going to ask me where we’re going?” I shifted in my seat.

“Nope. Mr. H. already gave me your parents’ address.”

I sank farther into the soft leather, wishing it would swallow me whole. “Of course he did.”

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing.”

My phone vibrated against my hip. Whoever had messaged me could damn well wait until after my visit with Mom.

“I’m Bill, by the way. I’m his Chief of Night Security.” He cast a glance at me. “Are you like, his cousin?”

Fuck. Here we go.
“No.”

“Business associate?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Why do you need to know?”

His shrug held nonchalance. “I’ve worked here for eight years and I’ve never taken a girl anywhere for him. Just curious is all. You can’t be his girlfriend so I thought maybe you might like to—”

“I don’t date.” The words came out pointed as I stared forward. My heel bounced up and down. If my relationship with Ben crumbled like my aching heart thought it might, that rule would be reinstated.

“Ah, ’scuse me, ma’am.” His breath quickened. “Please don’t tell Mr. Hathaway I went and upset you. I need this job.”

Shocked at the turn in conversation, I hung my head for a moment and then turned to stare at him. “Relax, Bill. If Mr. Hathaway fires you over something so stupid, he and I’ll have words. I didn’t mean to snap at you, but can we please stop talking?”

He gripped the steering wheel and gave a curt nod.

The iPhone rang its rock song, but I ignored it. I shouldn’t have been so annoyed over the car thing. Ben did offer to see me to Mom’s safely, but still, he should have known it would cause trouble with Dad. I hoped he wasn’t there yet.

Ten minutes later, we arrived in front of my parents’ white bungalow. Bill walked me to the door.

“Thanks for the ride. I’ll call you around nine.” I held up the business card Ben had given me with a cell phone number written on the back.

Bill smiled and looked me up and down with a subtle lick of his lips while I tugged my jacket tighter around me. Somehow I still felt exposed under his stare.

I waited for a moment, but he never moved. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Nope. Mr. H. was quite adamant that I stay put until you’re ready to go, ma’am. I’ll be watching the house from the car.”

Deep breaths, Eva.
Next time, I’d be requesting a different guard, though I’d have to choose my words carefully. Just because I didn’t like the guy didn’t mean I wanted to get him fired. I waited until Mr. Creepy returned to the limo before I knocked on the white door. It opened a moment later, revealing my thin, tear-stained Mom.

“Hey, Mom.” I offered a tiny smile.

New tears spilled from her eyes as she leaped forward and held me, rocking me side to side. “Thank you. I wasn’t sure you’d ever come here again after the way we’ve treated you.”

“Let’s go inside.” I took her hand and led her into the warmth of the living room. A quick glance around the neat space made me raise an eyebrow. No sulking man in the recliner with papers scattered around him. I realized I hadn’t smelled the faint hint of car exhaust and oil that always clung to his work coat in the front hallway. “Where’s Dad?”

Mom’s eyes turned harder than I’d ever seen them, and she gave a poor excuse for a smile. “Oh, he’ll be along if he knows what’s good for him.”

A little shake of my head and a closer look at her lips pressed into a hard line made me dismiss the thought that I’d misheard her. “Are you saying you didn’t let him come back even after he talked to me?”

“If he’d explained himself well enough to you, you would have come home right away.” She ran fingers along the oak mantel over the gas fireplace, her gaze following their path as if looking for the tiniest grains of dust to be cleaned.

“So, you really don’t know what happened that night with Grandpa? I don’t believe it was only what Dad said, that Grandpa told him I’d find my birth parents and break his heart. Dad’s not an idiot, or gullible.”

“He won’t talk to me about it.” Mom’s voice fell low into a forced whisper. “I told him if he didn’t tell you the truth, tonight, I’ll divorce him and find someone who isn’t a miserable, bitter man to grow old with. Someone who will appreciate the fine young woman my daughter has become.”

My stomach rolled over. I reached out to her. “Mom—”

She took my hand in her cold one and stared at me the way she did when she’d set her mind on something and wouldn’t be diverted. Although she didn’t pick battles often, once she did, nothing could sway her. “This isn’t just about you anymore, Evangeline, so please, no guilt, all right? I’ve let this go on for far too long. You were right about that.”

My respect for her grew. “I know it was his idea to keep the letter from me so I forgive you. But don’t ever lie to me again—I can’t take it. I won’t.”

“I’ve told you all I know, and I swear I’ll never keep anything from you again.” She pressed her lips to my forehead and wiped the spot with her fingers to remove her pink lipstick as she always did. “Your father tells me you might be in some kind of trouble. Is that why the man who brought you here is still in his car out front?”

My smile vanished. Mom was more observant than I’d given her credit for. I opened my mouth while my brain floundered for words I could say without lying. The ringing of her phone saved me the hassle.

Mom picked up the cordless handset from the table beside the sofa. “Hello—yes, this is she—what?” The pink in her cheeks faded to white. A moment passed before the phone dropped out of her hand and crashed on the hardwood, the battery pack breaking free and skidding across the floor.

“Mom?” I lunged forward and caught her just as her knees gave out.

I held Mom’s trembling hand as we sat in the hospital waiting room. The scent of alcohol and sickness wrinkled my nose and made bile rise up my throat. The incoherent babbling of an old woman echoed down the hallway, punctuated by another’s shouted obscenities that would make a porn star blush. I really hated hospitals.

Bill, who’d driven us, stood in the corner talking to Ben on my iPhone. I wouldn’t be going back there later, and he’d just have to get over it. An errant thought caught in the back of my mind: if it were me lying in the hospital bed, would Ben come? I shook it off and put my focus back on Mom. He couldn’t help it, and I needed to understand that.

“Are you sure that’s all Randy said, that he thought Dad had a heart attack?” Randy was Dad’s right-hand man at the garage, had been his best friend for years too. I handed her a tissue from the box beside me. I pushed my own fear and panic down and held it at bay—one of us had to keep a clear head.

Mom blew her nose and wiped her eyes. “He called me right after 9-1-1. Randy said he’d do CPR on him until…” Her chin quivered a second before a sob burst out. I wrapped my arms around her, rubbed my hand along her cardigan-covered arm.

“I’m sure someone will tell us something soon.” I held her for a long time and hummed “Hush Little Baby” the way she used to for me when I was sick or upset. Eventually she calmed and relaxed against me.

An hour later, Gran hobbled through the door, her hair pulled back into a tight, white bun. Her face, almost as white as her hair, appeared more wrinkled than normal. “Where is he? What’s happened to my son?”

Gramps wandered in after her in his worn brown cords and tweed old-man hat. He sat in a chair and picked up a magazine without looking at any of us. My mental exhaustion from the previous two weeks, along with his calm demeanor, weakened my self-control and ripped the lid off my anger. It rushed through my veins like fire through dry tinder.

I set my focus on Gran and unlocked my jaw. “We think Dad had a heart attack, but we haven’t been able to talk to the doctor yet and none of the nurses will tell me anything. Can you please sit here with Mom? I need to talk to Gramps.”

Her faded, gray eyes passed between Gramps and me, a shadow of fear behind them. She opened her mouth but closed it again, nodded. I wondered what look I wore and whether or not that had anything to do with her swallowing her protest.

I strode over to Gramps and leaned down to his ear. “Come out in the hall with me, old man. I need to talk to you.”

His cold blue eyes looked up at me. “I’m busy.”

I ripped the magazine from his hand and threw it on the pile in the basket beside his chair. “Now you’re not. Don’t make me drag your wrinkled ass into the hallway. Don’t think I won’t.”

A glance over my shoulder revealed Mom and Gran leaned forward in their chairs, watching the two of us with wide eyes. They sat back and stared at one another. My reasonable half told me a hospital wasn’t the place for the conversation I needed to have, but my other half didn’t give a flying monkey shit.

Aided by a series of grunts, Gramps pushed himself up and followed me into the hallway, grumbling to himself. I walked along, peering into doors. When I found a room with no occupants, I slipped inside, waited for Gramps to come in after me, and shut the door.

“What do you want?” Gramps stared toward the window, his arms held straight at his sides.

“How dare you waltz in here while your son is lying in the hospital and pick up a magazine as if you don’t give a fuck whether he lives or dies?”

He harrumphed and shook his head.

“God, really?” I raised my palms to the ceiling. “You want to be a prick, fine, but you’re going to tell me what I want to know. Dad won’t tell me the truth about what happened the night he told you about my adoption so spill it and make it fast—I need to get back to Mom.”

The bold defiance faded from his glassy gaze as it landed on me.

“Yeah, I thought that might wipe the smug look off your face. Whatever you said or did to Dad changed him in every way according to Mom. He made my life miserable, and hers, and probably his own, and I think you’re at least half to blame for that. I want to know why.”

The haggard old man glanced at the door, poised to take a step toward it, but I walked past him and pressed my back against it.

“I’m not taking blame for nothing.” He jabbed a stubby, cracked nailed finger toward me. “The only one responsible for your shit life is the teenage whore mother who got knocked up and tossed you away like garbage.”

Stunned, I gaped at him for a long time before the tornado in my mind quieted long enough for me to find words. “I guess that explains why I didn’t see much of you when I was growing up. Why you never came for Sunday dinner, and why you were never around when we came over to your house. Gran always said you were working, but now I see the truth. You’re just a bastard.”

His gaze fell to the floor, a scowl twisting his features into a wrinkled mess.

“What do you have against adopted children, Gramps?” A mutinous tear leaked out against my will and I hurried to wipe it away with my sleeve. I would not let him see me cry. “What is so horrible about me that you’d cut your whole family out of your life?”

“Your dad is not my son, and you’re not family.” The words came out low with a pause between each one.

I scratched my head, the knot in my stomach tightening until it hurt. “Come again? Are you saying Dad’s adopted?”

Gramps upper lip curled up in a snarl, and he went to the window, stared into the night shade falling over the city beyond. “I didn’t say he was adopted.”

An idea struck me dumb for a span of a few breaths. I took a step closer to Gramps. “Gran had an affair.”

He uttered a sound of disgust and rubbed his hair beneath his hat. “He was a daily reminder of my failure as a man.” Gramps turned, his lifeless eyes boring into my skull. “I couldn’t give her a baby so she took up with a neighborhood man.” His stare drifted back to the window, and hatred seeped into his voice, tainting the words that came like poison to my ears. “Didn’t find out he was a bastard until the boy was damn near ten years old.”

“Dad never knew, did he? Not until that night when everything changed.”

Gramps nodded. “Told him he wasn’t no man, neither, because he couldn’t spawn one of you. He couldn’t be mad at me ’cause he wasn’t my son and I was glad of it. Can’t love another man’s kid. Just the way it is.”

“You bitter, selfish old man! Drowning in your own self-pity is one thing, but to destroy your son after he found happiness again is downright heinous. So that’s why he hates me, because I reminded him he couldn’t give Mom a baby and because you made him believe bastards are worthless?” I roared wordlessly. “Shame on you for saying it, and shame on him for believing it! If you’d gotten over yourself, we could all be a family together, and Dad—”

A nurse popped her head through the door. “What’s going on in here?”

I hadn’t realized my voice had risen to a shout. Without another look at Gramps, I sped past the nurse and muttered, “Sorry.”

Bill paced in the hall and stopped when he caught sight of me.

I plodded into the waiting room in zombie fashion with Ben’s driver following behind. My mind couldn’t handle any more shocks, so it idled, functioning only well enough to move one foot in front of the other. A red-haired woman in green scrubs sat across from Mom, speaking in a low voice, a clipboard resting on her knees. Mom looked up and held out her hand when she saw me.

It took a moment for me to climb back into my head from the dark place I’d gone. Unable to read Mom’s expression, I ran forward and crouched beside her chair. “What’s going on?” The lump forming in my throat choked off my air. “He isn’t—”

“He’s stable,” the woman said, the doctor I presumed, brushing a few strands of hair away from her pale, freckled face. “He’s drifting in and out of consciousness, and he keeps insisting to talk to someone named Eva.” She stood, tucked her clipboard under her arm, and stared down at me. “Is that you?”