Girl of Vengeance (23 page)

Alexandra hurt when she fell down the steps.
I can’t turn my back on you for thirty seconds!

Yes, the words still hurt, but she saw new scenes now, heard new words. Carrie, six years old, throwing a fit because their mother couldn’t play with them. Adelina had been black and blue. She hadn’t gotten off the couch in days.

The police report.

The words had been stark. Incredibly damaging.

Contusions around neck.

Third, fourth and fifth ribs on the right side cracked.

Blunt force trauma.

Her father had been the suspect. The attack had happened
one day
after the report came back showing Carrie wasn’t related to him.

She walked forward into the lobby of the condo, her heels clicking on the floor, and it felt as if she were running a gauntlet.

His voice sounded ragged. Exhausted.

“Hello, Father,” she said. Cautious.

“Julia. Darling.”

She blinked then said, “What do you want?”

“I wanted to talk to my daughters. And Carrie won’t even answer my calls.”

She sighed. “Yet you think I will?”

“You’re my oldest daughter, Julia. We’ve always understood each other.”

She took a breath. “I think you presume a lot more than you ought to. I think you’ve left a lot to be explained.”

“Of course,” he said. “And I’ll answer whatever questions you have. Julia … you and the other girls … you’re all I have.”

She let out a breath. “Not Mother?”

“Your mother is unstable. You
know
that.”

“I don’t know what to believe from you.”

His response was firm. “Believe this. I’ve had the worst day of my life today. I’ve faced the most brutal Senate hearing you can imagine. And I’m devastated that you girls would believe
her
over
me.
After all she’s … done. Julia … please. All I ask is that you listen. Meet me for a drink and we’ll talk. You’ll see. You’re the only one who will listen to me.”

Her mind went to the photos in the police report. Her mother black and blue. The DNA results. The lies about her mother’s age. But then she knew he was right about some things. Her mother
was
unstable. Her mother
had
lied to them all, over and over again. And he was her father. He’d always been the stable one. What if there was a real explanation?

“I don’t know what good it will do.”

“Julia, you’re my daughter. You and I … we’ve always been the closest. I’m begging you. Hear me out.”

She sighed. Then slowly, she said, “All right. Let me tell Crank, and we’ll meet. Where?”

The lounge in the Bethesda Hyatt Regency was small and elegant, sitting just to the side of the open atrium that towered above them. On the other side of the bar, a young man, possibly twenty-five, gently played a highly polished grand piano. It was Tuesday evening, so the lounge wasn’t very crowded, but it was relatively dark. Julia and her father sat at a table in the back corner, far away from the other patrons.

“All right,” she said as the waitress walked away with their drink orders—double whiskey sour for her father and club soda for Julia. She craved a drink right then. But this wasn’t the time. “You wanted to talk. I’m listening.”

He frowned and loosened his tie. Julia blinked then glanced at her purse, resting on the seat of the chair to her left. Her father was one of the most stilted and anal-retentive men she’d ever met. For him to do anything so human as to loosen his tie in public showed a level of discomfort that stunned her. But she kept that reaction to herself. Julia had learned a great deal from both of her parents, and one thing she knew how to do expertly was out-WASP her father. She betrayed no reaction to his discomfort.

“First of all—Julia … I need you to know I’m disappointed. Disappointed that after all I’ve done for you … as close as we’ve been … that you would assume the worst without even giving me an opportunity to explain or defend myself.”

Julia didn’t respond. How could he possibly think his actions were defensible? What could he possibly say?

“Well?” he asked.

She shrugged minutely. “What do you want me to say? I saw the police report. You both lied about Mother’s age. You both lied about Carrie and Andrea’s birth. Dad … the police report … she had broken ribs. She was beaten and raped.”

Richard closed his eyes and exhaled. He didn’t answer right away, but the skin between his eyes formed a furrow just above his nose. He rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and fingers. Julia looked away. She was well aware she had the exact same mannerism when confronted with extreme stress.

“First of all—yes, your mother and I lied about her age. We were … young, and in love. And in Spain it didn’t matter at all that she was seventeen when we married. But I knew full well that would be frowned upon when we went back to the United States. So we publicly fudged the numbers. It never occurred to me it would become a big deal. Who could have predicted how wrong everything has gone in our lives, Julia?”

“And Carrie and Andrea? Dad … that’s not exactly a small lie. She had an affair with a British Prince? For fifteen years or more? Dad, I don’t know about the rest of my sisters, but I feel betrayed. Why did we never know? And the police report? What happened? Why?” She shook her head, speechless. At the word
Prince
his eyes had widened slightly.

“What’s this about a Prince?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Surely…”

Richard shook his head in disgust. “You see? This is just one more example of her lies. She swore to me that Senator Rainsley was the father. It almost destroyed our marriage, you know. I mean … I wasn’t perfect. And as I told you before, when we were in China, I … was briefly involved with another woman. I made my amends. But this … I assume you’re referring to Prince George-Phillip?”

Julia nodded slowly.

His response was fierce. “She never told me
that.
She lied to me about who she’d had the affair with. Or perhaps she slept with both of them. I wouldn’t put anything past her. Julia, I don’t know how you can sit there and make accusations against me when you
know
how unstable she is.”

Julia flinched. Of course she knew her mother was unstable. Not just unstable, but downright crazy sometimes. She closed her eyes, mind drifting back to that awful night in Spain when her mother had collapsed, gibbering in fear. Carrie and Alexandra had been too young to do anything, both of them panicking. They’d arrived in Calella late, it was dark and the streets had been crowded with men and women out partying and drinking. Julia hadn’t known what to do. She didn’t know their grandmother’s address, she didn’t speak Spanish, she didn’t know
anything.
Her mother hadn’t been able to do anything at all to protect her daughters, then or ever.

Why would I want to know? Why would I ask when my oldest daughter had become a drunken slut?

It didn’t matter how much time had passed, or how many times they had nice Friday afternoon chats on the phone. It didn’t matter how much Adelina Thompson had done for Carrie and Sarah after the accident. Those words couldn’t be taken back, ever. She didn’t believe her father, but she didn’t believe her mother either. She didn’t believe anything at all.

Julia slowly nodded. “Yes. I know she’s unstable. But how else am I to interpret that police report? And it happened the day after you found out about Carrie.”

“Julia, yes, I had a paternity test. I’d suspected for a long time that your mother had an affair with Chuck Rainsley. The first time he ever came to our house for dinner, she spent the entire time blushing and chatting with him. I spent a lot of time that spring overseas, mostly in Pakistan and Afghanistan—”

“Anthony Walker said you were probably CIA and not State Department. Is that true?”

Her father blinked and his mouth tightened. “The Post reporter?”

She nodded.

“He’s astute. I was an employee of the CIA for many years, Julia, under deep cover as a diplomat. It’s not all that uncommon. And don’t talk to me about hiding things from you. No intelligence agent tells their children what they do for a living. That would have put you all in significant danger.”

“So why tell me now?”

He shrugged. “I retired twelve years ago. I can’t discuss specific operations with you or anyone, but my employment with the CIA will be widely public by morning. It was disclosed at the hearing today.”

“So back to … the affair. And the police report.”

“Right,” he said, taking a deep breath. “So, I suspected the affair. It was little things. Unexpected moodiness. Did you know that one time she smashed her violin? And left it in pieces on my pillow?”

A sudden flash of memory, one of Julia’s earliest. Carrie was a baby, sitting in her highchair screaming, her little face bright red. She might have been a year old? Julia had been … four? She’d been sitting in the corner, tearing the pages out of a book she’d found. Julia didn’t know if they’d had a nanny then, but she must not have been there that day, because Adelina had seen her and screamed.

Julia, what are you doing?
The scream had startled her, and then Adelina snatched the book out of her hands. Julia remembered blood suddenly on her hands, pouring out of two of her fingers. Paper cuts, she realized now. She’d started to shriek, and Carrie was shrieking, and her mother had grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her toward the kitchen doorway where Carrie’s highchair was. The screaming got louder and somehow they shuffled and Julia could still remember the slow motion when Carrie’s highchair tipped over backward, the terrifying smack as it hit the hardwood floor.

Julia shuddered. Yes. She could easily imagine her mother leaving a broken and smashed violin on her husband’s pillow. Adelina Thompson had been dangerously unstable their entire life. In retrospect, she realized that it was a lucky thing Carrie hadn’t fractured her skull that day.

She redirected her attention to her father, who was still speaking.

“…when the report came in, I confronted your mother. She’d
lied
to me, Julia.
For years
. So, of course, I confronted her. Adelina was hysterical … she went berserk. She screamed at me and threw things. Julia, I swear to you, I would never lay a hand on your mother. I loved her. I always loved her. And you know that. I stayed with her despite her
years
of infidelity. The fact is, Adelina is mentally ill. She always has been. What kind of husband would I be to leave her when she was sick?”

Julia grimaced, shifting uncomfortably. What her father said was true. Her mother
was
clearly mentally ill. Julia had witnessed too many years of panic attacks and anxiety driven freak-outs to come to any other conclusion.

“So what happened?” she whispered.

“She ran. Out the door, and out into the street. I confess, I thought she was just angry, and going for a walk to cool down. Sometimes she did that … Adelina is a passionate woman, but not one who deals with personal confrontation very well.”

No kidding.

“When she didn’t come back after an hour, I called Melissa Brewer and sent you girls over there, and I drove, looking for her. We didn’t have cell phones then, of course, so all I could do was search, then check back at home every once in a while to see if she’d come home. I was frantic.”

As he told the story, Julia found herself nodding. Unfortunately, so far it was completely believable.

“So … by ten that night, I was panicking. I called the police, but they told me they couldn’t do anything until she was gone for twenty-four hours.”

“So what happened?” Julia asked.

“At one am the phone rang. It was Adelina. She was calling from … from a pay phone in the Tenderloin.”

Julia sucked in a breath. Her father looked ashen as he continued his story.

“I immediately went to her. I don’t know if you know what it was like back then—San Francisco now isn’t what it was twenty-five years ago. Back then the whole district was … massage parlors and cabarets. Whores and pimps and drug dealers. Homeless men sleeping in doorways. Junkies and transvestites and derelicts. I found your mother at a bus stop on this filthy street corner. Her clothes were torn and she was glassy eyed—drunk or drugged or I don’t know what. She was battered and bruised and…”

He stopped speaking and stared off into space. Julia didn’t react.

He swallowed and looked back at her. “I don’t tell you this to bullshit you, Julia. It’s what it was. She was in bad shape. I took her to the hospital, and we were hours waiting in the emergency room. Finally they saw her, and that took hours more. It was about three in the morning when the police questioned me. It was routine—they
always
question the husband when a woman is assaulted.”

He sighed and shrugged. “It was awful. Just … awful. Julia … I love your mother. And I second-guessed myself for years. Should I have just let it go and not confronted her? I felt responsible. It’s not as if I didn’t know that she was unstable. And it just got worse. We went to Belgium and … well … you remember her hospitalization.”

Julia stared at the table. Of course she remembered. She remembered every slap, every bitter word.