Haunting Olivia (21 page)

Olivia filled in Camilla on ever ything that was going on.

It took a lot to shock Camilla, but her eyes widened. “Are you sure you’re safe here?”

“I’m staying at Zach’s, so I think so,” Olivia said.

“With your daughter,” Camilla said. “I still can’t believe it. Do you have a picture?”

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Olivia pulled out the pictures of her and Kayla that they had taken the other day and handed them to Camilla.

Camilla sucked in her breath. “She has your hair!”

“Otherwise she looks exactly like her dad.”

“Well, her dad must be very handsome,” Camilla said, “because Kayla is gorgeous. She’s at that awk-ward becoming-a-teenager phase, but I can see it.

She’s going to be a knockout.”

Olivia stared at the photo of Kayla, her heart surg-ing in her chest. “I’m in love with them both,” she said, her eyes suddenly filling with tears.

“Hey, sweetie,” Camilla said, covering Olivia’s hand with her own, “what’s the matter? Everything sounds great between all of you. And now you’re even living with them.”

“I guess I’m a little overwhelmed,” Olivia said. “I don’t want to do anything wrong by Kayla. But I hardly know how to be a mom. Here I am stepping in thirteen years later. What do I know about motherhood?”

“I think I know what this is about,” Camilla said.

“I think it’s about that awful place you visited today.

You left without her the last time you were there.”

“I signed my rights to her away,” Olivia said. “How could I have done that?”

“Olivia, first of all, you were sixteen. Second of all, it doesn’t matter how old you were. When you’re not in a position to take care of a baby, the right thing to do is to sign your rights away so that someone else who can do right by the baby will take good care of her. You were not in a position to take care of a baby then. Not emotionally, financially, or otherwise.”

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“Zach was only seventeen,” Olivia said. “Not much older than I was.”

The waitress delivered their salads and paninis.

Camilla waited until the woman was gone before she leaned in. “I’ll repeat what I just said. It’s not so much the age as the person at the time. Yeah, maybe you could have risen to the occasion when you were sixteen, Olivia, but maybe not. From what you told me, Zach had years of experience relying only on himself, taking care of himself. He knew how to take care of that baby or how to find help, as he did for himself. Maybe your dad knew that.”

“Are you saying my dad thought that I was too immature to care for my baby but that Zach, whom he thought was a total loser, would make a fine father?

Camilla, that makes no sense.”

“I’m saying your father didn’t want his daughter to have a baby at sixteen and he made that baby go away. Poof. Gone. Gone to the baby’s father, a streetwise kid who’d had to raise himself for seventeen years and clearly had something special about him if his own golden child daughter saw something in him.”

Olivia gasped. “You think my dad gave Zach the baby because I supplied Zach with some stamp of approval?”

“By default,” Camilla said. “It happens in fashion and beauty all the time. You know that. Olivia, you won the Inner-Beauty Pageant at fifteen. That told your father, along with all your other achievements, that your voice, your heart, who you are meant something. And the boy you chose to fall madly in love with, to lose your virginity to, to risk getting 198

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pregnant by was Zach Archer. That had to tell your dad something about him.”

Olivia sat across from Camilla stunned. She’d never looked at it that way before, never dared consider that her father actually respected her, albeit in a very bizarre, backhanded manner.

“Camilla, how in the world does the assistant beauty editor of
Glitz
magazine get to be such a genius in the field of psychology?”

“I read a lot of self-help,” Camilla said, pulling out a hardcover titled
Thirty Days to Self-Esteem.

Olivia laughed. “How long have you been reading that?”

“Four months,” Camilla said, cracking up. “But I’m still on chapter three, “Three Days to Demysti-fying the Authority Figure in Your Boss.”

Olivia grabbed Camilla’s hand and squeezed it. “I am so, so happy you came to see me today, Mill. You have no idea how much the sight of you has done for me.”

“Me too, Livvy. So is there anywhere to shop in this town?”

Olivia had a brainstorm. As she filled in Camilla, her friend’s eyes got wide and excited. “Oooh, I love being a spy girl!”

As Camilla and Olivia entered Johanna’s Cashmere Emporium, a bell above the door jangled. Johanna was ringing up a sale at the counter; she glanced at Olivia and frowned.

As the other customer left, Olivia said, “Johanna, this is my friend Camilla. She’s visiting from New York City. She’s an editor at
Glitz
magazine, and HAUNTING OLIV IA

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she’s looking to buy a gift for the fashion editor. I suggested a gorgeous cashmere sweater from a local Maine shop.”

Johanna was flustered. “
Glitz
? Wow. Do you think you might be able to get a mention of my store in the magazine?”

Camilla smiled. “I can certainly try. I’m like this”—she twisted her fingers together—“with the fashion editor.”

Johanna rushed around the counter, falling all over herself to help Camilla choose among styles and colors. “Let me show you what just came in. To die for. So soft! The most gorgeous dark purple.”

In one minute, Johanna had said more to Camilla than she’d said every morning at eight to Olivia.

“Oooh, I think Larissa would love this!” Camilla said. “Don’t you think, Olivia? You were such good friends with her.”

Johanna stared at Olivia. Waiting. Hoping.

Olivia eyed the sweater. She let a few moments pass. “I can’t decide between the purple and the black, though. Larissa loves both colors so much.

Maybe get both?”

Johanna’s eyes widened.

“Ooh, they’re pricey. But worth it!” Camilla said.

“Okay, I’ll take both.” Camilla made a show of glancing down at Johanna’s shoes. “Oooh! I just love your shoes, Johanna. Are those Choos? Manolos?”

Johanna beamed. “Payless, actually.”

“You’re kidding! They’re gorgeous! I wish I could try them on, but we’re probably not the same size.

I’m a ten. Huge feet.”

Good job, Camilla!
Olivia thought. Johanna was 200

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about to walk into their trap and admit she was a size eight. Just like the shoe print left outside the basement window of the cottage.

“Sorry,” Johanna said. “I’m an eight. But I’m sure Payless will have them in your size.”

Camilla smiled. “I’ll stop in. Thanks so much!”

Johanna beamed and rushed back around the counter to the cash register. Once the sale was rung up, Olivia said, “See you in the morning, Johanna.”

Johanna smiled. Not a light-up-her-face smile, but a smile nonetheless.

Olivia had a feeling Johanna would be a little more talkative tomorrow.

Chapter 16

Olivia was right. Not only did Johanna offer her a smile the next morning, but she actually agreed to come in for coffee. Zach waited in the kitchen.

No matter where she was, Olivia could smell his combination of Ivory soap and delicious maleness; she worried that Johanna could too, would spring up and find Zach listening in.

The moment Johanna sat on the sofa, she burst into tears.

“Johanna?” Olivia said gently. She ran to get a box of tissues from the kitchen. Zach squeezed her hand on the way back.

Johanna accepted a tissue and dabbed under her eyes. Her mascara was running down her cheeks.

“At first I was doing it for the money,” Johanna said cryptically. “But then I really started to like the old guy.”

“Doing what for the money?” Olivia asked, her tone as gentle as possible.

“William liked to pay for sex,” Johanna said. “He wasn’t interested in calling an escort ser vice and 202

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having a strange woman, however hot, for the night. He liked to pick someone he was attracted to. So one night when I was working at Hotsie’s, a strip club a few towns over, he came in and started paying more attention to me than to the dancers. I was a waitress and also helped out in the girls’

changing room, mending a costume or finding someone’s mascara, that kind of thing.”

Olivia’s face must have registered some kind of shock because Johanna stood up. “Look, she said, if you’re gonna sit there all high and mighty and judge me . . .”

“I’m not judging you, Johanna. I’m more pictur-ing or trying not to picture my father in a strip club.”

That calmed down Johanna. She sat and took a deep breath. “Is the coffee ready? And if you have some Danish or something . . .”

Olivia smiled and headed into the kitchen. Zach shot her a thumbs-up. She poured two mugs of coffee, added milk and sugar to a tray and the box of cinnamon rolls she’d bought yesterday.

“Mmmm, do I smell cinnamon rolls?” Johanna asked, eyeing the tray. “I just love those.”

Half a cinnamon roll later, Johanna said, “Now where was I?”

Olivia sipped her coffee. “How you met my father.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, then took another bite of the cinnamon roll. “Your dad kept watching me. I saw how free he was with his money, and I couldn’t believe he was more interested in a forty-three-year-old waitress than a twenty-two-year-old dancer, but HAUNTING OLIV IA

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he was. One night, he waited for me to come out after my shift and he asked me on a date.”

“Were you interested?” Olivia asked. “I only ask because of the big age difference.”

“Interested in a handsome, older, wealthy man?”

Johanna asked. “Of course I was.”

“He asked me over to this house for dinner. I arrived and he had the whole thing set up in the dining room. A four-course meal, complete with waiter. I’ve never been treated like that in my entire life.”

“So it was a ‘date’ date,” Olivia said. “How did money factor in?”

“Well, after dinner we . . . ended up in the bedroom. After ward, he gave me five one-hundred-dollar bills. He said he thought it was hot to pay for sex, to role-play that I was a high-priced call girl and he was a strapping young guy. So I thought I was supposed to give him back the money when I left, but he always tucked it in my purse.”

Olivia’s face must have registered some surprise because Johanna added, “It wasn’t like
that
.”

“Like what?”

“It wasn’t like I was really a
prostitute,
” Johanna said.

“How long was your relationship?” Olivia asked.

“Just a few months,” Johanna said. “But it wasn’t all sex. We talked a lot. About my dreams, his. I told him how it was my dream to own a real cashmere sweater, and the next day, three were delivered to my apartment. When I told him it was my dream to open my own clothing store, he suggested I have a cashmere sweater shop and made all the arrangements. Put everything in my name, too.”

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“That was very generous of him,” Olivia said.

“And then he asked you to marry him?”

Her cheeks pinkened. “Well, he didn’t ‘ask me’

ask me. I mean, we talked about it. We were more like preengaged. We were going to live in this house together. And then he died. And left the place to you.”

“So I guess he must have talked about our estrangement. That’s why you were always so hostile to me.”

She nodded and sipped her tea. “He said you ran around behind his back when you were a teenager and got yourself knocked up by a local boy. He said you were an embarrassment to the Sedgwick name.”

“Well, that shows how he estranged himself from me,” Olivia said. “But why did you think I was the one who spit it in his face?”

“He said he was worried sick that one day you would come back and take everything that was coming to you. He said it just like that.”

“And you took that to mean this house?”

She nodded. “The house and Zach. Your father dropped dead and there you were, all moved in.

You even moved in on my cousin’s boyfriend. She was worried about that before you even turned up, of course.”

Cousin! So Marnie was Johanna’s cousin. Very interesting. “Worried about me before I arrived?”

Olivia asked, leaning closer. There was something crucial in all this and Olivia didn’t want to miss a word. She adopted a nonchalant look and jumped up to water the plants by the window. Anything to show Johanna there was nothing out of the ordi-nary about what she said.

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“Well, when your father’s health started going, and I mean going bad—he’d already had a heart attack—

he began talking a lot about you. He told me all about how you had a daughter at sixteen by someone who lived in town and that you gave custody of the baby to the guy. I was trying to figure out who, and Marnie, who has a thirteen-year-old daughter, was able to pinpoint Kayla Archer in two seconds. She and Brianna are in some classes together at the middle school. There aren’t too many thirteen-year-old girls without mothers in Blueberry.”

Olivia wondered what was going on in Zach’s mind right now as he took all this in. That Marnie knew about Olivia before Olivia had even come to town.

Had Marnie started dating Zach because she knew William Sedgwick was dying—and that Kayla might come into a huge inheritance soon? The timing added up. They’d started dating in December.

“Johanna, what you said about my making moves on your cousin’s boyfriend. It wasn’t like that.

When I came to Blueberry I didn’t even know that my child was alive.”

At Johanna’s confused expression, Olivia filled her in on the entire story.

“So it was more like unfinished business between you and Zach,” Johanna said. “I can understand that.”

Olivia took a deep breath, drained from talking about her father’s manipulations. Drained from the entire day. “I hope we can be friends, Johanna. We see each other at the crack of dawn every morning.