Haunting Olivia (27 page)

‘Dad, as if!’ or, ‘You are so provincial.’”

Olivia squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that alone, Zach.”

“I can’t tell you how much it means to me that Kayla has your family now,” Zach said. “She has two aunts, a baby cousin, a grandmother. She’ll have relatives who’ll love her.”

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Olivia smiled. “My sisters fell in love with her the moment they met her. I wish they both could have stayed longer. But we’re going to set up another visit in a few weeks. Amanda and Ethan will bring Tommy. And Ivy will bring her fiancé. And then we can all go to the wedding next month.”

Olivia had looked so happy yesterday, sitting with her sisters, talking, laughing. When he and Kayla had walked in, Ivy and Amanda had jumped up and enfolded them both in hugs. They had marveled over how pretty Kayla was, complimented her on her shoes, asked her about school and the pageant.

He’d always known she needed and would crave that kind of adult female attention, the kind that aunts were especially perfect at. And it took a huge weight off his back to know Kayla would have her Aunt Amanda and Aunt Ivy in her life from there on in.

He picked up a rock and flung it as far as he could into the ocean. Then another, harder, faster.

Olivia put a hand on his arm. “Zach, talk to me.”

He chucked his last rock back on the ground. “I guess I’m doubting my judgment, Olivia. I’m the genius who took up with Marnie, thought she and Brianna were good influences on Kayla. I want to go with my gut about Kayla on this pageant business.

But I don’t know what the hell to think anymore.”

“Does your gut tell you she’s guilty?” Olivia asked.

“My gut tells me she’s capable of everything that’s been done. Including that note to Cecily. She’s been jealous of Cecily for a long time. Before we even signed up for the pageant, she pointed her out in the school yard and said that Cecily thought 256

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she was ‘so great.’” He closed his eyes and let the cold air wash over him. “I’m at a loss, Liv.”

“Then let me help you out,” she said. “I’ve only known Kayla for a little over two weeks. But as I’ve said before, in that short time, I’ve spent a lot of time with her. I’ve seen her at what I assume is her worst behavior, and I’ve seen her at her best. She may be capable of doing all those things—the posters, the threats, the dead mole—but I know in my heart she didn’t do them.”

“How?” he asked. “How are you so sure?”

“I feel it the way I felt it when I met you, Zach. I knew who you were that first day I met you. Those first ten minutes. That’s how I feel about Kayla. I know she’s
good,
Zach. Just like I knew you were good.”

He grabbed her into a fierce hug, holding onto her against the wind. He tried to let go inside, the way he had so effortlessly when he was seventeen.

But nothing inside him would budge.

He thought he heard her whisper, “I love you,”

but he wasn’t sure if it was the wind playing tricks on him, or his mind—or if he was just remembering thirteen years ago, when she’d laid under him on this very spot and whispered, “I love you” in his ear.

He glanced at her, then out at the ocean. Whatever the case was, he wasn’t ready to deal with it anyway.

After they left the beach, Olivia called all the hospitals in the area. There was no Johanna Cole admitted to any of them. She called Johanna’s home several times and got the machine repeatedly.

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Olivia drove past Johanna’s house, and there were no signs of life. Same with the shop, which had a

“Closed for Vacation” sign on the window.

No signs of life.

Do. Not. Go. Near. That. House. Olivia so ordered herself four times but got out of the car. She would just knock, then peer in the windows, just to make sure Johanna wasn’t lifeless on the living room floor, having been beaten to a pulp by her dear cousin.

Olivia started up the front steps, her ears perked up for any sounds. But there was only the wind whipping through the trees. She knocked. No answer. She knocked harder. No answer. She peered through the bay window, but the curtains blocked her view.

“Can I help you?”

Olivia jumped. An elderly couple stood on the sidewalk, eyeing her nervously.

“I was looking for Johanna,” Olivia said.

“She said she was going out of town for a while,”

the woman said. “Saw her loading her suitcases into that little car of hers. All that luggage barely fit in the hatchback. Then she peeled out like someone was chasing her.”

Interesting. Marnie must have either scared Johanna away or made her leave town. Olivia wondered if Marnie was ner vous that Johanna had loose lips.

She headed back to Zach’s. No point in buying anything from town.

Time to call Edwin Harris, her father’s lawyer.

“Ah, Miss Sedgwick, I’m so glad you checked in,”

Edwin said. “How are things?”

“Well, the cottage was broken into yesterday, so I 258

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made arrangements with the caretaker, Johanna Cole, to meet at the shop she owns instead, but she wasn’t there. This morning, she didn’t come by the cottage, and her shop had a closed sign on it. I stopped by her house, and there was no answer.

Phone either.”

“I see,” the attorney said. “Give me a day or two to get in touch with Ms. Cole, and I’ll call you back.”

Olivia hung up the phone, a chill creeping up her back despite how comfortably warm it was in Zach’s house. If the cottage was hers free and clear, not that she wanted it, she didn’t have to stay in Blueberry.

Would Zach see it that way? Would he assume she’d pack up and move back to Manhattan? He knew she didn’t want to live in the cottage or use it as a summer or weekend residence.

Perhaps that was why he had acted as though he hadn’t heard her when she’d told him she loved him. Of course, he might not have heard her; she said it in such a low voice she wasn’t sure she said it aloud at all.

Did he think she was planning to leave? Go back to her life in New York? It dawned on her then that they hadn’t even discussed it. How Olivia would “fit into” Kayla’s life. Was she expected to buy a home of her own nearby so that she and Zach could raise Kayla like a divorced couple? Or like a couple who were sort of dating? If that was what you could call what they were doing.

Her insides twisted, Olivia went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. She heard the front door open, and Cecily Carle’s voice.

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“So your mom sleeps in the guest room,” Cecily said. “That’s a little weird, don’t you think?”

“Totally,” Kayla said. Olivia heard their footsteps on the stairs. “I can’t tell if anything’s going on between her and my dad. Anyway, whatever. I’m just really glad you’re coaching me on my oral presentation. No one else will even talk to me.”

“It does look pretty bad for you, Kayla,” Cecily said. “I hate to say that, but it’s the truth.”

Olivia could hear Kayla crying. She wanted to rush up, but she needed to let Kayla be, let her and her friend talk the way teenagers talked.

“You want to know something I haven’t told anyone?” Kayla said. “No, forget it. I shouldn’t even—”

“You can tell me,” Cecily said. “I won’t tell anyone. If it’s a secret.”

“Okay. I think my mother might be the one who’s been doing all this bad stuff,” Kayla said.

Olivia gasped. She moved closer to the doorway of the kitchen to make sure she could hear.

“I mean, she’s my real mother, right? And she wasn’t around for my entire life, until now. How guilty must she feel? Incredibly guilty. Plus, she won the Inner-Beauty Pageant when she was fifteen. The pageant is probably so important to her. Maybe she’d do anything to see me win. Like make my competition drop out.”

“Kayla, I don’t know,” Cecily said.

“Well, who else could it be?” Kayla said. “Brianna Sweetser wouldn’t hang up like ten posters calling herself a slut, even if she is one. So I don’t think she’s the one doing all this, even though she hates me.”

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“What about Deenie McCord?” Cecily asked.

“I guess it could be her. I don’t know her at all.”

“Do you really think your mom could be the one?” Cecily asked.

“I don’t know,” Kayla said. “I’ve thought about it.

It could be her. I mean, she really loves me. She’d do anything to make me happy. So of course she wants me to win.”

“That does make sense,” Cecily said. “Anyway, let’s go over your speech.”

Olivia made as little noise as possible. On one hand, she wanted to make a racket and let Kayla know she’d been in hearing distance. On the other, she wanted her daughter to have this time with her friend to work on her oral presentation.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sipped it with a heavy heart. She’d talk to Zach about it all later.

That night, Olivia knocked on Zach’s door. He sat on his bed, wearing only a pair of faded jeans, a set of blueprints spread out before him.

He was so, so beautiful. The moonlight cast its beams on his silky hair, his strong shoulders. She smiled at the memory of her sisters oohing and ahhing over him yesterday afternoon after he and Kayla had gone out grocery shopping. “He’s so good-looking!” Amanda had said. “No—hot, hot, hot,” Ivy had put in.

Maybe you should tell him how you feel. . . .

“Are these plans for a house?” she asked instead, her gaze on the blueprints.

He nodded. “This one was just finished. It’s so HAUNTING OLIV IA

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expensive that it hasn’t sold yet. It’s on the coast in Marbury, which is about forty minutes north of here.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed. “It’s beautiful. It looks like it blends right into the rocky coast-line. You know what it reminds me of? That house you were sketching when I first met you. Whenever I showed up to meet you, you’d be drawing away, so engrossed you didn’t notice I was there yet.”

He smiled. “I was always surprised that you did show up. I used to bring my ‘life’s work’ just in case you didn’t, so that if one dream got dashed, I’d still have my house.” He pointed at the blueprints.

“This is that same one.”

She saw now that it was. From the wraparound porch to the tree house in the huge oak to the gardens.

“I told myself I’d wait until you came back for Kayla,” he said. “I waited until she was ten, and then I guess a part of me believed you probably wouldn’t come. That that was a dream I
did
need to let go of.

So I started building my dream house in Marbury.”

“Do you know how many nights I would stare out the window of my apartment in New York at the glittering lights and wonder if you were out there somewhere, thinking about me, wondering what happened to me and our child? It was actually comforting to me to think that you didn’t know. I mean, when I thought she was stillborn.”

“Oh, Olivia,” he said, taking her hand. “I can’t begin to imagine how sad you must have been.”

She glanced at him. “If only, if only, if only I’d known. I would have rushed back here.”

“I know that now,” he said. “But back then, I had nothing to go on but the lies your father told me. I 262

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was actually glad the building of the house would take three years. The longer we stayed in Blueberry, the easier it would be for you to find us. I figured you’d come up to visit your father or have some kind of family reunion. But you never did, of course.

And then just a couple of months ago, my builder told me the house was ready.”

Olivia’s stomach sank. His dream house was ready. She’d come back to Blueberry in the nick of time.

And now he could go.

Her heart breaking, Olivia forced herself to focus on why she’d come knocking on his door in the first place.

Because I love Zach. That’s why.

“Zach, there’s something I need to talk to you about. I overheard Kayla and Cecily talking after school today. And I’m really concerned about some things Kayla said.”

Zach gave her his full attention. He rolled up his blueprints and sat back on the bed.

“Kayla told Cecily that she thought I might be behind the posters and dead mole and nasty letters.”

“You? Where would she get that idea?”

“She had a few theories. From how much I love her to how much her winning the pageant, as I did, means to me in making up for lost time. I didn’t know how to handle it, so I didn’t.”

“I think you handled it just right,” Zach said, running a hand through his hair. He glanced out the window, the moonlight glowing on his profile. “I’ve learned in the past couple of months that teenagers talk and talk and talk and say everything to each HAUNTING OLIV IA

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other that pops into their minds. I know she’s confused as hell about everything right now.”

“Including what’s going on between us,” Olivia said.

“Cecily knew that I sleep in the guest room. So Kayla’s definitely talking about her parents’ relationship.”

“I wish we had something concrete to tell her,”

Zach said, “but we don’t.”

Because he didn’t know how he felt. Thirteen years was a long time. And he’d raised Kayla alone.

“Did your father’s attorney get back to you?”

Zach asked. “Is the house yours free and clear?”

“He hasn’t called back yet,” Olivia said. And when he did, Zach would pack up and move to his dream house on the ocean in Marbury. And Olivia would be in limbo, belonging nowhere in particular.

“Well, after this weekend, after the pageant is over, I’m putting this house on the market. I used to think it would be good for Kayla to grow up here because she was conceived in love here. But now that you’re in her life, being here doesn’t seem as important. She doesn’t need the connection to Blueberry the way she did before.”

Olivia was sure she’d hear from the attorney in the next day or so. He’d verify that Johanna was nowhere to be found, and, therefore, the conditions of the will were null and void. The cottage would be hers. Zach wouldn’t have to safeguard her anymore; she’d be free to go.