Haunting Olivia (8 page)

“I don’t understand any of this!” her mother said.

“Your father handled the adoption, said that he knew a top-notch lawyer, that the baby would go to a wonderful family.” She let out a breath. “Oh, God, Olivia. What did your father do?” She was silent for a moment. “I’m flying up. You need my sup—”

“No, Mom,” Olivia interrupted. “I appreciate that you want to help, but if this girl is my daughter, if Zach is telling the truth, then I’m going to need to proceed alone and with the utmost caution.”

That was an understatement.

Chapter 6

Olivia pulled up to Barker’s Lounge at a few minutes to seven. There were several cars in the lot. She glanced around for the pickup she’d seen Zach driving. It didn’t look like he was here yet.

She headed inside and sat at one of the round tables in the back. She’d expected the place to be more of a bar, but it was a charming grill, with a blackboard menu dominating the wall behind the long, wooden bar. A jukebox softly played a Johnny Cash song, and an attractive couple played pool at the table at the far end. A few people were seated at the bar, none of whom Olivia recognized.

She glanced up at the blackboard menu, her stomach growling at the words
hamburger, mac and
cheese, fish and chips, chef salad.
She hadn’t eaten a thing all day. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to here, either.

She glanced at the door every few seconds while tearing the napkin on her lap to shreds. Finally, the door opened. And there was Zach, his cheeks HAUNTING OLIV IA

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slightly pink from the cold, a green wool scarf wrapped round his neck.

God, he was handsome.

He came over and sat down. “This is crazy,” he said, shaking his head. “What the hell are you doing in Blueberry all of a sudden? What is this story about being told our baby was stillborn? What the hell is going on, Olivia?”

Slow down, Zach. You’ve got to slow down.
“It’s good to see you,” she said. And it was. So good.

“Forget the niceties, Olivia,” he snapped. “I just want answers to my questions. What are you doing here? What do you want?”

A barmaid came over. They both ordered coffee.

“There’s a five-dollar minimum per person for the tables,” the barmaid said. “Menu’s up there,”

she added, gesturing at the blackboard.

Zach shook his head. “We’ll each have a hamburger and fries.” He turned to Olivia. “Unless you’re suddenly a vegetarian.”

“I still love hamburgers and French fries,” she said, surprised that he remembered her old addiction. In the brief time they’d had together in Blueberry, they’d always eaten hamburgers and fries, ordering them from the greasy spoon diner and bringing their lunch to the deserted area of the beach.

“I want answers, Olivia,” he said, his hazel eyes narrowed.

“My father died last month,” she told him. “At the reading of his will, I was told I would receive a letter to open on January thirtieth. The letter stated that I would inherit the cottage and an undisclosed sum of money if I lived in Blueberry for one month and bought a couple of things each day from town.”

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Zach unwound his scarf from his neck, but he didn’t take off his heavy brown leather jacket. “Am I supposed to offer condolences for the loss of your father? I have no idea if you two suddenly became father and daughter after I last spoke to you.”

She shook her head. “My relationship with my father never changed. If anything, it became more nonexistent than it was.”

“I assume you’re more interested in the ‘undisclosed sum of money’ than in the cottage,” he said.

“But then again, I thought I knew you once and I found out how wrong I was, so what the hell do I know about you?”

The slap stung, surprising her. But she cautioned herself against getting too emotional. “Zach, I don’t think
either
of us knew anything thirteen years ago.

I think my father lied to both of us. I have no idea what he told you about me. All I know is that he told me my baby was stillborn. The doctor con-firmed it. I believed that my baby was born dead until you said otherwise this morning.” She took a deep breath. “I called my mother when I got back to the cottage, and she swears she was told the same thing. My father was handling the adoption—”

Zach stared at her. “What adoption?”

“He browbeat me into agreeing to it. He kept telling me that you abandoned me when I told you I was pregnant and that you took off. That I’d be penniless and living on the street. That I’d be found an unfit and terrible mother by the courts and that my baby would be taken away from me and put into foster care. He told me all this and worse every hour until I signed the papers.”

Zach stared at her. “But I didn’t abandon you, HAUNTING OLIV IA

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Olivia. I was told that you ‘wanted nothing to do with a punk like me.’ That when I got you pregnant you realized what a mess I was making of your life. Your father told me he’d put the baby up for adoption or that I could have sole custody. I chose the baby.”

Olivia gasped. “How could he have done this? Why would he deny me my own child all these years?”

He stared at her. “Start from the beginning,” he said, finally taking off his coat. “Tell me everything.

From the moment you found out you were pregnant.

Don’t leave anything out.”

The waitress brought their burgers and fries, and Olivia was grateful for the reprieve to prepare herself for telling a story she never allowed herself to think about.

“Tell me, Olivia,” he said. “I have a right to know everything.”

She nodded. “I found out I was pregnant a month after I returned home to New York. I called you the day I took the pregnancy test. It was a Sunday morning, and my mother was sleeping. I took the phone into the bathroom, staring at the pink line on the stick of the pregnancy test.”

“And I immediately suggested we run away together,”

Zach said.

Her heart squeezed in her chest. “I know.” She would never, ever forget those words, his first reaction.

“But my mother overheard part of our conversation and she stormed in and grabbed the phone out of my hand and hung it up.”

“I’d assumed you hung up on me,” he said, shaking 74

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his head. “That it was your answer to my idea of running away together.”

“Zach,” Olivia said, “I loved you. How could you think I’d hang up on you?” She leaned back against her chair and stared up at the ceiling.

In that month between leaving Maine and learning she was pregnant, she and Zach spoke every day.

Her mother, curious about the long-distance bill, never asked if it was a boy or girl; all that mattered to her mother was that she’d made a good friend from the wealthy community. She and Zach spoke for just a few minutes every day, but sometimes for as long as twenty minutes, and always about how much they missed each other, how incredible their connection was, how they wished they could just run away together, start over from scratch, but how hard that would be at their age. They would wait until Olivia turned eighteen, and then they’d be together. That was the plan. Neither doubted their love. But then she’d gotten pregnant, and as hard as it would be to run off together and take care of a baby, Zach had been willing.

Just finish the story,
she ordered herself.

“My mother flipped out,” she continued. “Over and over she said, ‘How could you have been so stupid!’ and then she called my father, screaming at him that he’d let such a thing happen on ‘his watch.’ A moment later, she hung up with a ‘Your dad will handle this.’ Five minutes later, the phone rang. My father had made some calls, and I was being sent way up the coast of Maine to a home for pregnant teenagers. The baby would be adopted by a good family, I was told. It’s for the best, my mother said before dropping me off at the home.”

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“The best for
you,
” Olivia had wanted to scream.

Olivia’s pregnancy was an embarrassment to Candace, even though no one knew about it. And the best for her father, who wanted nothing to do with his own daughter, let alone a “problem.”

To everyone else, Olivia was in a Swiss boarding school.

“I tried to call you back,” she said. “In the middle of the night. But a recording came on and said the phone had been disconnected.”

“I remember that,” he said. “The phone was always getting disconnected every few months. My parents never paid the bill.” Now it was Zach’s turn to lean back against his chair and expel a breath. “I was so frustrated that I couldn’t get in touch with you. I tried to find you, but you were impossible to find. I went to New York to look for you, at your school, at shops around your house. I even waited on your doorstep to talk to your mother, but she refused to talk to me, refused to tell me anything.”

“I didn’t know that,” Olivia said, in such a low voice she barely heard it herself. “I tried, too, Zach.

I couldn’t reach you by phone, so I wrote letters.

And they were all returned unopened and marked

‘Return to Sender.’”

His mouth dropped open. “My mother . . . or father. Clearly, your father got to them. Paid them off. Paid them off to disconnect the phone most likely.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Olivia was emotionally exhausted and they hadn’t even gotten up to the birth yet.

“What was the home for pregnant teenagers like?” Zach asked.

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Olivia could see the building, a mile down a dirt driveway and surrounded by nothing but trees and the ocean, as though she’d just been driven there for the first time. She’d never forget how unwelcoming the brick building had looked. Like a detention center, a juvenile hall.

She shrugged. “It was what it was. No one was particularly kind there, but we were cared for physically. We were given prenatal vitamins and prenatal checkups and nutritious meals. I made a few friends there, but none of the girls really wanted to talk much; no one could bear to talk about how they really felt about being there or giving up their babies for adoption.” She took a deep breath. “I went into labor and I was so scared,” Olivia said, staring at her lap. “And then the baby was born and taken away. I didn’t even get to see her, Zach.”

“And you were told she was stillborn?” he asked, his expression incredulous.

She nodded. “By the doctor. By the nurse.”

“An employee of your father’s arrived at my house with a baby in his arms,” Zach said, “a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, and a bus ticket to Boston. I was told you never wanted to see me again, that you thought I was pathetic trash who’d almost ruined your life. And then he handed over the baby, who looked just like me.”

Olivia gasped and stared at Zach. “Why? Why, why, why would my father do that? Why would he lie and tell me the baby was born dead?” The tears came then, rushing down her cheeks.

Zach reached across the table for her hand, and she was so surprised that she glanced up at him. “I don’t know, Olivia. If there’s an ‘at least,’ though, HAUNTING OLIV IA

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at least he gave me the baby. I have no idea why he didn’t give the baby up for adoption, as you’d been told was the plan.”

She looked at him. “It must have been so hard.

Seventeen years old and taking care of a newborn.

All alone, no help.”

He nodded and slipped his hand away. “It
was
hard. But I had the money, and you bet I used it. I needed it. I found support in Boston, a center for fathers in my position. I accepted all the help I was offered. And I worked my ass off so that I could go to college. Thank God I had a good babysitter, a retired nurse whose own grandchildren lived far away. She took good care of Kayla while I was in school and worked.”

“Kayla. Her name is Kayla?”

He nodded.

It was all she could do not to burst into tears. “My middle name is Kaye,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said.

Again, they sat in silence for a few moments.

“What did you tell her about me?” she asked.

“I’ve told her the only truth I knew: that her mother was very young when she was born and needed to get her life together and one day, perhaps, she would come back.”

Olivia nodded.

“The sole reason I moved back to Blueberry was so that you would be able to find us if you ever did come,” Zach said.

“Where do you live now?”

“I built on the water, at the end of Spider’s Cove.

Do you remember all that wild brush and that sad 78

Janelle Taylor

weeping willow? I got rid of most of the brush, but the weeping willow is in my front yard.”

“I always loved that tree,” she said, so many memories hitting her at once. She and Zach had sat under that tree just twice, sharing French fries, sharing stories.

“Zach, will you tell Kayla about me? That I’m here?”

“I need to sleep on all this,” he said. “Kayla is going through a tough time.” He mentioned the suspension. The recent questions about Olivia and the pageant.

“I can’t quite process that this is my daughter we’re talking about. My child.”

“
My
child,” Zach snapped, as he stood up.

She glanced up at him.

He threw a twenty on the table, then put on his coat. “I need to think, Olivia. Until I call you, you’re not to go within two feet of Kayla. Do we have an agreement?”

She nodded, and in an instant, he was gone.

Olivia drove home, her fingers white on the steering wheel. She was relieved to be finally back at the cottage, where she could collapse and not think about Zach. About Kayla. About everything she’d learned and still couldn’t wrap her mind around.

She turned her key in the lock of the front door but was surprised that it wasn’t locked. She distinctly remembered locking the door behind her; it had offered her a few extra seconds before leaving the safety of the cottage to go meet Zach. Had Johanna, the caretaker, been by? Did she have a key?

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Huh. In everything that had happened today, Olivia had forgotten all about Johanna. Anyway, why would Johanna come by in the evening? Olivia had been told the caretaker would stop by every morning at eight. And Johanna had said the same thing this morning.