Sins of the Father (39 page)

“What is it, Helen?” Kathleen asked.

“I have a photograph that I want you to look
at. I need to know if you recognize the woman in it.”

“You think it could be this nurse? Martha
Henderson? But why would you have a photograph of her?”

“Mom, just look at the picture,” Crevan
said. “We’ll talk about the prevailing theory if this woman is
someone you recognize.”

Johnny had to pry the book out of my grip.
“Helen, whatever happens, it doesn’t change anything. He loves you,
always did, always will.”

Fortunately, everybody in the room believed
that he was offering me some sort of comforting fallacy, the silly
hope that somewhere my Dad lived in eternal paradise and not the
toasty place.

I nodded and flipped the book open to the
photograph taken at my first birthday party. Johnny’s eyes zeroed
in on me and dragged a deep affectionate chuckle from his gut.

My focus was on Kathleen.

She gasped. “She was older. But how can that
be? If you were a year old in this picture, how could Martha
Henderson appear so much younger in this picture than she did the
night you were abducted?”

My eyes met Johnny’s. We shared an odd mix
of horror and relief.

“Because it wasn’t Helen’s adoptive mother
that stole her,” Johnny said.

“Then… then who?” Briscoe asked.

“Her grandmother, Lyle’s wife,” Crevan
said.

Kathleen’s forehead wrinkled. “Lyle? As in
Lyle Henderson
?”

“Mom, do you know him?”

“Well of course we do. He’s been filling in
at Foundations ever since that horrible tragedy in January when
Pastor Napier was murdered. Lyle was a member of Foundations from
the very beginning. He left the city years ago to start a church
somewhere on the east coast. I didn’t know him, as you well know,
because Foundations was your father’s church.”

Crevan nodded. He cringed at our curious
stares.

“And what pray tell, was your church before
you and Aidan married?” Johnny asked.

“It was Saint Angelo’s of course,” she said.
“Aidan and my mother never made peace after we married and Aidan
insisted that I join Foundations.”

Briscoe grinned.

“Don’t start,” Crevan warned.

“Son, you’re half Catholic. There might be
hope for you yet,” he chuckled.

“Great,” I said. “I really am the only sane
one in the room.”

“So Dad knows Henderson,” Crevan
confirmed.

“Yes. All of the church deacons know him.
He’s quite active for his age, and when he offered to fill in until
the congregation could find a permanent replacement, your father
took it to the board immediately. Why would you think that Lyle
–”

“Hush, Kathleen,” I said. “We’ll explain it
all later. Right now, I need you to be very clear on this. Aidan
has been in contact with Lyle Henderson for a long time?”

“I… well, since Lyle came back to Darkwater
Bay. He married the widow Sanderfield in our church. I don’t know
about what happened before that.”

Johnny turned his head and muttered a
curse.

“Mom, are you sure?”

“Of course I am, Crevan. My memory is
perfectly fine.”

“We can’t ignore this anymore than we can
ignore the possibility that my father lied to me too, Crevan,” I
made the concession that had been unthinkable earlier today. His
reply surprised me.

“Seriously? You don’t have to throw me a
bone, Helen. I saw the pictures of you with your father. It’s
obvious that he loved you. No, I think you were right earlier
today. I think he had no idea that you weren’t his flesh and blood
child.”

“So what did happen to that baby?” Devlin
kept steering the conversation back to something else I didn’t want
to think about. Apparently, it was written all over my face again.
“Helen, I’m sorry, but it’s part of the mystery here.”

“I know,” I said. “But I have no idea why
they’d swap me for his real child. What was it they hoped to
gain?”

“Too bad Wendell died,” Devlin said. “He
could probably shed some light on it. I mean, it sounds like he
really hated Henderson if he forbid Marie from letting them have
any contact with you.”

“That was on religious grounds.”

“Was it?” Johnny turned to me. “We need to
know if that was the truth.”

“There’s no way you’ll ever find the answer
to that question now,” Crevan said. “Dev’s right. If Wendell hadn’t
died, maybe. Now? It’s gone. There’s no way anybody alive that was
involved in this will talk.”

“They will,” I said grimly. “If I have to
beat the truth out of them, they’ll talk.”

Kathleen’s face faded to the color of wet
ash. “My word!”

“Mom, Helen’s just venting,” Crevan
said.

“No,
she
isn’t,” I dug in my heels.
“Kathleen, you may as well know the truth now. Crevan is the gentle
child. I’m the bully. And if you don’t think I’d beat someone
within an inch of their life or worse if it meant putting a stop to
children being sold into slavery, you’re sadly mistaken.”

“Surely you don’t believe that Lyle would
sell
children!”

Crevan cupped his mother’s elbow and led her
to the sofa in the family room. Her soft cries punctuated Crevan’s
explanation of what Kathleen didn’t know about my abduction, the
dead little girl in the harbor several weeks ago, the abducted
Datello baby, all of it.

“Are you telling me that you think your
father could’ve…
given
my daughter to this man?”

Johnny’s gaze met mine.

“Oh my God,” dawning flooded Crevan’s eyes.
“Could that be what Gillette was talking about?”

Dev’s eyes darkened. “The son of a bitch.
You were supposed to be his because he already bought you as an
infant?”

“Whose?” Poor Briscoe had to feel like his
head was the ball at Wimbledon.

“Tony, it’s a long story,” Johnny said. “I’m
wondering where Henderson was when
The Celeste
was making
its way to Cleveland Island.”

“He’s in his eighties, Johnny. Surely you
don’t think that he would possibly believe he could keep me in
captivity. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Devlin said. “Have you
shown her the surveillance we did on him before OSI closed?”

“I didn’t think it was wise, in the first
place,” Johnny said. “Beyond that, we weren’t really communicating
a whole lot at the time you took the photos.”

“You’ve seen him?”

Devlin sighed. “I shouldn’t have mentioned
it, Helen. Yes, I’ve seen him. Think Jack LaLaine with a good
plastic surgeon.”

“So he doesn’t look like he’s
eighty-two.”

“He doesn’t look sixty-two,” Johnny said.
“It’s not the first time we’ve noticed this phenomenon. Eugene
Sherman didn’t look as decrepit as he should’ve either.”

I had seen photos of him. “Yeah, but he
didn’t look twenty years younger, and his child-bride wife sure as
hell looked too young for him.”

“Still, these guys seem pretty obsessed with
looking young, being fit. If he’s the guy who planned to take you
away from me, you wouldn’t have looked grotesquely out of place
together.”

“I think you just said I look old.”

“Helen, that’s not what I meant. All I’m
saying is that it wouldn’t have looked as odd as say, Hef and some
of his girls.”

“I’d look bizarrely old compared to his
preference,” I said. “Anyway, he still wouldn’t have been able to
overpower me.”

“Not unless they broke your will before he
took custody,” Devlin said. “And wasn’t that what Andy planned to
do?”

My stomach twisted into a hard knot.

“Helen, I’m sorry,” he said hastily. “I
didn’t mean to upset you. Or make you turn green.”

I spun on one heel and didn’t come back
until I had plenty of soda crackers to quell the churning bile.
Johnny had a glass of ginger ale waiting for me. He perched on one
of the stools at the breakfast bar and drew me back against his
chest. One hand rubbed a slow circle over my belly.

“Nobody’s gonna touch you but me.”

I rested the back of my head against his
chest. “Promise?”

“Yeah. And I think we’ve had enough brain
storming for one day. I think it’s time everybody goes off and does
whatever it is they do when they’re not working.”

“What about Kathleen? We can’t just send her
back to Aidan,” I said softly. “Johnny, if he’s involved in this,
even on the very periphery and without knowledge of what really
happened, he’ll see right through her. She doesn’t have the will to
stand up to him.”

“Let Crevan take care of her.” He kissed the
side of my head. “She’s his mother, Helen. We have our own family
issues to deal with now.”

Dad. We had to find Dad. That’s what Johnny
was subtly telling me. I knew he was right. Ache to hear Dad’s
voice again warred with fear that maybe he lied to me too.

“Dev, would you and Tony mind herding
everyone out? Doc is wiped out. She needs to rest and eat something
more than soda crackers.”

“Sure, Johnny. And don’t you worry about
this, Helen. We’ll get to the bottom of this one way or another.
You’ve got my word,” Briscoe said. He reached out and patted my
shoulder. “These bastards are goin’ down for what they done all
these years. I don’t care how shrewd they think they are.”

“Thanks, Tony.”

“You bet, kid.”

“Johnny, I need a moment alone with Crevan
before he leaves,” I said. “I promise, I won’t be long, and
whatever you want after everyone’s gone, you’ll get no argument
from me.”

“We can talk to him before he goes,” Johnny
said. “You’re not cutting me out of the loop, Helen.”

“It’s about her.” My eyes wandered to
Kathleen. “I have to make sure that he’ll take care of her while we
move this investigation forward, Johnny. She’s never stood up to
Aidan in her life.”

“Neither has Crevan.”

I turned in his arms. “But he has, Johnny.”
Our eyes locked. “He didn’t back down. He’s with Alex. Don’t sell
him short. He won’t cave in over this, not now that he knows why
Kathleen has been hot and cold all these years. Crevan needs to
know that I’ve got his back.”

“All right. And then we’ll focus on getting
you settled down for the night.”

I nodded. A moment later, I tugged Crevan by
the hand and led him into the office. The door clicked softly.

“Am I apologizing for something else
again?”

“Crevan, you have to know the truth,” I
said. “I don’t have much time. Johnny would kill me if he knew I
told you all of this, but you have to understand that this isn’t
all a dead end.”

“What is it? Honey, is this why you turned
green?”

I nodded.

“Do you think your father might’ve been part
of this too?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But that’s what you
don’t know.” Air rushed painfully into my lungs.

“Hey, whatever it is, it’s all right.”

“Can I trust you?”

“Of course you can.”

“I mean it, Crevan. We’re really family.
That means something to me. Even though I threw you out earlier, I
didn’t mean –”

“I know. Neither one of us wants to believe
the men who raised us were part of this, but we’re not children
anymore, Helen. You’re about to be a mother. I’m going to be an
uncle. The way I see it, this is more about protecting them than it
is fixing what happened to us all those years ago.”

Relief flooded me. “Good, then we’re on the
same page. I might’ve made a horrible mistake. I don’t think I did,
but either way, we need the information more than I need to conceal
what I’ve done.”

Crevan frowned. “This sounds serious. Maybe
even illegal.”

“It was illegal.”

“Helen –”

“Hush. It’s about my father. He’s not dead,
Crevan. He escaped from Attica, and thanks to Jerry Lowe, I was
able to get him out of there without anyone realizing that he
wasn’t really sick.”

Chapter 37

Apparently the luck of the Irish transcends
the reality that I grew up believing that my ancestry is
Scandinavian. Crevan wasn’t pissed. He was downright thrilled.

“Do you realize what this means?”

“Shh! Johnny’s probably got his ear pressed
to the door.”

“Helen, if you know where Wendell is, we can
get to the bottom of this a hell of a lot quicker.”

“I don’t know where he is. When Johnny found
me in New York, I was about to fly off to some warm country that
wouldn’t extradite either one of us.”

“Seriously?”

“I thought I could do it. I couldn’t. But I
wasn’t about to throw away Dad’s chance to be free. He should’ve
never been punished for Marie’s crimes.”

“So you’re going to look for him?”

“Johnny and I will find him. That’s not why
I’m telling you this.”

“Then why?”

“Because the way I see it, we’ve got two
potential witnesses that can tie all of this together. Henderson,
Sanderfield, Melissa Sherman, Gillette, all the rest. Your mother
and my father are key to this whole thing. Johnny and I can find
Dad.”

Crevan’s eyes fluttered shut. “If Mom walks
through the door after hearing everything she’s heard today, Dad’ll
know it in a second.”

“Exactly.”

“You want me to keep her away from him.”

“You think that’s a bad idea?”

“I think it’ll raise more questions than the
problems that sending her home to Dad would cause. She can’t leave
him.”

“Not even over a reconciliation with
you?”

“Ah, Helen, you don’t know the can of worms
–”

“Do we want to get to the truth in this, or
do we want to pretend that we can just ignore everything these men
have done? You said it, Crevan. This isn’t about what happened 39
years ago. My sons could be at risk.”

“I know. But if we want to keep him off
guard and too pissed off to realize what’s really going on, that’s
the way to do it. I just hope I don’t end up losing Alex over
this.”