Taken (22 page)

He said he wanted to marry me.”

“You were engaged to him?” Kayla queried.

“It never quite came to that. But just knowing that he wanted to marry me made me feel good. It was the fifties, Kayla. There was a clear distinction between good girls and bad girls, and I had definitely crossed the line. No respectable man would marry me. I wasn’t about to question Johnny’s intentions. Then everything went bad —

really bad. Johnny was arrested for the robbery at the mint and tried for murder. I was devastated. I couldn’t believe he’d committed such a terrible crime. Even though
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Frankie had pulled the trigger, I knew that Johnny was also responsible for those men being dead. I wasn’t completely stupid, you know. I knew Johnny was going away to jail, probably forever, and it almost destroyed me.”

“Is that it, Grandma? Is that the whole story?”

“No. There’s a little more. I want to explain to you why I gave you the watch.”

“I know why. You wanted to start over in your life.

You left everything behind. I don’t really understand it, because I like to keep the things of my past close. But you don’t. We’re different that way.”

“That is true, but that’s not all of it.” Her hand shook as she set down her drink. “I’m not sure I should tell you this. It will change everything. But then, I think I’m old, and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. Now that the watch is missing and people are following you . . . I can’t let you get blindsided.”

“Just say it, Grandma, whatever it is. I’d rather know the truth than hear any more lies.”

“I hope you’ll feel the same way in a moment.” She closed her eyes, drawing on all of her inner strength.

Then she opened them and fixed her gaze on Kayla’s face. “When Johnny went to Alcatraz, I wasn’t just devastated; I was also pregnant.”

“What?”

“Your mother . . .”

“Oh, my God!” Kayla jumped to her feet.

“Johnny is your grandfather, your mother’s biological father.”

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Kayla couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but stare at her grandmother in disbelief. She’d come over expecting to learn something more about Johnny or the watch — but she’d never imagined a secret like this. “Are you . . . are you sure?”

“Positive,” Charlotte said gently. “I was three months pregnant when Johnny was convicted.”

Kayla paced around the living room, her brain spinning. She had a lot of questions. She didn’t know which one to ask first. “What about Grandpa?” she asked finally. “Did he know he wasn’t Mom’s father?”

“Edward knew I was pregnant,” she said in a quiet voice.

“And he married you anyway?”

Charlotte nodded. “We were friends. I knew one of his cousins. We had spent time together — away from my other life. He didn’t know me as Sweet Charlie. He knew me as Charlotte. He was a solid and kind man. He found me crying one day and asked me what was wrong. I wound up blurting out the whole sordid story. I thought he would judge me, hate me, knowing that I danced top-190

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less and had sex when I wasn’t married — both very bad things in those days. But he didn’t criticize me. He just listened. And he gave me a shoulder to cry on. I wasn’t expecting anything else from him. When he suggested we get married, I was shocked. I said no, of course. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him to raise another man’s child, but he insisted that it was the right thing to do.”

She took a breath and continued. “It was a different time back then, Kayla. I didn’t think I could raise a baby alone. I didn’t want to give up my child for adoption, but I knew I couldn’t continue with my job as a dancer. I had to think of a way to take care of the baby and myself.”

Kayla could understand how hard it must have been.

Even now, the desperation her grandmother had felt was showing in her voice, in the tight lines around her eyes.

“Edward kept asking,” Charlotte added. “And finally I said yes. We got married the next week.”

A long silence followed her words. Kayla knew she was supposed to say something, but what? She still couldn’t believe that the grandfather she had loved her entire life was not really her grandfather. “This is . . . unbelievable.”

“I know you need some time to take it in.”

“Time? I don’t think there’s enough time in the world.”

“It sounds bad, I know.” Charlotte twisted her wedding ring around on her finger.

Kayla stared at the ring. She remembered when her grandfather had given her grandmother the two-carat diamond ring on their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.

He’d said that the simple gold band she’d always worn wasn’t enough. Now she knew that the first band had
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been given in haste. And what had it symbolized? Love?

Friendship? Duty?

“Why? Why did he ask you to marry him?” Kayla asked. “He could have given you money, helped you out.

He didn’t have to give up his whole life for you and the baby.”

“Edward wanted the baby to have a name, his name.

And he wanted to take care of me. He was almost ten years older than me. He was ready for marriage and children. Eventually he convinced me that we could make a marriage work. We could start with friendship and see where we ended up.”

“So you never loved him. You married him because you were pregnant, and not even with his child.” Kayla shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t understand.

Why did you stay with him for so long?”

“Because I fell in love with him,” Charlotte replied.

“Just like he said I would. He was always so sure of that.

Edward told me years after we married that he’d loved me all along, but he hadn’t wanted to scare me off. I was lucky that he had such a generous spirit, that he was willing to take me in, as tainted and flawed as I was.” She cleared her throat. “I’m not proud of any of this, Kayla. I lived a different life back then, as I told you before. But the one true thing in my life was always Edward.”

Kayla wanted to believe her, but how could she? Her grandmother had lied about something important, something vital to their family history. How could she trust her now? “Does Mom know?” she asked, suddenly aware that there was someone who had even more at stake in this story.

“No, she doesn’t. I never wanted to tell her. I still don’t.”

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“But you have to. She has a right to know. You should have told her years ago, when it wouldn’t have been such a big deal, such a big lie.”

“It wasn’t really a lie,” Charlotte began.

“Oh, please, Grandma, you’re not going down that road, are you?”

Charlotte pursed her lips together. “Edward was a wonderful father to Joanna. That wasn’t a lie.”

“But he wasn’t Mom’s biological father.”

“Blood isn’t everything,” Charlotte argued with a touch of steel. “Edward was there in the middle of the night when Joanna cried. He picked her up and gave her a kiss when she skinned her knee. He was at her high school graduation. He gave her away in marriage. That’s what a father does.”

Kayla sat back down on the couch. She knew deep in her heart that her grandmother was right, but it still felt so wrong not to share her grandfather’s blood. And Edward wasn’t here to give his side of the story. She had only her grandmother’s word — a grandmother she barely recognized anymore.

“What about the stained glass?” Kayla asked abruptly.

“Grandpa said I inherited the family gene. But I didn’t, because I never had that gene. I wasn’t really his granddaughter. He lied when he said that, because he knew I couldn’t have inherited anything.”

“Kayla, stop. Don’t make it sound so bad,” Charlotte pleaded. “Don’t go over every conversation you ever had with your grandfather and turn it into a lie.”

“It is bad. I’m the granddaughter of a murderer. God!

A murderer. That’s the blood I have running through my veins.”

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“Don’t call Johnny that,” Charlotte said sharply.

“Don’t ever call him that.”

“Why not? It’s true, and you’re the one who is suddenly so big on the truth.” Kayla felt her chest squeeze into a tight knot. She could barely breathe. “Why? Why did you tell me now?”

Charlotte looked at her for a long moment. “Because of the watch. I gave you the watch because it belonged to Johnny, and I wanted you to have something of his, even though you didn’t know it. I thought it was all right now.

So many years had passed. The watch couldn’t be important anymore. But it seems I was wrong.”

“Yes, it seems you were.”

“I realize that the watch has led you into trouble. I don’t want you to be blindsided, in case you meet up with anyone who might suspect that you’re Johnny’s granddaughter.”

“Why would that matter?”

“I’m not saying that it would, but —”

“But?”

“Johnny’s band of friends was like its own family.”

“You mean like a mob family?”

“No, I mean like a real family, like brothers. They were loyal to one another. They grew up together in North Beach. They were altar boys at St. Basil’s. They had their own code of honor. But they could also be ruthless. If by chance one of them survived the escape from Alcatraz, it’s possible he might want to make sure that no one else has a claim on whatever treasure was hidden away.”

“So you know that something was hidden away,”

Kayla said, determined to get to the truth. “Because you said before that you didn’t.”

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“I said I didn’t know, and I don’t. Johnny wanted to protect me. The less I knew about his business, the safer I was.”

“I can’t believe you would keep this secret all these years. There must have been some time in the last five decades when you considered telling the truth, like maybe when Mom was pregnant with me, or we needed some medical history.”

“Fortunately, everyone has been very healthy,” Charlotte said. “I did toy with telling you both at various times, especially your mother. But she was so close to her father. She was always more Edward’s daughter than mine, which is the true irony. They had similar personal-ities, dreams, and goals. He understood her drive for success. He encouraged her ambition. Edward was your mother’s hero. She admired him. Respected him. And she wanted to be just like him. How could I take that away from her?”

Kayla didn’t know. Her grandmother had a point, but still . . . Didn’t her mother deserve to know? “What are we going to do, Grandma? Are we going to tell her now?”

“Do we have to?”

“I think so.” But Kayla wasn’t excited about that prospect. Her grandmother was right: Her mother would be devastated by the news. It would rock her foundation.

It would cause her so much pain. And what good would it bring?

“I think we should wait,” Charlotte said.

“That’s because you’re afraid. You know Mom will be furious.”

“Maybe you should tell her.”

“Not on your life. This is your secret. I just wish I knew what was the right thing to do. It used to be so easy
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to know right from wrong, black from white, but everything is all mixed-up — complicated.”

Charlotte nodded, understanding in her eyes. “My life was very complicated before I met Edward. He straightened me out. When I married him I left all that emotion and drama behind. Edward was so good to me, Kayla. It wasn’t hard to love him. He didn’t demand it. He just made himself so indispensable that I never needed anyone else. Love grew between us. I don’t know exactly when or how, but the friendship we had blossomed into love. I don’t regret marrying him. I could have gotten divorced over the years. Times changed. No one would have cared. I didn’t stay with him because of Joanna. I was never that noble. I stayed with him because after spending so much of my early life in turmoil, it felt good just to be safe.”

“Safe doesn’t sound like passionate love. It sounds like you settled.” The thought disappointed her.

“Then I’m not explaining it right, because that’s not the way I feel. There are different kinds of love that we experience at different times in our lives. You loved your old boyfriend David for a long time. Then you loved Evan. They were both different.”

Kayla didn’t like the turn of the conversation. “They were both bad choices, and let’s leave my pathetic love life out of this.”

“I’m just saying that what we want — who we want —

changes, depending on how we grow, who we become.”

“If Johnny hadn’t gone to jail, you might have married him.”

“I thought that for a time. But as I grew older, I knew that wouldn’t have happened. Johnny wasn’t the marrying type.”

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“Did he know you were pregnant?”

“Yes, I told him right before he went to jail. He was really happy. He said he’d find a way for us to be together.”

“Excuse me? Didn’t he have a life sentence, Grandma?”

“Yes.”

“Then how was he going to get out? How would you be together?” Kayla saw her grandmother flinch. “You knew he would try to escape, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t know for sure. I didn’t even think it was possible, but he was adamant when he told me that someday he’d come back. I said I wouldn’t wait. I had to do what was right for the baby. He told me he understood, but he promised that one day he’d show up again.”

Kayla felt a chill run down her spine. Was it possible that her grandfather was still alive? His body had never been found. But if he was alive, why hadn’t he come back?

“Now, will you do what I asked you to do before?” her grandmother asked. “Will you stop looking for the watch?”

“I can’t. And I’m not just looking for Johnny’s watch.

I’m looking for all three, because they’re connected, and they’re the reason Evan messed up my life, and the only way Nick and I are going to catch him.”

“Nick and you?” her grandmother echoed. “You barely know the man. His problems are not your problems.”

“They are now, because we’re tangled up together.