The Secret Life of Ceecee Wilkes (38 page)

A
woman came to visit Eve during her third week as a prisoner in the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women. Eve sat down behind the sheet of Plexiglas, wondering if she was supposed to recognize her visitor. The woman was her own age, with salt-and-pepper hair, and she did not look at all familiar. Eve
did
recognize the box the woman held on the counter in front of her, though, and her hand flew to her mouth.

She looked at her visitor. “Ronnie?” she asked.

Ronnie smiled, almost shyly. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember me,” she said.

“Of course I do,” Eve said, then offered a white lie. “You still look like Olivia Newton-John.”

“The hair’s a little different.” Ronnie laughed. “Not to mention the rest of the body.”

Eve pointed to the box. “Is that…?”

Ronnie nodded. “I saved them,” she said. “I knew how important they were to you and I’ve just carried them around with me from move to move, hoping someday I’d find you to give them to you. I have to admit, I never expected I’d find you here, though.” She waved her hand through the air to encompass the prison.

Eve smiled. “Unreal, isn’t it? I guess you know the whole story?”

“Is there anyone breathing who doesn’t?” Ronnie asked. “I’m sorry, though. You were so young and Tim was so good at sucking you in.”

“I’m very lucky it’s only a year,” Eve said. She knew she would have received a far worse sentence if Irving Russell hadn’t intervened on her behalf. Why he and his daughter had had a change of heart, she would never understand, but she would be forever grateful to them for their help.

She looked at the box with longing. “I don’t know if they’ll let me have that in here,” she said.

“They will,” Ronnie nodded. “I called ahead and spoke to a woman who said they’d have to search them, which they did this morning while I was waiting. So now you can have them in your room…your cell.”

“Oh, Ronnie,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.” She managed to ask her old friend about herself, and learned that Ronnie worked with computers, was divorced and had three children. Eve listened with as much interest and caring as she could muster, but all she wanted to do was sort through the box to find whatever words of wisdom her mother might have to offer a forty-four-year-old woman in prison.

One year later

F
or once, Eve was sitting on the other side of the Plexiglas, a question in her mind that she’d been waiting decades to ask. She’d made this detour to the men’s prison in Raleigh on her way to visit Cory. The men’s prison felt different than the women’s correctional institution. It smelled staler, the air thicker, fouler. Women sat in the cubicles on either side of her, talking to men on the phones as Eve waited. She couldn’t make out what the women were saying, but one of them was crying.

She’d been out of prison for four glorious months. She and Jack were in counseling, but she knew things would work out between the two of them. The bond was strong, and she’d married a man who was not only forgiving but committed to her, no matter what. He’d proved that during the past year and a half. Best of all, his sense of humor and playfulness were back. She had been afraid she’d killed the joy in him for all time.

Dru was home again, living with them while she taught drama at the same high school Jack had taught at so long ago. Jack had needed her there while Eve was in prison, and Eve was in no rush to push her out of the nest. Dru had a boyfriend—a terrific guy with an animated personality that matched her own. She’d be out of the nest soon enough.

The only truly dark moment Eve had experienced while in prison was during Cory’s labor and delivery, when she could not be with her daughter. The memories of Genevieve were so strong during those hours when Cory was in labor, that she could see the bloody bed in the cabin whether her eyes were open or closed. Dru was with her sister in the delivery room, where Cory gave birth to a long, slender redheaded boy she named Sam, who was now nine months old and the most gorgeous grandchild in the universe. Cory’d had to give up on her dream job with the school district, though. Not because of her phobias but because of the demands of motherhood. Irving Russell was helping her out financially while she stayed at home with Sam. In a year or two, she’d go back to work, but for now, she was grateful for the help from her biological father. So far, his path and Eve’s had not crossed, and she thought that was best. They would live out their lives loving the same daughter, the same grandson, in their separate spheres.

Eve’s attention was suddenly drawn to the door at the back of the visiting area. Tim walked in dressed in his orange prison uniform, led by a guard who followed him right up to the cubicle. Tim smiled at her as he took his seat and lifted the phone to his ear.

“You never, ever should have admitted your part in the kidnapping,” he said, instead of hello.

He was still handsome, bald head and all. In another setting at another time, she might still have been taken in by his eyes.

“I had to,” she said. “I couldn’t let you—or anyone—pay for a crime I knew you didn’t commit. I appreciated that you tried to protect me, though.”

“And I appreciate that you saved my life. I’d be on death row if it hadn’t been for you.”

She shifted in her seat. “I have to ask you something,” she said. “Are you the person who sent money for Cory for all those years?”

He nodded. “Yes,” he said. He studied her face for so long she began to feel uncomfortable. “I need to tell you something, CeeCee,” he said. “First, I’m ashamed of the guy I was back then. I had one thing on my mind, and that was helping my sister. I didn’t care how I did it or who I hurt in the process. I used you and I used Genevieve Russell. You were so young and…” He hesitated.

“Gullible,” she said.

“Naive.” He smiled. “It made you very easy to seduce. But Genevieve had been even easier.”

She was confused. “You mean…when you kidnapped her?”

“She was my Spanish professor,” he said.

“Yes, I know.”

Tim shrugged. “I thought I might be able to get to Russell through her, so I…started a relationship with her.”

Eve gasped. “You mean…you had an affair with her?” She suddenly recalled Genevieve telling her that Tim had had an affair with a married woman.

“Her husband was so busy that it was easy,” Tim said. “She needed the attention, and I think she fell in love with me. At least she said she did. But it turned out she didn’t have much influence over Russell’s political decisions anyway, so I ended the relationship. A few months later, I started working on the plan to kidnap her. Bets, who was my girlfriend at the time, didn’t want to be in on it. And that’s where you came in.”

Eve shook her head. “You really were a user, weren’t you,” she said.

“Of everyone,” he admitted. He tilted his head to look at her. “Do you understand now why I sent you money for your daughter?”

“Out of guilt?” she asked, but then the reality dawned on her. “Oh my God,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “You thought she was yours!”

He nodded. “Genevieve was never sure, but in case she
was
mine, I wanted to support her in whatever small way I could. Of course, I know now that she wasn’t mine.” He looked a little wistful. “That’s best, really. Better that she has the security and status of being Russell’s daughter instead of having a convict for a dad.”

She nodded. “And she had my husband, Jack, for a dad. She couldn’t have gotten any luckier than that.” She looked down at her hands, then up at him again. “Did you…you were on the run for so long,” she said. “Just like I was. What was it like for you? Did you have a good life before they caught up with you?”

He shrugged again. “A good life, maybe,” he said. “A peaceful life, no. You can never have peace if you’re living a lie.”

She nodded, remembering how he’d seduced her with words like those. She was no longer vulnerable to his powers of seduction, but she still knew a good truism when she heard one.

“Right,” she said. “I know all about that.”

She left the prison after her visit, savoring the sunshine and the open road as she continued her drive to Cory’s. She felt freer than she had since Tim’s capture nearly two years earlier. Freer than she had since her mother’s death so long ago. There were no questions left to answer and nothing to get in the way of the future.

And in another few minutes, she could hold her daughter and grandson in her arms.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-5464-4

THE SECRET LIFE OF CEECEE WILKES

Copyright © 2006 by Diane Chamberlain.

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