by Nora Roberts
“She asked for more. From you. From all of you.”
“And miscalculated.” Phillip leaned back, studying Sybill. Nothing showed, he noted, but her pallor. “She won’t bleed us, Dr. Griffin. She can threaten all she wants, but she won’t bleed us, and she won’t get Seth.”
“You also have a copy of the letter I wrote to Gloria DeLauter,” Anna stated. “I informed her that Seth was under the protection of Social Services, that an investigation by this office was under way on charges of child abuse. If she comes into the county, she’ll be served with a restraining order and a warrant.”
“She was furious,” Grace spoke up. “She called the house right after she got Anna’s letter. She threatened and demanded. She said she wanted money or she’d take Seth. I told her she was wrong.” Grace looked over, held Seth’s gaze. “He’s ours now.”
She’d sold her son, was all Sybill could think. It was just as Phillip had said. All of it was just as he’d said. “You have temporary guardianship.”
“It’ll be permanent shortly,” Phillip informed her. “We intend to see to that.”
Sybill laid the papers back on Anna’s desk. Inside she was cold, brutally cold, but she linked her fingers lightly on top of her purse and spoke evenly to Seth. “Did she hit you?”
“What the hell do you care?”
“Answer the question, Seth,” Phillip ordered. “Tell your aunt what life was like with her sister.”
“Okay, fine.” He bit the words off, but his sneer was wobbly around the edges. “Sure, she knocked me around when she felt like it. If I was lucky, she was too drunk or stoned for it to hurt much. I could usually get away, anyhow.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter in the least. “Sometimes she got me by surprise. Maybe she hadn’t been able to turn enough tricks to score. So she’d wake me up and pound on me a while. Or she’d cry all over me.”
She wanted to turn away from that image, as she’d turned away from the desperate strangers in the waiting area. Instead she kept her gaze steady on Seth’s face. “Why didn’t you tell anyone, find someone to help you?”
“Like who?” Was she stupid, Seth thought? “The cops? She told me what the cops would do. I’d end up in juvie and some guy would use me like some of her johns wanted to. They could do whatever they wanted once I was inside. As long as I was out, I could get away.”
“She lied to you,” Anna said softly while Sybill tried to find words, any words. “The police would have helped.”
“She knew?” Sybill managed. “About the men who tried to . . . touch you?”
“Sure, she thought it was funny. Hell, when she’s stoned, she thinks most everything is funny. It’s when she’s drunk that she gets mean.”
Could this monster the boy spoke of so casually be her sister? “How . . . Do you know why she decided to contact Professor Quinn?”
“No, I don’t know anything about it. She got wired up one day, started talking about hitting a gold mine. She took off for a few days.”
“She left you alone?” Why that should horrify her, after everything else she’d heard, Sybill couldn’t say.
“Hey, I can take care of myself. When she came back, she was flying. Said I was finally going to be of some use. She had some money—real money, because she went out and scored a lot of dope without hooking. She stayed stoned and happy for days. Then Ray came. He said I could come with him. At first I thought he was like the guys she brought home. But he wasn’t. I could tell. He looked sad and tired.”
His voice had changed, she noted, softened. So, she thought, he grieves, too. Then she saw the ripe disgust come into his eyes.
“She came on to him,” Seth said shortly, “and he got real upset. He didn’t yell or anything, but he got real hard in the eyes. He made her leave. He had money with him, and he said if she wanted it, to leave. So she took it and went. He told me he had a house by the water, and a dog, and that I could live there if I wanted. And no one would mess with me.”
“You went with him.”
“He was old,” Seth said with a shrug. “I figured I could get away from him if he tried anything. But you could trust Ray. He was decent. He said I’d never have to go back to the way things were. And I won’t. No matter what, I won’t go back. And I don’t trust you.” His eyes were adult again, his voice controlled and derisive. “Because you lied, you pretended to be decent. All you were doing was spying on us.”
“You’re right.” She thought it the hardest thing she’d ever done, or would ever have to do, to meet those scornful eyes in a child’s face and admit her own sins. “You have no reason to trust me. I didn’t help you. I could have, all those years ago when she brought you to New York. I didn’t want to see. It was easier not to. And when I came home one day and both of you were gone, I didn’t do anything about that, either. I told myself it wasn’t my concern, that you weren’t my responsibility. That wasn’t just wrong, it was cowardly.”
He didn’t want to believe her, didn’t want to hear the regret and the apology in her voice. He balled his hands into fists on his knees. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you now, either.”
“She’s my sister. I can’t change that.” Because it hurt to see the contempt in his eyes, she turned back to Anna. “What can I do to help? Can I make a statement to you? Talk to your lawyer? I’m a licensed psychologist, and Gloria’s sister. I would assume that my opinion might carry some weight toward the guardianship.”
“I’m sure it would,” Anna murmured. “It won’t be easy for you.”
“I have no feelings for her. I’m not proud to say that, but it’s the simple truth. I feel nothing toward her whatsoever, and the sense of responsibility I thought I should feel to her is over. As much as he may wish it otherwise, I’m Seth’s aunt. I intend to help.”
She rose and scanned the faces in the room while her stomach pitched and rolled. “I’m terribly sorry, for all of this. I realize an apology is useless. I have no excuse for what I did. Reasons, but no excuses. It’s perfectly clear that Seth is where he belongs, where he’s happy. If you’ll give me a moment to gather my thoughts, I’ll give you a statement.”
She walked out, without hurry, and continued to the outside, where she could find air.
“Well, she went about it wrong, but she seems level right now.” Cam got up, paced off some of his energy in the crowded office. “She sure doesn’t shake easily.”
“I wonder,” Anna murmured. She, too, was a trained observer, and instinct told her there was a great deal more going on under that placid surface than any of them might guess. “Having her on our side will, without question, help. It might be best if you left the two of us alone so I can talk with her. Phillip, you’ll want to call the lawyer, explain the situation, and see if he wants to depose her.”
“Yeah, I’ll take care of it.” He frowned thoughtfully at the fingers drumming on his knee. “She had a picture of Seth in her Filofax.”
“What?” Anna blinked at him.
“I went through her things before she got back to the hotel last night.” He smiled a little, then shrugged as his sister-in-law closed her eyes. “Seemed like the thing to do at the time. She’s got this snapshot of Seth when he was little, tucked in her Filofax.”
“So what?” Seth demanded.
“So, it was the only picture I found anywhere. It’s interesting.” He lifted his hands, dropped them again. “On another path, it could be that Sybill knows something about Gloria’s connection to Dad. Since we can’t question Gloria, we ought to ask her.”
“Seems to me,” Ethan said slowly, “that whatever she knows would’ve come from Gloria. Be tough to believe it. I think she’d tell us what she knows,” he continued, “but what she knows might not be fact.”
“We don’t know fact or fiction,” Phillip pointed out, “until we ask her.”
“Ask me what?” Steadier, determined now t
o finish it out, Sybill stepped back into the room and closed the door quietly at her back.
“The reason Gloria hit on our father.” Phillip rose so their eyes were level. “The reason she knew he would pay to protect Seth.”
“Seth said he was a decent man.” Sybill’s gaze roamed the faces of the men. “I think you’re proof of that.”
“Decent men don’t have adulterous affairs with women half their age, then walk away from a child conceived from that affair.” Bitterness coated Phillip’s voice as he took another step toward Sybill. “And there’s no way you’re going to convince us that Ray slept with your sister behind our mother’s back, then walked away from his son.”
“What?” Without realizing it, Sybill shot a hand out to grip his arm, as much in shock as to keep her balance as she reeled from it. “Of course he didn’t. You told me you didn’t believe that Gloria and your father . . .”
“Others do.”
“But that’s—where did you get the idea that Seth was his son, his son by Gloria?”
“It’s easy enough to hear it in town if you keep your ears open.” Phillip narrowed his eyes at her face. “It’s something your sister planted. She claimed he molested her, then she blackmails him, sells him her son.” He looked back at Seth, into Ray Quinn’s eyes. “I say it’s a lie.”
“Of course it’s a lie. It’s a horrible lie.”
Desperate to do at least this one thing right and well, she went to Seth, crouched in front of him. She wanted badly to take his hand, but resisted her impulse when he leaned away from her.
“Ray Quinn wasn’t your father, Seth. He was your grandfather. Gloria’s his daughter.”
His lips trembled, and those deep-blue eyes shimmered. “My grandfather?”
“Yes. I’m sorry she didn’t tell you, so sorry you didn’t know before he . . .” She shook her head, straightened. “I didn’t realize there was confusion about this. I should have. I only learned about it myself a few weeks ago.”
She took her seat again, prepared herself. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”
TWELVE
IT WAS EASIER now, almost like a lecture. Sybill was used to giving lectures on social topics. All she had to do was divorce herself from the subject and relay information in a clear and cohesive manner.
“Professor Quinn had a relationship with Barbara Harrow,” she began. She put her back to the window so that she could face all of them as she spoke. “They met at American University in Washington. I don’t have a great many of the details, but what I do know indicates that he was teaching there and she was a graduate student. Barbara Harrow is my mother. Gloria’s mother.”
“My father,” Phillip said. “Your mother.”
“Yes. Nearly thirty-five years ago. I assume they were attracted to each other, physically at least. My mother . . .” She cleared her throat. “My mother indicated that she believed he had a great deal of potential, that he would rise up the ranks in academia quickly. Status is an essential requirement to my mother’s contentment. However, she found herself disappointed in his . . . what she saw as his lack of ambition. He was content to teach. Apparently he wasn’t particularly interested in the social obligations that are necessary for advancement. And his politics were too liberal for her tastes.”
“She wanted a rich, important husband.” Cueing in quickly, Phillip raised his eyebrows. “And she discovered he wasn’t going to be it.”
“That’s essentially true,” Sybill agreed in a cool, steady voice. “Thirty-five years ago, the country was experiencing unrest, its own internal war between youth and establishment. Colleges were teeming with minds that questioned not only an unpopular war, but the status quo. Professor Quinn, it would seem, had a lot of questions.”
“He believed in using the brain,” Cam muttered. “And in taking a stand.”
“According to my mother, he took stands.” Sybill managed a small smile. “Often unpopular with the administration of the university. He and my mother disagreed, strongly, on basic principles and beliefs. At the end of the term, she went home to Boston, disillusioned, angry, and, she was to discover, pregnant.”
“Bullshit. Sorry,” Cam said shortly when Anna hissed at him. “But it’s bullshit. There’s no way he would have ignored responsibility for a kid. No way in hell.”
“She never told him.” Sybill folded her hands as all eyes swung back to her. “She was furious. Perhaps she was frightened as well, but she was furious to find herself pregnant by a man she’d decided was unsuitable. She considered terminating the pregnancy. She’d met my father, and they had clicked.”
“He was suitable,” Cam concluded.
“I believe they suited each other.” Her voice chilled. They were her parents, damn it. She had to be left with something. “My mother was in a difficult and frightening position. She wasn’t a child. She was nearly twenty-five, but an unwanted and unplanned pregnancy is a wrenching episode for a woman of any age. In a moment of weakness, or despair, she confessed all of it to my father. And he offered her marriage. He loved her,” Sybill said quietly. “He must have loved her very much. They were married quickly and quietly. She never went back to Washington. She never looked back.”
“Dad never knew he had a daughter?” Ethan covered Grace’s hand with his.
“No, he couldn’t have. Gloria was three, nearly four when I was born. I can’t say what the relationship between her and my parents was like in those early years. I know that later on, she felt excluded. She was difficult and temperamental, demanding. Certainly she was wild. Certain standards of behavior were expected, and she refused to meet them.”
It sounded so cold, Sybill thought now. So unyielding. “In any case, she left home when she was still a teenager. Later, I discovered that both of my parents, and myself, sent her money, independently of each other. She would contact one of us and plead, demand, threaten, whichever worked. I wasn’t aware of any of this until Gloria called me last month, about Seth.”
Sybill paused a moment until she could compose her thoughts. “Before I came here, I flew to Paris to see my parents. I felt they needed to know. Seth was their grandchild, and as far as I knew, he’d been taken away from Gloria and was living with strangers. When I told my mother what had happened, and she refused to become involved, to offer any assistance, I was stunned and angry. We argued.” Sybill let out a short laugh. “She was surprised enough by that, I think, to tell me what I’ve just told you.”
“Gloria had to know,” Phillip pointed out. “She had to know Ray Quinn was her father or she’d never have come here.”
“Yes, she knew. A couple of years ago, she went to my mother when my parents were staying in D.C. for a few months. I can assume it was an ugly scene. From what my mother told me, Gloria demanded a large sum of money or she’d go to the press, to the police, to whoever would listen and accuse my father of sexual abuse, my mother of collusion in it. None of that is true,” Sybill said wearily. “Gloria always equated sex with power, and acceptance. She routinely accused men, particularly men in positions of authority, of molesting her.
“In this instance, my mother gave her several thousand dollars and the story I’ve just told you. She promised Gloria that it was the last penny she would ever see from her, the last word she would ever speak to her. My mother rarely, very rarely, goes back on a promise of any kind. Gloria would have known that.”
“So she hit on Ray Quinn instead,” Phillip concluded.
“I don’t know when she decided to find him. It may have stewed in her mind for a time. Now she would consider this the reason she was never loved, never wanted, never accepted as she felt she deserved to be. I imagine she blamed your father for that. Someone else is always to blame when Gloria has difficulties.”
“So she found him.” Phillip rose from his chair to pace. “And, true to form, demanded money, made accusations, threatened. Only this ti
me she used her own son as the hammer.”
“Apparently. I’m sorry. I should have realized you weren’t aware of all the facts. I suppose I assumed your father had told you more of it.”
“He didn’t have time.” Cam’s voice was cold and bitter.
“He told me he was waiting for some information,” Ethan remembered. “That he’d explain everything once he found out.”
“He must have tried contacting your mother.” Phillip pinned Sybill with a look. “He would have wanted to speak with her, to know.”
“I can’t tell you that. I simply don’t know.”
“I know,” Phillip said shortly. “He would have done what he felt was right. For Seth first, because he’s a child. But he would have wanted to help Gloria. To do that, he needed to talk to her mother, find out what had happened. It would have mattered to him.”
“I can only tell you what I know or what’s been told to me.” Sybill lifted her hands, let them fall. “My family has behaved badly.” It was weak, she knew. “All of us,” she said to Seth. “I apologize for myself, and for them. I don’t expect you to . . .” What? she wondered, and let it go. “I’ll do anything I can to help.”
“I want people to know.” Seth’s eyes swam when he lifted them to her face. “I want people to know he was my grandfather. They’re saying things about him, and it’s wrong. I want people to know I’m a Quinn.”
Sybill could only nod. If this was all he asked of her, she would make certain she gave it. Drawing a breath, she looked at Anna. “What can I do?”
“You’ve made a good start already.” Anna glanced at her watch. She had other cases and another appointment scheduled in ten minutes. “Are you willing to make the information you’ve given us official, and public?”
“Yes.”
“I have an idea how to start that ball rolling.”
The embarrassment factor couldn’t be weighed, Sybill reminded herself. She could and would live with the whispers and the speculative looks that were bound to come her way once she followed through on Anna’s suggestion.