by Lisa Gardner
Melanie looked at Ann Margaret quizzically. “They really did agree to take care of Russell Lee's child? Then, who is that?”
“William, sweetheart. William Sheffield was my son. I turned him over to the boys' home the day they arrested Russell Lee, terrified some reporter like Larry Digger would find us both and make his life hell. I honestly thought it was for the best.
“Then, when Russell Lee and Harper agreed on the deal, I drew up papers. Harper and Jamie both had to sign a confession to all they'd done, and then I put it in a safety deposit box with instructions that it was to be opened and turned over to the police if anything happened to me. Finally I moved to Boston, where I could start over too, make something of myself, and, of course, keep an eye on Harper. As for William . . .”
She hesitated, and then she flushed. She said quietly, “I was so sure he was better off in that boys' home. I sent money every year so he would have the best of everything. The brothers promised to take very good care of him. . . . He could get a clean start, never have to worry about some reporter connecting him with his father. And with all that money . . . I grew up so poor myself, I was so sure money was the one thing that would make a difference. I guess I'm not so much better than Harper after all.”
“No,” Melanie said. Something had come over her, and it showed in her face. Something cool. Something fearless. “We are all better than Harper. Because it didn't stop there, did it, Dad? Five years later Russell Lee is finally due to be executed, then no one will ever be the wiser. But how is your family? Your family you thought would be so thrilled with a million bucks? Mom's drinking, Brian's still in therapy. You work all the time just so you don't have to face your own handiwork. And even then you didn't do the right thing.
“Jamie called you. I can remember being in the study of the hotel room in London, hearing it all but not understanding. Jamie telling you that your plan had worked, you'd done well, and now couldn't you give something back. I was so miserable without my mom. And Mom and Brian were so miserable without me. He could set it all up. Erase my memories so not even I would ever know. Drop me off at the hospital for Harper to ‘find.' Then you could literally adopt me back. You wouldn't even have to pretend to be my real father this time. This time you could be the generous adoptive dad taking in an abandoned little girl. You liked that, didn't you, Harper? It made you look good.”
Harper glared at her stubbornly.
“And even then,” she said, “you fucked it up! Kept spending, didn't you? Became a brilliant surgeon, making more and more money, but it was never enough. You learned nothing from ripping your family apart. Suddenly it's twenty years later and you're not the great provider you pretend to be. You're slicing up healthy patients for profit. You're violating your own doctors' oath. Why not? You've already committed a heinous act and gotten away with it—”
“I never hurt anyone!”
“You hurt everyone! You hurt my mom, you hurt my brother. You hurt me! And you risked your patients who trusted you with their health. And then you got mean.
“The man who shot Larry Digger, who tried to shoot me, that was your doing. Someone had found out, someone was sending you little notes, and you were afraid that finally, after all these years, the truth would come out. So you hired someone to kill me. And did you kill him too? Because you were too cheap to part with the payment money?”
“No, no,” Harper protested. “Jamie did that. Jamie shot the man. He's the killer!”
“Jamie is the protector! He did what he had to do to keep me safe. Just like he dove in front of me when you opened fire. For God's sake, he was your friend, and you killed him!”
“He cheated with my wife!”
“You cheated with half the nursing staff. How dare you!”
“Goddammit, you don't know anything!” Harper's voice had gone too high. He lost whatever control he'd had on himself, and in a fraction of an instant David realized it was all going to hell.
He aimed at Harper's forehead just as Patricia Stokes jumped into the way.
“You will not hurt my daughter!” she cried.
“Patricia, no,” David shouted.
And now Ann Margaret was moving and Harper was leveling his gun at his wife, screaming at her to get out of the way or he'd kill her too. And how could she have hurt him when he'd loved her so much and why hadn't she just let things go, why hadn't she been able to get over the loss of Jamie O'Donnell's daughter. Because she still loved O'Donnell, that's why. She'd always loved O'Donnell more.
And while David tried desperately to get a bead, Patricia was yelling that it wasn't true, she had loved Harper more, it was his own pride that had never let him see it and she had been so certain they could have been happy together. What had happened to their dreams? How could he have brought them to this? How could he have threatened their daughter and murdered his own friend?
And then he heard Melanie. Melanie crying for her mother. Melanie realizing that Harper was beyond reason, that he really was going to shoot his own wife and David couldn't stop it, and then she was pulling something out of Jamie O'Donnell's jacket. The gun. Melanie had Jamie's gun.
“Ann Margaret, down!” David roared at the same time Harper spotted the new threat and jerked toward Melanie. Shit, Patricia Stokes was still in the way. He couldn't fire!
Harper screamed. His face twisted, something horrible and bleak passing over his eyes. Melanie rose to face him, looking calm, looking fierce.
“Melanie, no! Patricia, goddammit, get down. Get down!”
And Brian Stokes stepped up behind his father with a tree limb and slammed it across the back of his skull.
Harper crumpled. David rushed forward, already pulling out the handcuffs, and snapped them on. Ann Margaret and Patricia were still standing in the way, pale and dazed.
Brian stared at them all, the tree limb gripped tightly between his hands. With his bruised and battered face he looked like hell. Then his eyes found his sister.
“Meagan?” he whispered. “Oh, Meagan . . .”
“Brian,” she cried, and then she dove into his arms. Patricia ran there too, throwing her arms around her children, cradling them feverishly against her. Together at last, the three remaining Stokeses began to cry.
David and Ann Margaret stood on the outside while the woods once again settled down, and after a minute the birds resumed chirping as if all were as it should be.
When the police arrived twenty minutes later, Patricia Stokes was still crying with Brian. But Melanie had moved into David's arms, and now he held her against him tightly and gently stroked her hair.
EPILOGUE
I T WAS RAINING the day they laid Jamie O'Donnell to rest. It had taken weeks to get his body from the Texas medical examiner. Patricia had found a Catholic priest for the service. Ann Margaret had known he wanted to be cremated. Brian and Melanie had chosen the Newport Cliff Walk to scatter his remains; he had taken them there often when they were children, claiming he loved to listen to the sound of the waves battering the rocks. It reminded him of Ireland.
Now Melanie, Ann Margaret, Patricia, Brian, and Nate stood silently in front of the priest. Melanie found she could not concentrate on the words. Promises of hope and glory and charity meant little to her these days. She was tired of words. They were too easy to say and too tempting to believe.
She watched the dark, angry water frothing below. She thought as strange as it sounded, Harper should be here. This funeral was about him too, and whether he'd ever admit or not, she suspected he missed Jamie O'Donnell and grieved over him too.
Dr. Harper Stokes was now in jail. The states of Texas and Massachusetts and the FBI were currently fighting over him, each arguing they had the best case and should get first dibs. So far the feds were winning. David's healthcare fraud squad had descended upon their Beacon Street home in a frenzy. Bank accounts were frozen, assets seized, files plundered. Melanie, her mother, and her brother had been called in for questioning so many times, the desk man at the Burea
u knew them by sight.
Melanie had gotten to spend equal time with Detective Jax, going over that last afternoon with William. So far no charges had been filed against her. Her attorney assured her that the abrasions on her face, combined with the fact that the gun had been William's, made her self-defense argument plausible. Most likely the D.A. would not want to waste the state's time prosecuting the case. She supposed she should be grateful for small favors.
She would not go through life as a murderer, then. And yet she had killed a man. She wasn't sure what that made her, but then, she was unsure of so many things these days.
One day, exactly two weeks after Jamie's death, she'd awakened in a cold sweat. She'd been dreaming again about the shack and then the days in London. Except this time Jamie said he couldn't stand to be her father anymore. She was a dreadful little girl, he hated her, and he was giving her back.
In a frenzy, she'd driven straight to the jail where they'd been holding Harper and had demanded to see him. She had to know, she had to ask him. Could he tell her if Jamie really loved her? Would he fill in the missing pieces for her? Her memory was still so hazy, and she wanted to hear that both men had cared, that Harper never really would have hurt her, even the hit man had been a mistake. He loved her, Jamie loved her, everything had simply gone awry. Two men and their jealousy, one man and his greed. It was everyone's fault but hers.
Harper, however, wouldn't see her. Since his arrest, he had refused to see anyone, even his wife.
She'd gotten back in her car, driving mindlessly. The next thing she'd known she was at David's apartment. She hadn't had a moment alone with him since the police had arrived in Texas. He was back to being Special Agent Riggs, lead investigator of the growing healthcare fraud case against Harper. Agents, of course, were not allowed to consort with witnesses in a case. She had understood. Agents had rules, and for the most part David respected those rules. That's what made him so different from her two dads.
That night, however, she'd said to hell with it. She'd banged on his door, and the moment he'd opened it, she'd thrown herself into his arms. He hadn't argued. His expression had said everything she felt, the hunger, the yearning, the need for connection, for a reminder that Texas had been real, they were real. They'd made love right there on the entryway floor. Then again in the kitchen, then finally they made it to the bedroom, where they'd started all over again.
Hours later she'd gotten up, gotten dressed, and as wordlessly as she'd arrived, she'd left. He had never called her. She expected that until the investigation was concluded, that would be the case.
She'd waited five days before showing up again. Then three days after that. They never spoke, as if both realized that would cross the line and breach the agent–witness protocol. Instead, they let their hands and mouths and bodies speak for them, urgent and hungry and fierce. Melanie trusted those silent, feverish interludes more than she trusted anything else that had happened in the last twenty years of her life.
Her mother and Ann Margaret were trying to help. Most afternoons now the three women sat out back on the patio, Ann Margaret and Patricia relating the early days in Texas to Melanie, trying to give her some perspective.
Melanie learned a lot about Jamie in those sessions. The way he had loved her mother but had never completely won her away from Harper. The way he'd loved Ann Margaret but still chose the destructive course. The way he seemed to love his daughter, though even that love was strange and tragic.
He had made Melanie his primary heir. Swiss bank accounts holding millions of dollars were hers, ensuring that she and her mother would never want for anything. Ann Margaret was to receive a generous annual stipend for the rest of her life.
The police uncovered the electronic voice distorter he'd used for his anonymous calls. They also found ostrich feathers and a strange picture of a woman and two horrible beasts no one could explain. Last gifts, Brian said. The ostrich feathers for Patricia, for burying her head in the sand when it came to her husband's activities, and the picture for Ann Margaret, for having cavorted with not one, but two monsters in her lifetime.
According to Ann Margaret, Jamie had knowledge of everyone's crimes. The apple on William's bed symbolized that the apple never fell far from the tree. He'd even seen Brian pulling out the briefcase with the ransom money, then had waited breathlessly for Brian to blow the whistle. Of course, Brian never had.
Also, Jamie had the knack for bypassing various security systems, for ferreting out the little details of everyone's life so he could deliver the intimate gifts most intimately.
Finally, Jamie O'Donnell had had motive. According to the Texas medical examiner, Melanie's father had possessed one last secret—he'd been dying of stomach cancer, most likely with less than six months to live.
It appeared that he'd decided to use the brief time he had left to reveal the truth. That's what the FBI said.
Ann Margaret had a slightly different theory.
When you were first adopted, Melanie, you got to meet everyone again for the first time. Just as Jamie predicted, you seemed to “know” your mother instantly. The same with Brian. You even accepted Harper quite naturally and were very protective of him.
Then your parents introduced you to Jamie. Do you remember what you did, Melanie? This was your birth father. The man who'd purposely removed you from the country to help appease Harper and protect you. The man who'd rearranged his life to care for you and then out of love for Patricia and you had given you up again. And you took one look at him and recoiled. You were afraid.
I don't think he ever forgot that moment, sweetheart. I don't think he ever stopped knowing that Harper was the one you ended up loving, while he was the one who had inspired fear.
Some things are even more powerful to a man than cancer. One of those has got to be love.
“‘When I was a child, I spake as a child,'” the priest at the service intoned. “‘I understood as a child, I thought as a child: But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.'”
That was Melanie's cue. She rose. She picked up the urn. It was amazingly heavy, substantial, and yet nothing at all compared to what Jamie had been on earth. At the priest's nod, she took off the top.
Did we ever see face-to-face, Jamie? There is so much I want to ask you. So much I wish I understood . . . So much about you to love and admire, and so much to hate.
I believe you loved me, that you did what you thought was for the best. You sacrificed for me, you sacrificed for my mother, and because of that, I love you, Jamie O'Donnell, and I forgive you everything. Go in peace and God bless.
Melanie tipped over the urn. The ashes floated down in the damp, misty air, into the ocean, where they swirled and then were swept away.
Patricia and Ann Margaret walked back to the road together in the lead. Behind them came Brian and Nate, their heads huddled together and speaking quietly. That left Melanie alone in the rear. She tried not to feel lonely, but it didn't entirely work.
They arrived at the end of the Cliff Walk, where their three vehicles were parked. Melanie saw that a fourth had joined them. And as if reading her mind, a dark-suited man leaned against the passenger door and his head came up at the sight of her.
Melanie started running, and she didn't care who saw her.
“David!”
She drew up short at the last moment, suddenly self-conscious and unsure. He wore a navy blue suit, which made him look official. But then his face softened, his eyes began to glow, and she felt the knot loosen in her chest.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi yourself.”
“Nice ceremony.”
“You heard?”
“I walked out for it but didn't want to interrupt.”
“You could have interrupted,” she said immediately. “I wouldn't have minded.”
He smiled slightly and brushed a finger down h
er cheek. She closed her eyes so she could concentrate on the feel of his touch, and when she opened them again, she saw that the tip of his finger was damp. He'd brushed away her tears.
“Are you still investigating my father?” she demanded. “Tell me, are you here as part of your special duties, because you are just killing me—”
“I'm done.”
“Done?”
“Done. Wrapped up this morning, handed over to the attorney general. I'm a free man, Melanie Stokes. So I thought I oughta find you.”
“Oh, David,” she said, and then she couldn't speak. “Oh, David,” she tried again. She gave up words and threw herself against him. He folded her into his embrace.
“I missed you,” he said.
“Me too.”
“I wanted to know how you were doing.”
“I know, I know.”
He was suddenly angling back her head, his eyes fierce. “I'm taking meds,” he declared in a rush. “I can walk better, move better. Got promoted too. I have job security. But, Mel, I haven't done as right by you as I could.”
“David, I love you.”
He stopped talking and held her close. After a moment he muttered, “Thank God. My father told me I was probably messing this whole thing up and I should've introduced you to him weeks ago. Somehow or other that would've made a difference. I don't claim to understand him. Actually, after everything I blabbered, I think he was hoping for a chance to court you himself.”
“Really? My mom asked if you were ever going to come around again. Ann Margaret told her to be quiet and mind her own business—they were in no position to give advice on men.”
He laughed. “Interesting point.”
She grabbed his lapels. “Say it, dammit! It's been a bitch of a month and I want to hear it. All of it!”
“I love you, Melanie. I want to settle down with you, raise two point two children, and grow old together. I want to be with you every single day of my life.”