She nodded, her gaze going back to the girl.
“Meet me at Barker’s Lounge tonight. Do you remember where it is? On the outskirts of town. We’ll have privacy there.”
“You could just come by the cottage, if you want,”
she offered.
He shook his head. “I’d rather we met in a neutral place. Seven o’clock?”
She nodded, and he turned and walked away toward the gazebo.
Look back, she willed his retreating figure. Look back so I’ll know this wasn’t all a figment of my imagination.
He didn’t look back.
Olivia felt her legs threaten to give out again, and she rushed over to the gazebo and sat down just as her legs would have given out.
Your father hands over our newborn daughter and a check for twenty-five thousand dollars. . . .
Just a card every year and a check . . .
Our baby is sitting right there . . .
Olivia covered her face with her hands. A scream rose and died in her throat.
It couldn’t possibly be true. It couldn’t.
Her father’s face floated into her mind. And she knew it absolutely could be true.
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Olivia glanced over to the parking lot in front of the town hall. An attractive woman was standing by the window of Zach’s shiny red truck. She traced a finger down his cheek, then slid her tongue along his ear. Girlfriend? Wife? Olivia hadn’t noticed whether Zach wore a wedding ring.
She forced herself up. She had to get back to the cottage, to a telephone. There was only one person alive who would know—or admit to—the truth.
Her mother.
“So who was that hot babe?” Kayla asked as Zach pulled out of the town hall parking lot.
His fingers were shaking on the steering wheel. He steadied them, forcing himself to pull it together.
“You mean Marnie?”
“Duh, Daddy. No. The blond woman.”
He hadn’t been confused by who she’d meant.
He just wasn’t ready to answer the question.
What the hell? What the hell was Olivia Sedgwick doing in Blueberry?
“She’s someone I used to know a long time ago,”
Zach finally said, glancing over at Kayla.
He suddenly realized that Kayla had Olivia’s cheekbones. Olivia’s heart-shaped face. Olivia’s long, slender fingers. He’d only had one photograph of Olivia, from when she was sixteen, and he never allowed himself to look at it. When Kayla asked him, as a five-year-old, if he had any photos of her mother, he gave her the picture and told her to be very careful with it, that it was the only one.
For months she slept with it under her pillow.
And then she told him that she wanted to put it HAUNTING OLIV IA
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away, like her mother: away. He tried to get Kayla to open up about her feelings over the years, paid for some expensive therapy, but Kayla never wanted to talk about her mother. There’s nothing to say, was her refrain.
Zach had no idea where Kayla had put the picture, but he’d bet anything she had it tucked safe somewhere in her room. Anyway, all he’d had of Olivia over these years was his memory of her, and he’d forgotten those little details, like the shape of her face. He only knew that when he looked at Kayla, he was reminded of Olivia.
“She’s so pretty,” Kayla said. “I wish I looked like that.”
You do, he thought. You look more like me, but your mother is everywhere in your face. And the hair, of course.
“Was she an ex-girlfriend?” Kayla asked, wiggling her eyebrows at him. At his nod, Kayla giggled.
“Well, she’s a total klutz. First she drops her coffee and then she wipes out on the snow right into it.”
She laughed, then opened her pink Inner-Beauty Pageant folder and began reading.
He took a deep breath. Thank you, he sent heavenward. He wasn’t ready for questions. He wouldn’t lie to his daughter about who Olivia was, but he needed time to think, needed time to figure out what to say and how.
He needed to talk to Olivia and find out what the hell she was doing in Blueberry. What her inten-tions were.
Our baby was stillborn. . . .
What was that all about? Had her father really told her the baby she’d given birth to had been born dead? That seemed beyond even William 68
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Sedgwick’s lack of decency. Or maybe not. And what about the doctor and nurses? Had they been paid off?
Or was Olivia playing some kind of game with him? He’d find out in a few hours. Of that much he was damned sure.
Out of breath from running back to the cottage, Olivia dropped down on the sofa in the living room and stared at the phone. One telephone call stood between her and the truth.
She picked up the phone. Her hand trembled, and she silently counted to ten. Then twenty.
She dialed. Her mother answered on the first ring.
“Hello, Candace Hearn speaking.”
Olivia hesitated.
“Hello?” her mom repeated.
“Mom, it’s me,” she said, standing up and pacing the room. “I’m going to get straight to the point. I need you to tell me the truth.”
“The truth about what, dear?”
Olivia stopped. “About my baby.”
There was silence for a moment. “Your baby?
Olivia, I’m not sure I’m follow—”
No. Her mother was not going to pull one of her famous “I have no idea what you’re talking about” routines, her voice all feigned innocence. “I just ran into Zach Archer. And, according to him, our daughter. ”
Now it was her mother’s turn to suck in her breath. “What do you mean ‘our daughter’? What are you talking about?”
Olivia began pacing again. “Damn it, Mom. No lies! Tell me the truth right now!”
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“Olivia, I have no idea what—”
“Mother, was I lied to? Did my baby live?”
“No!” her mother insisted. “The baby was stillborn. The doctor said so. That rude nurse, as well.
I have a copy of the death certificate.”
Olivia closed her eyes and shook her head. “Could William have paid off the doctor? Could the death certificate have been forged?”
“Olivia, my God, I just don’t know. Why would he do such a thing? Why would he arrange to have the baby supposedly be born dead when you were giving it up for adoption anyway?”
Yes, why? That made no sense. In either case, she would not have been going home with a baby.
“Olivia, what do you mean you saw Zach Archer and your daughter?”
Olivia took a deep breath. “I mean, he’s here in Blueberry and he told me that our child is alive and well. She was with him, though not within earshot of our conversation.”
“I don’t understand any of this!” her mother said.
“Your father handled the adoption, said that he knew a top-notch lawyer, that the baby would go to a wonderful family.” She let out a breath. “Oh, God, Olivia. What did your father do?” She was silent for a moment. “I’m flying up. You need my sup—”
“No, Mom,” Olivia interrupted. “I appreciate that you want to help, but if this girl is my daughter, if Zach is telling the truth, then I’m going to need to proceed alone and with the utmost caution.”
That was an understatement.
Chapter 6
Olivia pulled up to Barker’s Lounge at a few minutes to seven. There were several cars in the lot. She glanced around for the pickup she’d seen Zach driving. It didn’t look like he was here yet.
She headed inside and sat at one of the round tables in the back. She’d expected the place to be more of a bar, but it was a charming grill, with a blackboard menu dominating the wall behind the long, wooden bar. A jukebox softly played a Johnny Cash song, and an attractive couple played pool at the table at the far end. A few people were seated at
the bar, none of whom Olivia recognized.
She glanced up at the blackboard menu, her stomach growling at the words hamburger, mac and cheese, fish and chips, chef salad. She hadn’t eaten a thing all day. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to here, either.
She glanced at the door every few seconds while tearing the napkin on her lap to shreds. Finally, the door opened. And there was Zach, his cheeks HAUNTING OLIV IA
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slightly pink from the cold, a green wool scarf wrapped round his neck.
God, he was handsome.
He came over and sat down. “This is crazy,” he said, shaking his head. “What the hell are you doing in Blueberry all of a sudden? What is this story about being told our baby was stillborn? What the hell is going on, Olivia?”
Slow down, Zach. You’ve got to slow down. “It’s good to see you,” she said. And it was. So good.
“Forget the niceties, Olivia,” he snapped. “I just want answers to my questions. What are you doing here? What do you want?”
A barmaid came over. They both ordered coffee.
“There’s a five-dollar minimum per person for the tables,” the barmaid said. “Menu’s up there,”
she added, gesturing at the blackboard.
Zach shook his head. “We’ll each have a hamburger and fries.” He turned to Olivia. “Unless you’re suddenly a vegetarian.”
“I still love hamburgers and French fries,” she said, surprised that he remembered her old addiction. In the brief time they’d had together in Blueberry, they’d always eaten hamburgers and fries, ordering them from the greasy spoon diner and bringing their lunch to the deserted area of the beach.
“I want answers, Olivia,” he said, his hazel eyes narrowed.
“My father died last month,” she told him. “At the reading of his will, I was told I would receive a letter to open on January thirtieth. The letter stated that I would inherit the cottage and an undisclosed sum of money if I lived in Blueberry for one month and bought a couple of things each day from town.”
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Zach unwound his scarf from his neck, but he didn’t take off his heavy brown leather jacket. “Am I supposed to offer condolences for the loss of your father? I have no idea if you two suddenly became father and daughter after I last spoke to you.”
She shook her head. “My relationship with my father never changed. If anything, it became more nonexistent than it was.”
“I assume you’re more interested in the ‘undisclosed sum of money’ than in the cottage,” he said.
“But then again, I thought I knew you once and I found out how wrong I was, so what the hell do I know about you?”
The slap stung, surprising her. But she cautioned herself against getting too emotional. “Zach, I don’t think either of us knew anything thirteen years ago.
I think my father lied to both of us. I have no idea what he told you about me. All I know is that he told me my baby was stillborn. The doctor con-firmed it. I believed that my baby was born dead until you said otherwise this morning.” She took a deep breath. “I called my mother when I got back to the cottage, and she swears she was told the same thing. My father was handling the adoption—”
Zach stared at her. “What adoption?”
“He browbeat me into agreeing to it. He kept telling me that you abandoned me when I told you I was pregnant and that you took off. That I’d be penniless and living on the street. That I’d be found an unfit and terrible mother by the courts and that my baby would be taken away from me and put into foster care. He told me all this and worse every hour until I signed the papers.”
Zach stared at her. “But I didn’t abandon you, HAUNTING OLIV IA
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Olivia. I was told that you ‘wanted nothing to do with a punk like me.’ That when I got you pregnant you realized what a mess I was making of your life. Your father told me he’d put the baby up for adoption or that I could have sole custody. I chose the baby.”
Olivia gasped. “How could he have done this? Why would he deny me my own child all these years?”
He stared at her. “Start from the beginning,” he said, finally taking off his coat. “Tell me everything.
From the moment you found out you were pregnant.
Don’t leave anything out.”
The waitress brought their burgers and fries, and Olivia was grateful for the reprieve to prepare herself for telling a story she never allowed herself to think about.
“Tell me, Olivia,” he said. “I have a right to know everything.”
She nodded. “I found out I was pregnant a month after I returned home to New York. I called you the day I took the pregnancy test. It was a Sunday morning, and my mother was sleeping. I took the phone into the bathroom, staring at the pink line on the stick of the pregnancy test.”
“And I immediately suggested we run away together,”
Zach said.
Her heart squeezed in her chest. “I know.” She would never, ever forget those words, his first reaction.
“But my mother overheard part of our conversation and she stormed in and grabbed the phone out of my hand and hung it up.”
“I’d assumed you hung up on me,” he said, shaking 74
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his head. “That it was your answer to my idea of running away together.”
“Zach,” Olivia said, “I loved you. How could you think I’d hang up on you?” She leaned back against her chair and stared up at the ceiling.
In that month between leaving Maine and learning she was pregnant, she and Zach spoke every day.
Her mother, curious about the long-distance bill, never asked if it was a boy or girl; all that mattered to her mother was that she’d made a good friend from the wealthy community. She and Zach spoke for just a few minutes every day, but sometimes for as long as twenty minutes, and always about how much they missed each other, how incredible their connection was, how they wished they could just run away together, start over from scratch, but how hard that would be at their age. They would wait until Olivia turned eighteen, and then they’d be together. That was the plan. Neither doubted their love. But then she’d gotten pregnant, and as hard as it would be to run off together and take care of a baby, Zach had been willing.
Just finish the story, she ordered herself.
“My mother flipped out,” she continued. “Over and over she said, ‘How could you have been so stupid!’ and then she called my father, screaming at him that he’d let such a thing happen on ‘his watch.’ A moment later, she hung up with a ‘Your dad will handle this.’ Five minutes later, the phone rang. My father had made some calls, and I was being sent way up the coast of Maine to a home for pregnant teenagers. The baby would be adopted by a good family, I was told. It’s for the best, my mother said before dropping me off at the home.”
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“The best for you, ” Olivia had wanted to scream.
Olivia’s pregnancy was an embarrassment to Candace, even though no one knew about it. And the best for her father, who wanted nothing to do with his own daughter, let alone a “problem.”
To everyone else, Olivia was in a Swiss boarding school.
“I tried to call you back,” she said. “In the middle of the night. But a recording came on and said the phone had been disconnected.”
“I remember that,” he said. “The phone was always getting disconnected every few months. My parents never paid the bill.” Now it was Zach’s turn to lean back against his chair and expel a breath. “I was so frustrated that I couldn’t get in touch with you. I tried to find you, but you were impossible to find. I went to New York to look for you, at your school, at shops around your house. I even waited on your doorstep to talk to your mother, but she refused to talk to me, refused to tell me anything.”
“I didn’t know that,” Olivia said, in such a low voice she barely heard it herself. “I tried, too, Zach.
I couldn
’t reach you by phone, so I wrote letters.
And they were all returned unopened and marked
‘Return to Sender.’”
His mouth dropped open. “My mother . . . or father. Clearly, your father got to them. Paid them off. Paid them off to disconnect the phone most likely.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Olivia was emotionally exhausted and they hadn’t even gotten up to the birth yet.
“What was the home for pregnant teenagers like?” Zach asked.
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Olivia could see the building, a mile down a dirt driveway and surrounded by nothing but trees and the ocean, as though she’d just been driven there for the first time. She’d never forget how unwelcoming the brick building had looked. Like a detention center, a juvenile hall.
She shrugged. “It was what it was. No one was particularly kind there, but we were cared for physically. We were given prenatal vitamins and prenatal checkups and nutritious meals. I made a few friends there, but none of the girls really wanted to talk much; no one could bear to talk about how they really felt about being there or giving up their babies for adoption.” She took a deep breath. “I went into labor and I was so scared,” Olivia said, staring at her lap. “And then the baby was born and taken away. I didn’t even get to see her, Zach.”
“And you were told she was stillborn?” he asked, his expression incredulous.
She nodded. “By the doctor. By the nurse.”
“An employee of your father’s arrived at my house with a baby in his arms,” Zach said, “a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, and a bus ticket to Boston. I was told you never wanted to see me again, that you thought I was pathetic trash who’d almost ruined your life. And then he handed over the baby, who looked just like me.”
Olivia gasped and stared at Zach. “Why? Why, why, why would my father do that? Why would he lie and tell me the baby was born dead?” The tears came then, rushing down her cheeks.
Zach reached across the table for her hand, and she was so surprised that she glanced up at him. “I don’t know, Olivia. If there’s an ‘at least,’ though, HAUNTING OLIV IA
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at least he gave me the baby. I have no idea why he didn’t give the baby up for adoption, as you’d been told was the plan.”
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