Abandoned

by Allison Brennan

  “You’ll edit it,” he grumbled.

  “Probably. But I’ll get it done on time. I really have to go.” She hung up and followed David from her office. Eve was standing in the middle of the living room looking lost and forlorn.

  “Eve, shouldn’t you be in school?”

  She shrugged. “I’ll be late. I just—I didn’t know who to talk to. It’s not like I can talk to my friends. And my dad—I know, Max. He’s not my dad and I don’t know what to do.”

  David caught Max’s eye and motioned that he was going downstairs.

  “Do you drink coffee?” Max asked.

  Eve nodded. “Cream and sugar.”

  Max prepared two mugs and sat down on the couch. Eve sat at the opposite end, staring at her coffee, not drinking or talking.

  “What happened, Eve?”

  “I overheard my dad and you and the FBI agent on Saturday night. I didn’t want to believe it so I found my birth certificate. He’s on my birth certificate. But he lied. I don’t know how, but he lied on my birth certificate and he has lied to me my entire life.”

  “Lies have a way of coming out,” Max said. “They always do.”

  “I don’t know who I am anymore,” Eve said, tears in her eyes.

  Max felt for her. She’d been there, she’d felt the same way. The only difference was the reason for the lies.

  “I’m not excusing Gabriel’s deception,” she said, carefully choosing her words, “but he loves you. He was scared that whatever Martha and Jimmy were into—and it’s clear now that they were involved in something very illegal and very dangerous—would end up hurting you.”

  “But he could have told me. Because you know what? I don’t even know if I’m related to him at all.”

  Now Max was confused. “What? Related to who?”

  “Gabriel,” Eve said. “He told me yesterday—he told me that my mother put ‘unknown’ on my birth certificate. That she didn’t put Jimmy Truman down as my father. Dad—Gabriel—altered the birth certificate somehow. He put his name down. But there was nothing. No one. What if I’m not even his niece? I’m a stranger—a nobody. I don’t know anything anymore.”

  Max had never been more angry at her mother than she was at that moment. She’d lied to two daughters.

  “I’ve been where you are,” Max said.

  “You don’t understand. No one can understand.”

  “I do. You want blunt? Martha told me who my father was. He was a married man, she’d had an affair with him, and he didn’t want anything to do with me. When I was sixteen—same age as you now—I flew from California to New York and confronted him. He didn’t deny the affair, but he denied that he was my father. I demanded that he take a paternity test or I would tell his wife. He took the test and he hadn’t been lying—he wasn’t my father. Martha lied to me either because she didn’t know who my father was, or because she didn’t want me to know the truth. Or just to keep me tethered to her. I don’t really know, and I doubt I’ll ever know the truth about my father.”

  Eve stared at her, eyes wide, and wet, and confused. “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know, and no answer I’ve come up with satisfies me. But I know who you are. You are Eve Truman. You need to own your name. You’re a smart girl, a championship sailor, kind, generous with your time and talents, and beautiful, inside and outside. It doesn’t matter who your parents were. All that matters is who you are.

  “Gabriel did a great job raising you. Don’t let his lie destroy your relationship. He loves you so much, he gave up his navy career to raise you. I don’t tell you this to make you feel guilty—you have nothing to feel guilty about. It was his choice to leave the military and take care of you and his sick mother. A lot of people wouldn’t do that.”

  “You promised me the other night that you would never lie to me. How can I even believe that when everyone in my life has lied to me?”

  “It’ll be hard, but it’s me. It’s who I am. The truth is messy, but it’s real. People sometimes lie to themselves, and I think Gabriel convinced himself that you were his daughter. But consider everything else he’s ever done. Not what he’s said, but his actions. He cared for your grandmother. He was by her side, taking care of her until she died. He taught you everything he knew about boats and sailing. I bet he taught you to swim, too.”

  She nodded. “He’s a great swimmer.”

  “He adopted you—not legally, not formally, but for all intents and purposes, he is your father. Please find a way to accept what he’s done, forgive him, because his motives were pure. He loved you and wanted to protect you.”

  “He apologized a hundred ways but I may never know the whole truth. I don’t know who my father is. No one does.”

  “The odds are, Jimmy Truman is your biological father and Martha put ‘unknown’ on your birth certificate for a reason only she knows. If you really need to know, tell Gabriel you want a blood test.”

  “Can they do that? Tell if he’s my uncle?”

  “Yes. They’ll know how closely you’re related.”

  “I don’t know.” She frowned. “I don’t want to hurt him … and it won’t change anything.”

  “You don’t have to make the decision today.” Max knew she would get the test in a heartbeat. It would drive her crazy not knowing when the truth was attainable. She’d learned to live with the fact that she would never know who her father was unless he came forward and claimed her. So far no one had, and after thirty-two years Max doubted anyone would. But Eve had to make her own decision.

  “I’ll tell you this much,” Max said. “I respect you not wanting to hurt your dad, but if not knowing the truth will fester inside you and make you miserable, you need the truth. If you can truly let it go, believe in your heart that Gabriel is your uncle, and continue to call him Dad because he raised you and he loves you, then believe what you want. But it’s your decision, okay?”

  Eve nodded. “Thank you for, um, listening.”

  “You want to come back later, come back. Anytime. I’ll be here all month, maybe longer.”

  “I would like that a lot.”

  “I’m going to ask David to drive you to school, okay? He looks intimidating but he’s a good guy.”

  “That’s okay, you don’t have to go out of your way, I can grab the bus.”

  “I insist, you’re upset and I’m going to talk to your dad.”

  She sucked in her breath. “Why?”

  “Not about you. I’m not going to betray your confidence. If you want to talk to him about the DNA test or anything else, and you don’t want to do it alone, ask me and I’ll be there.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” She bit her lip. “Then, um, why talk to my dad?”

  “When we spoke on Saturday, I suspected that he was holding back something. Maybe because he didn’t know how the information fit with what we were saying, or maybe because he didn’t trust me or Ryan Maguire—the FBI agent who was with me. Now that everything is out in the open, I have some questions and I think he has answers—even if he doesn’t know it yet.”

  * * *

  After David left with Eve, Max walked over to Gabriel’s office in the boathouse with a thin folder of the information she wanted to share with him. She found him sitting at his desk staring out the window at the ocean. She knew that feeling—when she was troubled, she often stared at the Hudson River from her penthouse.

  “Gabriel,” she said.

  He turned to face her. It was clear he’d gotten little sleep in the last couple of days. Dark circles framed his eyes and he hadn’t shaved.

  “I was going to call you.”

  “Good. May I sit?”

  He nodded. “Close the door first.”

  She did, and sat across from him. “Eve came by this morning.”

  “She said she would. She’s never missed school before.”

  “I had my assistant, David Kane, take her to school. No need for her to be any later, or have to take the bus. You can trust him—I do,
he’s a security expert.”

  “Your bodyguard?”

  “If needed, but mostly he’s just safety-conscious. He’s my assistant—he helps me investigate cold cases.”

  “I fucked up.”

  “Yeah, but for the right reasons. So put that all aside, Gabriel. You have to. We have a far more pressing issue right now.”

  “Phillip Colter.”

  Now she was surprised. “Yes. What do you know?”

  “When Maguire mentioned him, I froze. He is a principal at Boreal, Inc., a company that invested in the resort. Everyone in town knows Colter—at least by reputation. He’s a wealthy philanthropist, a recluse. He never comes to town, but I think he’s here now.”

  “He is. I saw him Saturday night at your restaurant.”

  Gabriel didn’t look surprised. “I’m torn about what to do. We can lose everything. But I can’t sit by and take money from a criminal. Are you certain he’s an art thief?”

  “Agent Maguire is, and his evidence is compelling, but he doesn’t have enough for a warrant. If you know anything that can help the FBI get that warrant, you need to step up.”

  “I don’t. That’s the thing, I’ve only met Colter once, ten years ago when he was in a meeting with Brian. I didn’t even know he was with Boreal until then. Brian introduced us, said they were talking about financing—we’d been hit by a storm the season before and the repairs were killing us, but they had to be done. Colter gave us a short-term loan. And I didn’t think much of it. Brian has always handled the finances. After I talked to you and Maguire I went to talk to Brian.”

  Max cringed. While she liked, as a strategy, confronting people who were lying to her, she always had a plan. An emotional Gabriel went over to his partner’s without one.

  “He was evasive. I’ve known Brian my entire life. He’s family—a cousin—and he was there for me when my dad died, he helped my mom when I was overseas. He’s a good guy. But he was lying to me. Maybe not lying, just avoiding. So I dropped it. Because Brian knows everything. He knows that Martha left Eve with my mom. He knows that Jimmy, not me, is Eve’s father, and he knows that Martha put ‘unknown’ on the birth certificate because he helped me create the forgery. Eve was born Genevieve Nora Revere. We changed Revere to Truman and added my name. And I don’t regret it—Jimmy didn’t deserve to have her, and after he threatened to take her away, I had to do something to protect her.”

  “Put the guilt aside for now, we can debate the rightness and wrongness of your actions later. What I need is more information about Martha and Jimmy.”

  “I don’t know anything. I wasn’t lying to you about that. I don’t know about these stolen paintings or what happened to my brother when he didn’t show up when he said he would. And I was on a ship when Martha left Eve with my mom.”

  “I want to show you something. See if you recognize any of these places. Martha sent me postcards—a total of sixteen—after she left me. The first was from Hawaii, and it’s the only one that mentions Jimmy by name.” She showed him the card. She quickly went through the others, then put the seven art pieces together. “Maguire and I think that Jimmy and Martha stole these seven paintings from Colter. There is a specific reason Maguire thinks Colter stole them, and I’m inclined to agree with him. It could be that Jimmy and Martha were part of his crew, though the criminal psychiatrist I consult with thinks Martha may have stolen them simply because she could. Either way, they came to be in Jimmy and Martha’s possession. This one”—she pulled out the card of the Toulouse-Lautrec—“Jimmy sold ten years ago to a Russian national. It’s now out of the country and the FBI hasn’t been able to retrieve it. This is the sale that put Jimmy on the FBI’s radar, and why Maguire has been hassling you. These three”—she pointed—“were recovered when a storage locker under the name J. J. Sterling—one of Jimmy’s aliases—went into default and the individual who bought the contents at auction took them to an art appraiser.”

  “Jimmy is just not this smart.”

  “Because it’s art? Maybe. But Martha was smart and very knowledgable about art.” She paused. “Jimmy was a con artist since he was a kid, wasn’t he?”

  Gabriel nodded sadly.

  “So these last three paintings—two were in a storage locker in Georgia that went into default. The locker was under the name Martha Truman—my mother was certainly not original—and the contents were bought by Boreal at auction. That means this one, a Degas that is almost priceless, is still missing.”

  She skipped the Caravaggio because it would be too complicated to explain her theory on that, and went to the last postcard, of the seascape near the Boreal mansion. “This was the last postcard my mother ever sent me.”

  “Oh, my god.” He picked it up, stared at it. “Martha sent this exact same postcard to Eve. My mother kept it as a keepsake. It’s in her baby book at home.”

  “I need to see it.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Gabriel, I need to call Agent Maguire and tell him about Brian’s relationship with Colter. Maybe it means nothing”—Max didn’t think so, but she didn’t want to completely spook Gabriel when he was being so helpful—“but it gives us one more connection between Colter and Cape Haven.”

  “While you’re at it, tell him that Brian drove out to Colter’s place in Oyster Bay last night. I followed him because he wasn’t acting like himself. Whatever is going on, Brian knows exactly what it is.”

  Chapter Thirty

  SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

  In the middle of the night, Martha crept out of Emily Truman’s guest bedroom, the Degas in hand. She was not a little bit angry—she was ready to kill someone. Namely, Jimmy, who had gotten her into this mess in the first place. It was his idea to steal the paintings from Phillip. Sure, she went along with it, but she didn’t know the man, really know him, at the time.

  But it wasn’t just the paintings. It was that Jimmy had walked out. He’d walked out on her and Genevieve. Disappeared.

  She’d had a plan—not a bad plan, though it needed a bit of work. They would go back to California. She would explain to her grandmother Genie—who would just love that Martha had named her daughter after her—that she had a bit of a problem and needed a loan. One year of her allowance up front. That would give them the money to disappear. Get new identities and go to New Zealand. It was far, far from Phillip and when he got tired of chasing them around, they’d return for the paintings.

  Part of the problem was that Jimmy wanted to sell the paintings, and Martha wanted to keep them. She couldn’t imagine how they would sell stolen art. They might not have stolen the art from the museums, but the art was stolen in the first place. She was pretty confident she could talk her way out of any jail time—she was very smart and good on her feet. But Phillip had time, money, and rage on his side and she was pretty certain he would come after her, even if the police believed her version of the story.

  And then the baby. Jimmy wasn’t happy about the baby, but what was she supposed to do? Genevieve was his baby too (at least, she was seventy percent certain she was Jimmy’s) and he should be helping them figure out the solution.

  But like everyone else in her life, Jimmy, too, had let her down. He’d taken four of the paintings from their storage locker and left her a note—a note!—that it was time to split up, that she could do what she wanted with her three paintings and he would do what he wanted with his four! paintings.

  Jerk.

  So she had to come up with plan B. Convince Phillip that she could get the paintings back. She still planned on going to California, but Phillip knew who she was and he could easily track her down there. She needed time. Having the baby had really messed her up. She couldn’t think straight, she had lost a lot of weight—she wasn’t complaining about that part, but she didn’t feel well and had no appetite. The difference in having a baby at twenty-one and thirty-seven, she figured. But the biggest problem was that she couldn’t seem to make a decision. Everything she thought about doing just … well, no deci
sion felt right.

  Leaving Genevieve with Jimmy’s mother was the only thing that made sense to Martha. Without having to worry about the kid, she could think straight, she figured.

  She’d left two of her paintings in a storage facility in the middle of nowhere—neither Jimmy nor Phillip would find them. She paid for two years up front. Jimmy had left two days before she received her April allowance, so she had plenty of money to put her plan into motion.

  Ha-ha, Jimmy, no money for you!

  She shook her head to clear it. Yeah, she wasn’t doing well. What she really wanted was to find a spa in the middle of nowhere and spend a month being pampered and recuperating from her pregnancy and birth. She’d have to wait until May when she received her next allowance, but she had a couple of places in mind. She just had to disappear for a couple of weeks, then collect her money, check into a spa and relax. Heal. Come up with a plan. Maybe going to California was not the smart thing to do. Maybe hunting Jimmy Truman down and punishing him would make her Phillip Colter problem go away.

  Martha realized she’d been standing in the living room for the last thirty minutes holding the Degas, rolled carefully in a tube. The Degas was her insurance. No one would find it here, unless they sold the house. Maybe not even then. But she wanted to give her baby girl something in case Phillip couldn’t be reasoned with. By the time anyone found the painting, it would be so long that they could claim ownership. Martha knew a lot about art and art history, but was a little sketchy on the laws. Still, it had been years since Phillip stole the Degas, and it would be years more before anyone could possibly find it.

  Martha took a painting down from the wall, one of those popular paintings by a local artist. She’d found a postcard of exactly this painting in the Cape Haven Museum, where she had originally intended to leave the art, but the volunteer there made her squeamish, watching her much too closely. She’d seen the painting at the Truman house, and when she saw the postcard she realized that she had the perfect plan.

  Carefully, she took the backing off the painting of the Chesapeake Bay. It was ironic, perhaps, that the most iconic picture from the region was only a hop, skip, and a jump from Phillip’s house. And she was going to hide “his” Degas there. She giggled, then clamped a hand to her mouth. She certainly didn’t want to explain to Emily what she was doing. Though the woman was old, she wasn’t stupid. She might believe everything Martha said, but she might talk to someone, too, and if anyone knew that Martha was hiding the Degas here, they might take it for themselves.