Body Double

by Alane Hudson

  Once Blake found her, they stopped at the gift shop for a small vase of flowers, and continued up the elevator to the cardiac wing. Nurses at the central station hunched over computers, tapping keys. Others scurried about, carrying supplies and equipment of various kinds. In nearly every one of the rooms they passed, a patient lay with tubes running to IV drips and machines that pushed air up the little plugs in their nostrils.

  They found Harold’s room number and paused outside the closed door.

  “Are you sure you want to go in alone?” he asked.

  Andrea nodded, not entirely sure, but she wanted to give Harold the chance to get anything off his chest without Blake listening in. Her years as a social worker had prepared her for this, and her resemblance to Sarah made her the ideal person to hear him. She took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and went in.

  The bed was surrounded by machines and monitors with tubes and things connected to Harold’s frail body. She set the flowers on the table opposite the bed, went to his side, and put her trembling hands on the railing, looking down into his face. He didn’t look like the tyrant she’d tried to avoid, the cold-hearted bastard that had closed The Delmar Center, the man worthy of his own daughter’s contempt and indifference. He looked like a father not unlike her own, the man she’d idolized as a little girl and leaned on as a young woman and hoped never to disappoint. The man she hadn’t seen since last Christmas because somehow money always got in the way.

  Her eyes filled with tears. What if this were her dad, lying here dependent on machines and drugs to keep him alive? What would she say to him?

  His eyelids fluttered, and he opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and weary, but they brightened when they found her face. “My Sarah,” he said, barely above a whisper. “You came.” He pressed a button on his bed, and it inclined his upper body a few inches.

  She put a hand on his shoulder. Comforting him calmed her own nervousness. “Of course I came. Are you in pain? Should I call the nurse?”

  “No, baby doll. Just let me look at you for a minute.”

  Andrea held her breath, worried that he would begin to notice the differences between her and Sarah—the jawline, the nose, her lack of the beauty mark on her jaw that she hadn’t remembered to pencil in. Without his glasses on, maybe he wouldn’t be able to spot those details.

  His gaze glided down her arms. “You’re all scraped and bruised up. I’m so sorry. What happened?”

  She exhaled, thankful to have gotten past the initial scrutiny. “It’s not your fault. I pissed off some guys in the trafficking world, but I’m safe now. The police are on it, and Blake won’t let me out of his sight until I hire a bodyguard.”

  “Good,” he said with a small nod. He painstakingly moved his hand toward hers, and she took it. “I haven’t always been a good father.”

  “Hush,” she said. “You can apologize when you’re better.”

  “I haven’t always been a good man, but somehow you turned out all right, even if you did pick up some of my less... savory behavior.”

  Andrea tried to smile as if she understood he was joking. “What are you talking about? I did not. I’m a perfect angel.”

  “I don’t know how you did it,” he said, “how you managed to be in two places at once, but you fooled me.”

  Her heart began to race. “Father, hush now. You need rest. I’ll go so you can—”

  Harold gripped her hand with surprising strength. “No, you stay and listen.” The beeps on his machine increased slightly in frequency, and the numbers displayed there ticked upward. He paused to catch his breath. “The marriage is real. I checked. Brava for pulling that off, but you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain. Someone else went on the honeymoon with Blake while you went to Colombia.”

  Andrea’s hands felt cold, her body distant as blood rushed in her ears. How did he know that? “What makes you think—”

  “Think? No, I know.” He licked his lips and took a few breaths that seemed to slow the beeps on his machine. “Did you forget that I have friends in the Colombia judicial system? When Paulo called last week and asked why I hadn’t told him my daughter was in Bogotá, I didn’t know what he was talking about. He faxed me papers with your signature on them.”

  Andrea stiffened. She and Blake had been afraid something like that might happen. She started forming a lie about having to cut their honeymoon short to pursue a lead on some traffickers.

  He went on. “Remember the couple, Don and Margo, you had dinner with one night and met up with for some snorkeling? Two of my employees.”

  Oh, crap. Blake had introduced her as Andrea to nearly everyone they met on the honeymoon. Trapped, her only way out was to go on the offensive. “You spied on me?” she asked, trying to sound incensed.

  “I did what I had to do because I can’t trust you. Remember the man you met on the plane? The one Blake assaulted? Another employee. He was there to take pictures of you so I could see that you actually went on the honeymoon and didn’t go off by yourself once you got to Hawaii. You weren’t supposed to be on that flight, by the way. Whose idea was it to skip the reception? Yours?”

  “No, it was Blake’s. Christ, Father. We got married. That’s what you wanted.”

  “You have a legal union to Blake Thomas, though you still deceived me. The rogue in me applauds your ingenuity. The father in me weeps, wondering where I went so wrong. Your mother would be heartbroken at what a deceitful woman you’ve become. I wanted better for you, Sarah. I wanted you to take after Anna, and that’s why I’m not going to give you the fifty million.”

  Andrea blanched. Sarah was counting on that money. Without it, she might stay married to Blake. There had to be a way to convince him. “But you promised,” she said, an urgent plea in her voice. “You know I’m gay, and marrying a man won’t make me straight. I can’t change who I am any more than you can, Daddy. The Lighthouse needs that money. The people we help—”

  “Daddy?” He looked at her hard, his brows stiff and low. “When have you ever called me Daddy?”

  Andrea knew then that she’d slipped up in a big way. This whole charade was about to come crumbling down around her ears. “Ever since I was a girl, I’ve wanted the kind of father I could call Daddy, a father I could count on and confide in, whose love I never had to fear losing. When I set aside all the pain you’ve caused me and see you as a man who loves his baby doll, I call you Daddy in my heart.” For now, he seemed to be buying it, but if she went on too long, he might suspect she wasn’t Sarah.

  His eyes welled, and a tear spilled down his temple and into his graying hair. “I don’t have much time left,” he said. “I just need to hear you say it once before I die. Just once, Sarah.”

  Say what? That she forgave him? That she loved him? Somewhere along the way, Harold had done something to alienate his daughter, but Andrea had no idea what that was. The question she asked herself was: Should she stand up for Sarah and let him know she wasn’t ready to forgive him and that he must accept her for who she was, or should she acknowledge that, despite what he’d done, she knew he loved her, and give him the peace he needed before he died? Whatever she said to him today, Sarah need never know. She could give this man some peace and let Sarah hang onto her anger if that was what she wanted. If Sarah expressed regret later at not having been there to say goodbye to her father, Andrea could tell her that he died knowing she loved and forgave him.

  “I forgive you,” Andrea whispered, hoping that was what he wanted to hear.

  His gaze hardened. He pulled his hand away. “I knew it. Imposter. You’re not my daughter. What do you want? Money?”

  “No,” Andrea said. She dropped the Southern accent. “I don’t want anything except for you to have some peace and closure before... I’m sorry.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I just do. It’s who I am. I care about everyone.”

  Tears trickled from his eyes. “My only child wouldn’t come to see me, even on my deathbed.” The bee
ps on the machine slowed, the numbers ticking steadily downward.

  He was letting go.

  “No,” she said urgently, her nerves about to explode. “She wanted to come. She did. She’s still in Colombia and couldn’t get here fast enough.” She couldn’t let him die thinking his own daughter didn’t love him. Even if Sarah was bitter and angry, surely there was some love there.

  “You look just like her,” he said with a glance at her face. “I should have known you for an imposter. Anna would have. Was it you at the wedding too?”

  Andrea nodded. “Sarah gave me power of attorney so that I could pledge her in marriage to Blake.”

  “Why did you come here?” His voice sounded sad, not angry. “Haven’t you done enough?”

  She began to cry, realizing that she was breaking this man’s heart just as Sarah was. “I thought I could help repair your relationship with Sarah before it was too late. I didn’t want you to be alone or feel unloved.” But his daughter’s absence, her lack of even a phone call to him said more loudly than words that she didn’t love him.

  He was quiet for a moment, sniffling through his ventilator. She plucked a couple of tissues from a box nearby and tucked them into his limp hand. “Andrea?” he asked. “Is that your name?”

  She nodded. “Andrea Lindholm.”

  “She never told you why she hates me.”

  Andrea shook her head.

  He closed his eyes. “When she was fourteen years old, I caught her skipping school—with a nineteen year old woman. I couldn’t prove that anything sexual was going on, but I suspected. By this time, Sarah’s mom had passed away, so it was up to me to handle it. I ran the woman off and told her I’d have her arrested if I even thought she was hanging around my daughter again. Sarah was angry. So angry. She hit herself all over with a Ping-Pong paddle and then told the school counsellor I’d... beaten her.” He gritted his teeth, and the beeping machines protested.

  Andrea put her hand on his shoulder to offer comfort.

  “I’ve never laid a hand on that girl, never even spanked her as a toddler. She betrayed me.”

  Just like Anna had, Andrea thought.

  He took a few deep breaths and coughed, but the insistent beeping began to calm. “They put her in a shelter for girls. My business partner, Hiram Banks, wanted nothing to do with me, our stock price plummeted, and my life was all but over. I sat in jail for six days before she recanted. Meanwhile...” Tears streamed from his eyes. “Do you know what other inmates do to child abusers? I was brutalized in prison.”

  “Oh, my God.” Andrea slapped a hand to her mouth. She never would have thought the formidable Harold Gentry could be anyone’s victim. Maybe that was one reason he’d become so ruthless.

  “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” he said. He might have been formidable two weeks ago, but now he looked so alone, so helpless.

  “It’s okay. Whatever you say is just between us.”

  With a trembling hand, he reached for the cup of water on the side tray, and Andrea picked it up for him, angled the straw toward his mouth, and waited for him to drink his fill. He thanked her with a small nod and relaxed into the pillow.

  “Finally,” he went on, “the charges were dropped and I was freed. Sarah came home, and she treated me like I was the one who’d done something wrong. She quit speaking to me, quit listening to me, started getting into trouble, so I sent her away to boarding school. She hated it—hated me. She wouldn’t even let me hug her at her high school graduation. Giving her money was the only way I ever got to see her because I insisted on handing her a check in person.”

  Andrea didn’t know what to say. Why would Sarah have blamed him for their problems? It seemed she never learned to see the situation from anything but that of a willful teenager. It occurred to Andrea that he might have been leaving something out, that his side of this story was the tip of a much bigger iceberg. Even the thinnest sheet of tissue paper had two sides.

  “When I asked you to say it,” he whispered, “I was asking for an apology. Never in all these years has Sarah acknowledged her wrongdoing in sending me to jail over a false accusation. But in fairness, I never told her what happened to me in prison. I let her think they’d put me up in a country club where rich, white-collar criminals are reputed to go. This was in Georgia, where that kind of prison doesn’t exist.”

  “Mr. Gentry, I’m so sorry,” Andrea said. “I had no idea.” If Harold had never faulted his wife for her role in the affair with Blake Sr. or acknowledged that she was a willing participant, maybe it was that unexpressed anger that started the rift between him and his daughter. Might he have unknowingly burdened Sarah with all that unspoken pain?

  “I’m dying. Was an apology too much to ask?”

  “Of course not, but do you truly need one? Sarah will come to recognize her error in her own time. You can’t control when that happens any more than you can control who she loves. You can control when you forgive her for it though. It’s never too late to let go of anger and resentment. If this is your time, don’t take it with you. Letting go of it now might help you heal, and if you leave this hospital under your own power, imagine how free and fulfilling your life can be.”

  Harold nodded, tears streaming down his face, and reached for her hand. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it. “You have a gentleness about you, even when you’re laying bare the truth. Tell me honestly, do you love Blake Thomas?”

  “Yes,” she said and immediately worried that her automatic answer would upset him. Blake was his son-in-law. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with him. He was marrying another woman, but the more I got to know him, the deeper I fell. Saying goodbye to him is going to ruin me, but if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “I appreciate your honesty. You’ve been a better daughter to me in the last ten minutes than Sarah has in twenty years.” He patted her hand and kissed it again. “Now, if you’ll hand me my cell phone. It’s right over there.”

  Andrea saw it on the table and fetched it for him. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be using that here.”

  “To hell with their stupid rules.” He punched a few buttons and lifted the phone to his ear with one trembling hand.

  Andrea was about to leave to give him privacy to make his call, presumably to Sarah, but he held her wrist.

  “Franklin, take down this name: Andrea Lindholm.”

  She froze, wary of what was about to happen. Was he going to have her charged with fraud or identity theft for impersonating his daughter? “What are you—”

  He silenced her with a sharp look. “Add it to file five. That’s right. Yes, I’m sure. No, make it ten. All right, start the recording. Ready? I, Harold Gentry, being of sound mind and... well, never mind about the body... do hereby attest that my last will and testament is to be amended as indicated.”

  Her heart raced, her face tingled, and her knees weakened. His will? What in the world was he doing? What was he thinking?

  “I make this change of my own free will, effective immediately.” He checked the LED display on his phone and recited the time and date. “I’m making this amendment by phone with Andrea Lindholm as my witness.” He held the phone toward her. “State your name and whether you heard my amendment.”

  “Um, I really don’t—”

  “Say it. Please. Don’t deny me my final request of you. You owe me that at least.”

  She leaned closer to the phone. “I’m Andrea Lindholm, and I heard Harold Gentry’s amendment.” She had no idea what it meant, but whatever it was gave Harold some peace, and she did owe him one request for her part in the deception.

  He put the phone back to his ear. “Got it? Good. That’s all for now. I’ll call you back later. There are some more changes I want to make.” He snapped the phone shut and closed his eyes. “It’s done.”

  Andrea was both horrified and excited. What he’d done was crazy. He barely knew her. Why would he put her in his will? “Mr. Gentry, fo
r whatever it was you gave me, thank you, but you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Maybe not, but good deeds should not go unpunished.” He chuckled humorlessly and coughed. “I’m tired, dear. Is Blake here? I need to tell him something before I fall asleep again. Send him in, would you?”

  “Yes, of course.” She paused and searched the older man’s face. No matter what kind of cutthroat tycoon he’d been, right now, he was only a lonely, old man without his family by his side. Nobody should have to die alone. She brushed the graying blond hair from his forehead, leaned over, and placed a gentle kiss there while tears streamed down her face. “I’ll be back to see you later. Sleep well,” she whispered.

  Blake tried to stay calm, but he could practically hear his blood pressure whistling in his ears like a tea kettle. At first, he paced the length of the waiting room, wondering whether Harold was treating Andrea respectfully. He didn’t hear yelling or crying, but that didn’t ease his mind. Even on his deathbed, Harold would be Harold—controlling, rigid, and judgmental. It was hard not to storm in there to protect Andrea from him, but she had that calming presence and the training to get people talking. She could handle herself.

  “You should sit down and relax. What happens next is out of your hands.”

  He spun around and met the green eyes of his half-brother, Richard. For a moment, they simply stared at each other. Blake wanted to ask what Richard was doing there, but he supposed he could guess. He had a choice: to accept this man as a brother or as an enemy. “Richard. Good to see you.” He approached with his hand extended, and the other man shook it. “What do the doctors say?”

  Richard had Blake Senior’s sturdy square jaw and cleft chin, and of course the same wavy brown hair Blake had inherited. The green eyes must have come from his mother. Sarah’s mother. He shook his head. “The prognosis isn’t good. There was a lot of irreparable damage to the heart tissue. They don’t expect him to make it another twenty-four hours. We need to keep him as calm as possible.”