Page 122

"Daddy," she cried, shaking Randolph's shoulder. "Tell him it isn't so; tell him it's a lie."

Randolph lowered his head in defeat. Clara Sue glared at me and then turned back to Mr. Updike.

"But why should she get so much?" she demanded. "She's a bastard."

"It's the way your grandfather wanted it," Mr. Updike replied. "And," he reminded everyone, "it was his to do with as he wanted."

"But she's a . . . a freak!" Clara Sue screamed. "That's what you are, a freak!"

"No, she's not," Philip said with a smile of amusement as he turned to me. "She's your half-sister and your aunt."

"That's freaky. I don't believe it; it's all a lie," Clara Sue insisted. She got up and turned on me just as she reached the door. "I hate you," she spit back at me. "I won't let you get away with this! I won't let you get away with taking what is rightfully mine. Mark my words. One day you're going to pay." Then she ran from the room.

"What about my grandmother's will?" Philip asked Mr. Updike.

"I'll read it in a moment. She leaves various things to various people, but her share in the hotel goes to your father."

Randolph continued to sit with his head bowed. Had he known all along? I wondered. Was that what made him the way he was? There was no question in my mind now that Grandmother Cutler always knew. Now I understood why she called me her curse on her deathbed and why she hated me so. Despite my hardened heart, a small part of myself even felt sorry for her.

But I didn't feel sorry for my mother. I stood up. "Mr. Updike," I said, "since the rest of this doesn't concern me . . ."

"Yes, of course. You may go now. I will be in touch with you concerning documents to sign."

"Thank you," I said and turned to go. I hesitated a moment and crossed to Randolph, who lifted his head and looked up at me with eyes flooded with tears. I touched his shoulder and smiled at him.

"I wish," he said through his tears, "that you really were my daughter."

I kissed him on the cheek and then Jimmy and I walked out of the office.

"Well," Jimmy said, shaking his head. "From a girl with barely enough to eat to the owner of a major resort."

"I'd give it all up in a second for a normal life, Jimmy."

He nodded.

"Let's go get Christie," he said.

"You go to the car, Jimmy. I'll be right out," I said. "I want to speak to my mother first."

I hurried across the lobby, through the family's section of the hotel and up the stairs. The doors to my mother's bedroom were shut, but I didn't knock. I opened them abruptly and marched in to find her spread on her stomach on her bed. She had been sobbing into one of her big, fluffy pillows.

"Why didn't you ever tell me the truth, Mother?" I demanded.

"I'm so embarrassed," she cried. "Why did he have to do that? Why did he have to write that horrible letter and let the whole world know?"

"Because he couldn't die with it on his conscience, Mother. You know what a conscience is, don't you? It's what haunts you and haunts you when you lie and deceive people you are supposed to love. It's what haunts you when you are so selfish you don't care who you hurt, even if the people you hurt are your own flesh and blood," I lectured.

She slapped the palms of her hands over her ears. "Oh stop it, stop it!" she cried. "I don't want to hear this. Stop it."

"Stop what? The truth. You simply can't take the truth, ever. Can you, Mother?

"So this was really why you permitted Grandmother Cutler to arrange for my kidnapping? She knew that Grandfather Cutler was my father, didn't she? Didn't she?" I demanded.

"Yes," my mother confessed. "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

"And this was why she hated me so much when I was returned and why she couldn't stand the sight of me," I continued, extracting each piece of truth out of her like a dentist pulling teeth.

"Yes," she moaned. "That woman despised me because of what William had done. She wanted to hurt me . . . to have her revenge."