She frowns. “What envelope?”
“It’s old. Josh’s birth certificate and a power of attorney dated a year after he was born. I take it you were going to send it to me but never did?”
Lily’s brows pull together. She tilts her head. “I wonder when he found those. It had to have been before his injury. He has trouble reading.”
“I think he showed the envelope to the woman who drove him.”
“Who?”
“Some old lady. She dropped him off at my house and left before I could get her name. My guess is he hitchhiked.”
She gapes. “Josh!”
“He’s safe. He’s been with me the entire time. All I wanted was to find you and get him back to you. I owed you that much.”
“You owed me? For what?”
“I should have let you move in with me when you asked. I should have stood up for you when Dad was being an ass. I’m sorry I didn’t. I didn’t realize . . . No, I refused to accept how bad it was between you. But he had me believing you destroyed everything you borrowed from me when it really was him. He was manipulating us behind our backs.” Olivia sees that now that she knows the truth about him and Lily’s parentage. The prom dress—Dwight made her believe Lily ruined the dress, but she wouldn’t put it past him to run her dress through the mud. She’d blame Lily, making her feel like a family outcast. He let Lily cut up Olivia’s magazines, knowing they were her favorite and that she’d hate Lily for doing so. Everything he did pushed Lily away and kept Olivia close to him. As if he was afraid Olivia would find out what he was really like. And remember what he’d done. Dwight had been manipulating her for years, and she never saw it.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. And I’m sorry I made you think I didn’t love you.”
“I didn’t hate you, Olivia. You were Dwight’s favorite, and he didn’t like me. He scared me. I wasn’t trying to keep my distance from you. I was trying to stay away from him.”
Josh’s laughter carries to the lake and they look up at the house again. Blaze and Tyler are smiling, a good thing. It’s been a long time since they’ve connected.
“What happened? How’d you get separated from Josh?”
Lily’s eyes brighten with fear. “Someone is after me. We were on our way here to hide when I had to pull over. Josh had to go to the bathroom. I was hit when I got out of the car. We were parked on the side of the road. When I came to, Josh was gone. I flagged down a passing car and the driver, a young gal, I think—I don’t remember, it’s hazy—she called an ambulance for me.”
“Geez, Lily.”
She tugs at her shirt. “I’d never been so scared.”
“Was it Dad? I mean, Dwight? Did he hit you? Did he push Josh? Oh, my god, Lily. I can’t believe he’d do this to you. What did he want from you?”
“He wanted to make sure I wasn’t talking. I know things about him. But it wasn’t him. He’s not the one who’s after me.”
Olivia blinks. She falls back a step. “Who is?”
“I don’t know who or why.”
That doesn’t sound good. “He’s still out there?”
Lily nods. She and Josh are still in danger.
“Lil—” Olivia’s chest hurts out of fear for them.
Lily touches her arm. “There’s so much I have to tell you, but . . .” She looks back over her shoulder and Olivia sees Lily’s longing plainly etched on her face. She wants to get back to her son, and Olivia doesn’t blame her. Someone is still out there looking for them.
She rests her hand over Lily’s. “Wait . . . Before we go back, there’s something I have to tell you. I know about Dwight, that he’s not your dad. I know he . . . that . . .”
“That what?” Lily folds her arms. “That Benton St. John was my dad?”
Olivia exhales roughly. “Yes. That.”
“I found out the night I left.”
“Mom mentioned that. She said you overheard them arguing. She also said you know Dwight killed him.”
Lily blinks. Her mouth falls open. “Mom told you that?”
“Yeah, it’s horrible, isn’t it?” she asks, confused by Lily’s reaction. Why is she shocked if she already knew?
“My god.” Lily roughly rakes both hands through her hair.
Olivia’s pulse pounds in her throat. Apprehension moves through her, starting at her toes and rising like a sealed room filling with water, threatening to suffocate her. “What’s wrong? Is there something else?” She’s not sure she can handle more revelations about her dad.
Lily stares at her, thunderstruck. “You’ve got it all wrong. Dwight didn’t kill my dad.”
“Then who did?”
CHAPTER 36
CHARLOTTE
Most parents teach their children honesty is the best policy. Charlotte’s daddy taught her to lie.
“Deception is an art,” she remembers him explaining once over a cup of Earl Grey and biscuits. His office was located near her high school. She’d meet him there every afternoon on her way home from class. He insisted what he taught her would take her further than any Pythagorean theorem or Byzantine Empire lecture could.
“Master it, and this will be yours.” He gestured at his office space with the inlaid walnut paneling and plush steel-blue carpeting. Paintings from contemporary artists the likes of Nova and Gallegos that were as provocative as they were repulsive. Charlotte thought of them as hauntingly beautiful. She wanted her own art gallery in Laguna Niguel with its homes on high cliffs over sea-glass blue waters, not her daddy’s square office in a steel tower. Stocks and REITs were interesting if one liked that sort of thing, which Charlotte didn’t. Boston was an icebox in the winter and a sweatshop during summer, and neither was good for a girl’s complexion. Her sights were set on something much grander in California, with its fast cars and sun-drenched men.
She escaped to California as soon as she was admitted into USC. Within a few years, she met Dwight Carson, someone who was suddenly shinier in her eyes than the art gallery she aspired to own, with his lofty political aspirations and charming personality. One day, he’d be in the White House and she’d be right beside him. She left campus without her diploma and followed Dwight and his dreams, making them her own.
Enraged that she’d waste her future, Charlotte’s daddy disowned her. But she didn’t mind. She and Dwight were going places she could never get to as Gilbert Dayton’s daughter. She and Dwight married. They had a beautiful baby girl they named Olivia, and two years later, a son they called Lucas. Dwight launched his winery consulting business, meeting all the right people up and down the west coast, and Charlotte earned her real estate license, quickly rising to the top of her firm as the highest producing agent.
She then met Benton St. John. Gorgeous, athletic, looked at her just the right way, Benton. And for a brief bit of time he was the shiniest trinket in the window. She wanted nothing more than her neighbor. If her husband could have a little morsel on the side, she could have her treats, too.
Charlotte remembers the day Lily was conceived. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, smoothing her floral-print pencil skirt over her lush hips as anticipation warmed her blood. She undid one more pearl button on her pink silk blouse so that just enough cleavage showed. Tempting, not tacky.