Genuine Lies (52 page)

“Whoa.” He gave a quick laugh as he steadied her. “You
must have missed me—” He cut himself off when he realized she was shaking. Tipping her head back by the chin, he saw the stricken look on her face. “What is it? Did something happen to Eve?”

“No.” The lost, helpless expression changed to fury. “Eve’s just fine, just fine and dandy. Why shouldn’t she be? She’s pushing all the buttons.” She tried to jerk away, but he held firm. “Let me go, Paul.”

“As soon as you tell me what’s got you all worked up. Come on.” He nudged her back outside. “You look like you could use some air.”

“Brandon—”

“Is sound asleep. Since his room’s on the other side of the house, I don’t think anything you have to say out here will bother him. Why don’t you sit down?”

“Because I don’t want to sit. I don’t want to be held or soothed or patted on the head. I want you to let me go.”

He released her, holding his hands up, palms out. “Done. What else can I do for you?”

“Don’t use that wry British tone. I’m not in the mood for it.”

“All right, Jules.” He rested a hip on the table. “What are you in the mood for?”

“I could kill her.” She whipped up and down the patio, crossing from light into shadow then back into light. As she turned, she ripped one of the showy pink geraniums from its stem and shredded the blossom. The velvety shreds fluttered to the ground to be crushed and torn under her feet. “This whole thing, all of it, has been one of her famous maneuvers. Bringing me out here, taking me into her confidence, making me trust her—care for her. And she was sure—so fucking sure I’d fall right into the trap. Do you suppose she thought I’d be grateful, honored, flattered to be linked to her this way?”

He watched her throw the mangled stem aside. “I can’t really say how she thought you’d feel. If you’d care to fill me in?”

She tossed up her head. For a moment she’d forgotten he was there. He stood, lazily leaning against the table, watching.
Observing. They had that in common, she thought bitterly. There were those who stood and watched, recorded, reported, carefully noting how others lived, how they felt, what they said as they were tugged through life by fate’s wily fingers. Only this time she was the one being manipulated.

“You knew.” A fresh wave of rage crested inside her. “All this time, you knew. She never keeps anything from you. And you stood by and watched, waited, knowing she would do this to me. What role did she cast you in, Paul? The hero who calmly picks up the pieces?”

His patience was wearing thin. He pushed himself away from the table to face her. “I can’t confirm or deny until you tell me what it is I’m supposed to have known.”

“That she’s my mother.” Julia flung the words at him, tasting each bitter syllable on her tongue. “That Eve Benedict is my mother.”

He hadn’t even been aware of moving, but his hands had shot out to grip her arms. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“She told me tonight.” She didn’t jerk away. Instead, she grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt and leaned into him. “She must have thought it was time for a mother-daughter chat. It’s been only twenty-eight years.”

He gave her a quick, rough shake. Hysteria was rising in her voice, and he preferred the rage. “Told you what? Told you exactly what?”

Her head came up slowly. Though her grip on his shirt didn’t lessen, she spoke calmly, clearly, as if explaining a particularly complex problem to a slow-witted child. “That twenty-eight years ago she gave birth, secretly, to a child in Switzerland. And having no place for that sort of inconvenience, gave the child away. Me. She gave me away.”

He would have laughed the thought aside if it hadn’t been for the desolation in her eyes. Her eyes … not the color, but the shape. Very slowly, he moved his hands up into her hair. Not the shade, but the texture. Her lips trembled. And the mouth …

“Good Christ.” Still holding her, he stared at her face as
if he’d never seen it before. Perhaps he hadn’t, he realized. How else could he have missed the similarities? Oh, they were subtle, but they were there. How could he have loved both of them, and not have seen, not have known? “She told you this herself?”

“Yes, though I wonder she didn’t have Nina jot it down in a memo. ‘Tell Julia the secret of her birth over dinner. Eight o’clock.’” She broke away then, turned her back on him. “Oh, I hate her for this. Hate her for what she’s stolen from me.” She whirled back, her hair flying out, then settling in a tangle on her shoulders. The trembling was past so that she stood spear-straight in the cool white light of the moon while emotions rolled off her like sweat. “My life, every moment of my life, changed in the flash of an instant. How can anything be the same again?”

There were no answers. He was still reeling, fighting to take in the single fact she’d shoved at him. The woman he’d loved most of his life was the mother of the woman he wanted to love for the rest of it. “You’re going to have to give me a minute to take this in. I think I know how you must be feeling, but—”

“No.” The word erupted from her. Indeed, everything about her was hot, on the point of boiling over. Her eyes, her voice, the fists held rigidly at her sides. “You couldn’t even come close. There were times as a child I wondered. It’s only natural, isn’t it? Who were they, those people who hadn’t wanted me? Why had they given me up? What did they look like, sound like? I made up stories—that they had loved each other desperately, but he’d been killed and left her destitute and alone. Or that she’d died in childbirth before he could come back and save her, and me. Lots of sweet, fanciful little stories. But I left them behind, because my parents …” She lifted her hand to cover her eyes for a moment as the pain ripped through her. “They loved me, they wanted me. Being adopted wasn’t something I thought about often. In fact, I’d forget about it for long stretches of time because my life was so normal. But then it would hit me again. When I was
carrying Brandon, I wondered if she’d been scared, like I was. Sad, and scared and lonely.” “Jules—”

“No, don’t, please.” She retreated instantly, hugging her arms tight against her body in defense. “I don’t want to be held. I don’t want sympathy or understanding.”

“Then what?”

“To go back.” Desperation snuck into her voice like a thief. “To be able to go back to before she started to tell me that story. To make her stop. To make her see this was one lie she should live with. Why couldn’t she see? Why couldn’t she see, Paul, that the truth would ruin everything? She’s taken away my identity, scarred my memories, and left me rootless. I don’t know who I am. What I am.”

“You’re exactly the same person you were an hour ago.”

“No, don’t you see?” She held her hands out, and they were empty. Like her heritage. “Everything I was was built on that one lie, and all the others that followed it. She had me in secret, under a name she’d borrowed from one of her scripts. Then she walked away, picked up her life exactly where she’d left off. She never even told …” The words shuddered to a halt, then began again on a husky whisper. “Victor. Victor Flannigan’s my father.”

That was the only thing that didn’t surprise Paul. He took her hand, found it stiff and icy to the touch. He curled her fingers closed inside his as if to warm them. “He doesn’t know?”

She could only shake her head. His face seemed pale in the moonlight, his eyes dark. Did he know? she wondered. Did he know he was looking at a stranger? “God, Paul, what has she done? What has she done to all of us?”

So he held her, despite her resistance. “I don’t know what the consequences are, Julia. But I know whatever you’re feeling now, you’ll get through it. You survived your parents’ divorce, their deaths, bringing Brandon into the world without a father.”

She shut her eyes tight, hoping to erase the afterimage of Eve’s face—with tears just beginning to spill out, leaving only
hope and needs behind. “How can I look at her and not hate her, hate her for being able to live so easily without me?”

“Do you think it was easy?” he murmured.

“For her, yes.” She pulled away to wipe impatiently at tears. The last thing she would feel now was sympathy. “Goddamn. I know what she went through. Disbelief, panic, misery—all the phases. Sweet Jesus, Paul, I know how much it hurts to find yourself pregnant and know the man you love, or think you love, will never make a family with you.”

“Maybe that’s why she felt she could tell you.”

“Well, she was wrong.” She was calming slowly, methodically. “I also know that if I had made the decision to give Brandon up, I would never push myself back into his life and make him wonder, make him question, make him remember all those doubts about not being good enough.”

“If she made a mistake—”

“Yes, she made a mistake,” Julia said on a hard laugh. “I’m it.”

“That’s enough.” If she didn’t want sympathy, he wouldn’t give it. “At the very least, you know you were conceived in love. That’s more than most people can be sure of. My parents have retained a polite revulsion for each other as long as I can remember. That’s my legacy. You were brought up by people who loved you, and were conceived by people who continue to love each other. You can call that a mistake, but I’d swear you had the better bargain.”

There were things she could have hurled back at him, hurtful things that rolled through her brain, then died of shame and self-disgust before they touched her tongue. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was stiff, but no longer raw with pain. “There’s no reason to take all this out on you, or to indulge in self-pity.”

“I’d say there was plenty of reason for both. Will you sit down now, and talk to me?”

As she brushed away the last of the tears, she shook her head. “No, I’m all right, really. I hate to lose my temper.”

“You shouldn’t.” To soothe himself as well as her, he combed her hair away from her face with his fingers. “You do it so well.” Because it seemed right, he brought her back into
his arms, resting his cheek against the top of her head. “You’ve had a rough night, Jules. Maybe you should get some rest.”

“I don’t think I can. I could use some aspirin, though.”

“We’ll get you some.” He kept an arm around her as they walked back into the kitchen. There were lights, glowing cheerfully, and a buttery scent that made her think the hamburgers had been followed up by a bowl of popcorn. “Where’s the aspirin?”

“I’ll get them.”

“No, I’ll get them. Where?”

Because her mind felt as limp and achy as her body, she gave in and sat at the table. “Top shelf, left side of the stove.” She closed her eyes again, listening to the sound of the cupboard door opening, closing, the sound of water hitting glass. On a sigh, she opened them again and managed what passed for a smile. “Tantrums always give me a headache.”

He waited until she’d swallowed them. “How about some tea?”

“That’d be nice, thanks.” Sitting back, she pressed her fingers to her temple, circling them slowly—until she remembered that was one of Eve’s habitual gestures. With her hands clasped in her lap, she watched as Paul readied cups and saucers, rinsed out a porcelain pot in the shape of a donkey.

It was odd, sitting there while someone else handled the details. She was used to taking care of herself, solving the problem, mending the breaks. Now she knew it was taking all of her will, all of her energy to resist the need to lay her head down on the table and indulge in a bout of hot weeping.

And why? That was the question that dogged her. Why?

“After all this time,” she murmured. “All these years. Why did she tell me now? She said she’d kept tabs on me all along. Why did she wait till now?”

He’d been wondering the same thing himself. “Did you ask her?”

She was staring down at her hands, shoulders slumped, eyes still damp. “I don’t even know what I said to her. I was
so blind with hurt and anger. My temper can be … ugly, which is why I try not to lose it.”

“You, Jules?” he said lightly as he passed a hand over her hair. “An ugly temper?”

“Horrible.” She couldn’t bring herself to answer his smile. “The last time I went off was nearly two years ago. A teacher at Brandon’s school had made him stand in the corner for over an hour. He was humiliated, wouldn’t talk to me about it, so I went in for a conference. I wanted it straightened out because Brandon’s just not a troublemaker.”

“I know.”

“Anyway, it turned out that they were making up Father’s Day cards toward the end of the school year, and Brandon didn’t want to make one. He, well, he didn’t want to.”

“Understandable.” Paul poured boiling water over tea bags. “And?”

“And this teacher said he was expected to treat it as an assignment, and when he refused, she punished him. I tried to explain the situation, that Brandon was sensitive in that area. And with this tight-lipped sneer she said he was spoiled and willful and enjoyed manipulating others. She said if he wasn’t taught to accept his situation, he’d continue to use his accident of birth—those were her words—accident, as an excuse not to become a productive member of society.”

“I hope you slugged her.”

“Actually, I did.”

“No.” Now he had to grin. “Really?”

“It’s not funny,” she began, then felt a bubble of laughter in her throat. “I don’t remember hitting her exactly, though I recall a few of the names I called her as people came rushing in to pull me off her.”

He picked up her hand, weighed it in his, then kissed it. “My hero.”

“It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it sounds now. At the time I was sick and shaky, and she was threatening to sue. They calmed her down when the whole story came out. In the meantime, I pulled Brandon out of the school and bought the place in Connecticut. I wouldn’t have him subjected to that kind of
thinking, that kind of nastiness.” She let out a long breath, then another. “I felt exactly the same way tonight. I know if Eve had come near me, I would have hit her first and been sorry about it later.” Julia looked down at the cup he set in front of her. “I used to wonder where I got that streak of mean from. I guess I know.”

“It scared you, what she told you tonight.”

Julia let the tea slide into her system and soothe. “Yes.”