Liberty At Last (The Liberty Series) (36 page)

“I’m Liberty,” I said, looking at her big brown eyes. She was so pretty she was doll-like. I took an instant liking to her that took me by surprise.

Alexandra released me and the gentleman next to her moved up and shook my hand. “I’m William Brown, your father’s attorney,” he said. “You can call me Billy.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

“Eric would be so happy to see you safe and well,” he added.

I hadn’t know what to expect, but he seemed normal enough, wearing a polo shirt and khakis, his tortoise-shell glasses perched on the edge of his nose. He was extremely tan, like he spent a lot of time at the beach. “You been getting out and playing nine?” he leaned over and asked Ian.
Ah
, I thought.
Not a lot of time at the beach. A lot of time at the golf course.

“Not so much during the hot weather,” Ian said, “but I expect to get back out there soon.”

“Do you golf?” Alexandra asked me, sitting down next to me and having a sip of her red wine.

“No. Never,” I said.

“Oh good. Me either. My husband does, and he likes to get out there.
A lot,
” she said, rolling her eyes and laughing.

“How long have you been married? And where do you live?” I asked.

“We’ve been married for six years,” she said. “We live outside Boston and we have two little girls.” She pulled out her phone and showed me her screen saver. “This is Alice — she’s five — and this is Victoria — Tori. She’s three.” They were both brunettes like their mom, but Tori had wild, curly hair like mine. They both had dimples and pink and green outfits on.

“They’re beautiful,” I said, and again, I was surprised to feel my heart lurch. What was going on with me?
Those little girls could be my nieces. If Alexandra and I got close.
I shivered. This wasn’t turning out at all how I expected.

It was just nice to imagine some normal relatives, some family that hadn’t been tainted by the ugliness of my mother’s descent into drugs. And Ray. I could never love anyone the way I loved Sasha, but seeing my half-sister here, listening to her warm and friendly chatter, made me think it was possible that there was room in my heart to love someone else, too.

Who the hell was I turning into?
I looked down at my sparkly engagement ring and my heart swelled with joy.
Some sort of optimist? Some sort of person who had a home and felt secure? Someone who had enough love left over to be generous?
I’d come a long way from Vegas, from that chipped card table and those lonely dinners of fluorescent macaroni and cheese.
Not that there was anything wrong with fluorescent macaroni and cheese
, I reminded myself.

“What about you?” she asked me. “I see you’re engaged; congratulations.” She reached for my hand and inspected my ring. “Very nice,” she said. “I’ve only known you for twenty minutes, but I feel very protective of you. I approve.” She cocked her head back at John, who was talking animatedly to Ian and Billy.

She leaned forward. “Is
he
the bounty hunter?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “That’s what Billy told me.” she asked, her big brown eyes sparkling up at me.

“It’s true,” I said, not sure how to proceed. “Did you know about me?” I blurted out. I might be miles away from that chipped card table, but apparently, I would always be a blurter.

She leaned back, took another sip of her wine, and shook her head. “I didn’t. Not until Eric got sick. Then he told me. I have three siblings, as you know, but he only told me. He didn’t trust them. They would have tried to cut you out of his estate.” She noted my shocked expression and laughed, but not unkindly. “He was right about that. They still tried. Hard.”

Now it was my turn to take a sip of wine. “Tell me more,” I said. There was so much I didn’t know. “Tell me everything.”

“Oh, Liberty, you don’t want to know everything. Trust me!” she said. “That’s the benefit of being the unknown half-sibling. You got to miss a decade or two of family drama.

“Our father was the quintessential ladies’ man. I even knew it when I was a little girl. He was handsome, with that curly hair, and he was dapper. He was also rich, which always helped. He was married three times — and of course, he had a relationship with your mother. With his first wife, he had two children: Katrina and Jacoby. With his next wife, my mother, he had me and my brother, Robert. He didn’t have any kids with his third wife, but oh boy, was
she
a piece of work. She ended up with half of his estate. She wanted more, but he was very clear with his instructions. He knew who she was and he didn’t want her taking all of it.”

“Gold digger?” I asked. In Vegas, we were all considered gold diggers, but no one was mean-spirited about it. We were all just desperate. I was the only one who didn’t really qualify — only because I was too scared to talk to anybody.

“Oh, she was a gold digger, but she was a wicked step-mother on top of it,” Alexandra said and rolled her eyes. “She tried to turn him against all of us, one at a time. It was ridiculous. After she made up stuff about each of us, he figured it out. He didn’t have time to divorce her, though. He got sick first.” She let out a shaky laugh and blotted her eyes with her napkin. I poured some more wine into her glass and noticed that Ian had put full plates of delicious looking lasagna and salad in front of us. There was plenty of time for food later. This was the first time I’d met my sister, the first time I’d ever heard about my father. Who knew when I would have a chance like this again?

“Did he have cancer?” I asked.

“No. He had a heart attack. He had a mild one a few months before the one that killed him,” she said.

“He told me about you,” Alexandra said. “At least a little. He said he’d had an affair with your mother, and that he never met you,” she said, watching me carefully. “He told me that he sent your mother money, but that she would never let him contact you. That she eventually stopped corresponding with him completely. He said he’d worried over the years that she wasn’t well, and wasn’t caring for you properly, but that he didn’t do anything about it because you were a secret.”

She reached over and gripped my hands. “Liberty, he felt horrible about it. It was his greatest regret,” she said and laughed without humor. “And trust me, he had
a lot
of things to regret.

“He hired John’s company before he got sick,” she continued. “Ian had told him about the business, and he became obsessed with the idea of finding you. Then he got sick. It all happened so fast, but he was able to get his estate in order. It was very important to him that you be provided for, because he knew you’d grown up with so much less than his other children.”

She looked at me. “I know about your mother,” she said, softly. “I’m so sorry she passed.”

I shrugged at her. “Thank you,” I said. “She’s in a better place now.”

We both had some wine then.

“Billy’s going to give you your share of our father’s estate tonight,” she said, looking at her watch. “We’ll have to go soon. But I also have something for you.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A letter from our father. And something else that no one knows about,” she said.

Billy came over before I had time to process this. “Liberty,” he said, “Alex and I have to be on our way soon. Are you ready to sign some paperwork?”

“Sure,” I said. He grabbed his briefcase and I brought him into the library. He had a stack of papers for me to sign, which we went through briefly, me signing, him stamping. Then he handed me a check. I didn’t even look at it. It seemed impolite.

Alex came in as Billy was packing up. “I need a minute with her,” she said, “and then we can go.” She closed the door behind him. “Eric wanted me to give you this,” she said, handing me a sealed letter. “Read it whenever you want. Whenever you’re ready,” she added, gently.

“I told you that I was the only one he’d confided in about you, before he died,” she continued. “The others know now, of course, because we’ve all gone throughout the estate and Billy’s done all the disbursements. Except for this one,” she said, and slid a black velvet box across the table to me.

I looked up at her, questioningly, and she nodded at me. I opened the box and heard myself gasp at what was inside. I looked up at her, stunned.

“He wanted you to have this,” she said. “He’d bought it some time ago and put it aside — for a rainy day, I guess. Or a hot new girlfriend. He didn’t want Wife Number Three getting her hands on it, so he’d kept it in a safe in his office for years. But he wanted to give it to you,” she said, and smiled at me. “Off the books. So the other kids didn’t know and come after you, tearing you limb from limb and trying to get
their
grubby hands on it. I was the only one he trusted to deliver it,” she said, and I heard a trace of good-girl pride in her voice.

I looked back down at the enormous emerald and diamond necklace in the box.
It was like something Elizabeth Taylor would have worn,
I thought, irrationally thinking of her wearing it in a perfume commercial. “It’s stunning,” I said, finally finding my voice.

“It’s worth over a million dollars,” Alexandra said, matter-of-factly. “Read the letter. He had a lot to make up for, and this doesn’t take away everything he didn’t do for you,” she said, her voice trailing off. “But it’s something. He wasn’t a bad person. He didn’t know you, but he did love you. As crazy as that sounds.” She put her hand on my shoulder and bent down to hug me.

“Lock that up,” she said. “Tonight. There’s insurance for it. The information’s in the envelope I gave you.”

I stood up and hugged her. “Thank you for coming,” I said. “I’m so happy I got to meet you. I’d love to see you again. If you wanted to.” This came out sounding like I was begging, and I felt myself began to redden.

“Liberty, of course I want to,” she said, and hugged me again. “Would you want to meet my girls?” she asked, and she sounded nervous, too.

I nodded. “Yes,” I said, immediately.

“Then let’s do it soon,” she said.

Later, after we’d cleaned up, John asked me what I thought of Alexandra.

“I love her,” I said, blurting it out before I could even think about it. “She was so sweet. And nice and normal. And clean and pretty. She’s basically the perfect relative.”

“I thought she seemed lovely, too,” John said, smiling at me. “Worthy of you. Like she’s someone who’d be worth getting to know better.”

“I think so, too,” I said. “Wait — she gave me this. Let me show you.”

I showed John the necklace. He gave out a low, long whistle. “Holy cow,” he said, touching it lightly.

“Alexandra said it’s worth a lot of money,” I said, looking at it nervously.
What the hell was I ever going to do with it?

“You think?” John asked, sarcastically. “Let’s put it in the safe.”

I took out the check and the letter from my father; I looked briefly at the check and promptly dropped the glass of water I was holding, shattering the glass and spilling water everywhere.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” John asked, bending down and picking up the pieces.

I just looked at the numbers on the check. “Was Eric very wealthy?” I asked, unable to fathom what I was seeing.

“I don’t think so,” John said. “Didn’t Ian tell you how much you were getting? I thought he said it was a couple of thousand.”

I nodded, still standing there in a puddle of water, like an idiot, letting John clean everything up. “A couple of hundred thousand,” I said, gulping for air. “Like,
nine
hundred thousand.”

“Sweet!” John said, popping up and smiling at me. “Not only are you smoking hot, but you come with a dowry!”

“Sweet!” I said, slapping his face lightly with the check. “Now I can finally pay you back for everything.”

“Oh, you’re gonna pay,” John said, finishing cleaning up the mess I’d made. He carefully put down the check and the jewelry box and suddenly picked me up in a fireman’s carry, throwing me over his shoulder, and I screamed in surprise and delight.

“You are gonna pay every day for the rest of your life,” he said, and slapped me on the ass.

“Thank God,” I said, finally feeling a little more normal, as he carried me off.