Watching Amanda (12 page)

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Authors: Janelle Taylor

BOOK: Watching Amanda
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Ethan glanced at Tommy. “I'm sorry to hear that. I was raised by a single mother. It was hard on her.”
“Did you ever know your father?”
He shook his head. “He took off when he found out my mother was pregnant.”
“How could a man do that?” she asked. “I don't understand it. Even if he's scared of whatever ... the responsibility, I guess. How can he just run away as though it's not happening?”
“So he can pretend it isn't happening,” Ethan said. “What I don't get is how they stay away. When you know you've got a five-year-old child, a ten-year-old, a twenty-year-old. How do you just put that out of your mind?”
“Do you know anything about your dad?” Amanda asked.
He shook his head. “He was some guy my mother dated for only a short while. Her home life wasn't too great and she looked for love wherever she could find it, I think.”
“Is your mom still living?”
He shook his head. “Car accident a long time ago.”
He seemed lost in thought for a second, his expression fond, tender. Then he glanced at Tommy in his high chair, wacking his spoon onto the tray. “For Tommy's sake, I'd like to believe that his father is sincere. But for your sake, I'm very suspicious about the timing.”
She nodded, unable to form words, unable to even form a thought. This was all too much. And a very strange part of it was how much she was appreciating it all being dumped on someone else's shoulders for a little while. Someone's strong shoulders.
“Tommy looks exactly like you,” Ethan said in practically a whisper.
“I'm always glad for that. For the past year, I haven't had to look into the mini face of the man who broke my heart.”
He glanced at her then and nodded. “I can understand that. My mother always used to say I looked a lot like my father.”
She felt her cheeks burn. “Oh ... I ... I'm sorry. I stuck my foot in my mouth there.”
“Not at all,” he told her, helping himself to another slice of bacon. “My mother often told me she'd loved my father very much, even though they'd only dated a short while. That he was an irresponsible jerk who abandoned her didn't take away from her memories of loving him before she knew he was an asshole.”
Amanda looked at him and smiled. “You were conceived in love.” She glanced at Tommy. “I never really looked at it that way. I wish I had. Tommy was conceived in love too. Even if I was the only one in love. Thinking that way would have helped me a lot through my pregnancy and these past eleven months.” She took a deep, fortifying breath, surprised at how much better she felt. She placed her hand on Ethan's arm, and he started, slightly jerking it away. “Thank you.”
He nodded, but kept his gaze on his notebook. “I think we'd better get back to this,” he said, tapping the list he'd made.
Amanda nodded.
“There's also the possibility that—” He paused, eyeing her for a moment.
“The possibility that what?”
“That William fathered other children, children he didn't claim as his own,” he finished.
She felt herself bristling. “I have no idea about that.”
“That's why I said it's a possibility. And a possibility that we should check out. Perhaps someone out there got very angry at being left out of the will.”
Amanda glanced down at the table. “I'm trying to decide which would be worse—having him acknowledge me as his child and then neglect his role as a father, or not acknowledging me at all.” Again she felt her cheeks burning and silently cursed herself for not thinking before she spoke.
“Well, I'd say both suck equally.”
Amanda smiled, then laughed.
He smiled back, and she was struck again by how good-looking he was. His dark, thick hair was slightly too long, and she had an impulse to push the heavy locks off his forehead. His dark brown eyes were intense, sharp, probing. He had a strong, masculine nose and a slight cleft in his chin.
“So William wasn't interested in fatherhood, period?” Ethan asked. “From the beginning? And with both your sisters, too?”
Amanda nodded. He offered child support, which my mother refused. And he invited me and my sisters to spend two weeks with him in his house in Maine every summer.”
“What was that like?” he asked.
“It was wonderful and weird at the same time,” she said. “Wonderful because for those two weeks, I had a father. Like every other kid, I had a father. If I saw him in the hall or around the grounds, I could call out ‘Dad,' and someone would actually turn around in response. I can't tell you what that meant to me. To be able to call someone Dad. To have a father. Even for just two weeks every summer.”
“I can definitely understand,” Ethan said.
And again she felt like an idiot. Why did she keep putting her foot in her big mouth? Why was she blathering on about poor little her, when he never even knew his father?
“I'm sorry,” she said. “I keep—”
“You're entitled to your own feelings, Amanda,” he said. “My own circumstances don't have anything to do with yours. I've never been one to believe in feeling better about something just because someone else seems worse off.”
She looked at him for a moment, unable to speak. Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. “You're a very generous person,” she finally said.
He looked back at her, holding her gaze for just a few seconds. “Generous.” He shook his head. “I think that's a first.”
“Well surely the people in your life think so,” she said. “I'm sure they're the beneficiaries of that generosity on a daily basis.”
“There are no people in my life,” he said, and suddenly something shifted in his eyes. The sparkle that had been there in their intense brown depths was gone, replaced by that same coldness she'd seen in them when they'd met in the park, when he'd surprised her in her bedroom, and when she'd come downstairs this morning. He tapped his notebook with his pen. “Back to business. Another possibility is that someone feels you don't deserve this. Someone offended by your lack of grief.”
“How would anyone know how I feel?” Amanda snapped. “I'm grieving plenty.”
“For yourself,” he said. “For the father you never had and the father you'll never get to have. You're not crying your eyes out for William Sedgwick himself.”
Anger boiled in her gut and she stood up. “How dare you? You don't know anything about how I feel! No one does! Well except for my sisters, maybe, because they probably feel exactly the same way.”
“Okay,” he said, holding up a hand. “I'm sorry. So let's say it's not about anger, but more calculated. Someone trying to scare you into leaving before your time,” he said. “Perhaps the intruder wasn't planning on killing you, but just
scaring
you.”
“I don't know,” Amanda said. “That pillow was pressed against my face hard enough and long enough to kill me in a few more seconds had you not come.” She dropped down into her chair. “Oh my God, Ethan. You saved my life. You saved my life, and I haven't even thanked you.”
She looked in his eyes for any flicker of warmth but there was only the coldness. He didn't say
you're welcome
. He didn't say
no problem
. He didn't say anything.
“Who are Tommy's godparents?” he asked suddenly.
“He doesn't have godparents,” Amanda said.
Ethan took a deep breath. “What I'm asking is, if something should happen to you, who will get custody?”
Amanda stiffened.
Don't get defensive. It's a reasonable question.
“My best friend from high school, Jenny. If you're suggesting that my oldest friend tried to kill me so that she could get custody of Tommy and his big inheritance at my death, then we can end this stupid exercise right now.”
“Amanda, I wasn't suggesting any such thing. I just asked the question. I wanted to know if one of your sisters was his godmother.”
“No,” she said curtly.
She took a deep breath. Soon after her son's birth, Amanda had asked both of her half sisters if they would be her son's godmothers. Both said their jobs and lifestyles—Olivia's constant traveling and Ivy's dangerous profession—would make them terrible godmothers, but both said they would as a last resort. In the end, Amanda had decided on neither. It had been clear that her sisters were uncomfortable about being asked; to be fair to them, it was really as though a stranger were asking them to take care of her child should something happen.
“Amanda?”
She started and blinked and realized Ethan had asked her another question. “I'm sorry, what?”
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Was that your original question?”
He smiled. “No.”
“I'm fine. I hate this, but I'm fine. I'll be fine.”
He eyed her for a few seconds and gave her what she took as a reassuring nod. “What are your sisters' mothers like? I did some research online, but a lot of what I found was gossip rag material. I do know that Ivy Segwick's mother was the only one married to William and that Olivia's mother sued him for a staggering sum of child support.”
“I don't know their mothers well,” Amanda said. “But they did both attend the reading of the will and both were particularly interested in their daughters' inheritances. There's definitely no love lost between them. And there were no tears shed over William.”
“So let's add Ivy's mother, Dana Sedgwick, and Olivia's mother, Candace Hearn,” he said, jotting down their names.
“Good Lord, Ethan, why not add Ivy's fiancé to the mix? And how about everyone we've ever known in our entire lives?
“I'll settle for those with any kind of a motive,” he retorted. “Who's this fiancé?”
Amanda crossed her arms over her chest. “Declan Something. Apparently, William didn't approve of him. He didn't think he was good enough for Ivy because he's not established in business yet.”
“Have you met him?”
“At the reading of the will,” Amanda said. “I didn't even know she was engaged before then,” she added in a low voice.
Ethan glanced at her. “What was your take on him?”
“He seemed very much in love with her. They seemed very much in love. Ivy's mother was worried that William was ‘up to something' by setting the opening of her inheritance letter on the day of her wedding.”
Ethan seemed to be letting all this sink in. “Perhaps the fiancé is worried too. Worried that if Ivy goes through with the wedding, she'll get nothing. Maybe he wants to get you out of the way now so that the brownstone can be split between Ivy and Olivia.”
“That sounds pretty far-reaching, Ethan.”
“Everything we're talking about is only speculation. We need to explore all possible angles. Your sisters might be furious that you're set to inherit the brownstone. And their mothers might be furious that their daughters have to wait for whatever's coming to them, which may not be as good. And considering that William owned only a house in Maine and a cottage in New Jersey, it's possible that your sisters and their mothers and this Declan guy feel more than a little threatened.”
She felt a chill run up her spine and shivered. “You've got my sisters on your list, their mothers, Ivy's fiancé, and the father of my child.”
He glanced at her, waiting.
Tears came to her eyes. “I don't want any of them to be the one who tried to hurt me last night. I can't tell you how much I don't want it to be any of them.”
As tears streamed down her cheeks, Amanda just sat there, numbly grateful that Tommy was absorbed by making a tower of two blocks over and over again. Suddenly, she felt Ethan's hand atop her own. Surprised, she glanced up at him, and he took his hand away.
No
, she wanted to say.
Please put it back. Your hand is warm and comforting and strong... .
Don't be a fool
, she cautioned herself.
You don't know this man. And you know better than to be lulled into a false sense of security.
“You know, it's not really fair to focus on my sisters or their mothers or Ivy's fiancé or Paul Swinwood,” she said. “There could be any number of unclaimed heirs. Like you said, his obituary was in all the major papers. And then there's the housekeeper—”
Ethan glanced up at her. “What?”
Amanda sat up straight. “The housekeeper! Clara Mott. She was here yesterday when I arrived. She has her own key! How the hell did I forget about her?”
He jotted down her name. “Harris didn't mention the housekeeper. Perhaps he didn't think it was relevant to my job. She must have come well before your couch sentence.”

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