through his sun-bleached hair. “I always planned to tell you, but that time never came. And, of course, I had put that picture on the mantel and told you it was your dead mother. I didn’t know what would happen if I told you the truth and admitted to the deception.
“You were so happy-go-lucky. I thought you’d become sad, upset…maybe even try to search her out or something. That was the selfish part of my thinking. I never, ever thought something like this would happen.”
Olivia got up from her chair and started to pace the kitchen. The dogs tracked her until they got dizzy. “But it did happen, Dad. That lawyer wants me to call him back. He left her will. I didn’t even look at it. I don’t want anything from her. Can you take care of it, Dad?”
Dennis stared at his daughter before he got up to lift the lid of the Crock-Pot. “You just threw stuff in here, eh?” Olivia nodded. “I’m afraid, Ollie, it doesn’t work like that. I guess your mother wanted to make amends for what she did. She can’t hurt you anymore. Just deal with it, then forget about her. I know that sounds easy for me to say, but it’s the best thing for you to do. If she left you an insurance policy, donate it to some worthy cause. You’re nothing like her, Ollie. You’re my daughter, and don’t you ever forget it. Now, where is that damn will? We might as well get started on this so we can lay it to rest. Do you forgive me, Ollie?”
Did she? Did she have a choice? She forced herself to nod. “It’s on the coffee table in the great room.” Her heart thumped in her chest as she stared at her father’s back. His shoulders were slumped as he made his way into the great room.
Olivia remained at the kitchen table, a table built by her father. She’d helped to sand it. She clasped and unclasped her hands as she tried to come to terms with what her father had just told her. The part that bruised her heart was that her mother had refused even to see her when she had been born. She’d just signed her away, all nice and legal. What kind of woman would do a thing like that?
Time crawled forward as Olivia waited for her father to return to the kitchen. What was taking so long? She started to get angry all over again as she entered the great room. Her father was staring off into space. Fear washed through her as she raced across the room.
“Dad, what’s wrong?”
Dennis turned, and for a moment he still didn’t seem to be focusing on her. “This is going to be a little more complicated than I originally thought. It seems your…Allison changed her name. Does the name Adrian Ames mean anything to you?”
Olivia shook her head.
“How about Adrian’s Treasure Box? Does that ring any bells?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s some big mail-order catalog. I think I ordered stuff from there a few times. Why, Dad? Why are you asking me these questions?”
Dennis Lowell took a deep breath. “Your…Allison is…Adrian Ames, owner of that mail-order company. It’s a multimillion-dollar business, and she left it all to you.”
Olivia’s jaw dropped. “What?” she asked in a strangled voice.
Dennis looked down at the will in his hands. “It’s all spelled out right here. Much to my surprise, she lived just forty miles from here. At least she had a house here. Seems she has property all over the world. She never remarried. It says right here that when you turned sixteen, she started taking an interest in your life. She hired a private detective to send her monthly reports, and obviously that was done right up until the time of her death. She never did anything about those reports, Ollie. She stuck to our bargain, for whatever that’s worth.”
Olivia wiped at the tears starting to gather in her eyes. It was starting to snow again, she noticed. “What was she like, Dad? Not that story you made up for me when I was little. The real story.”
Dennis leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes. Both dogs hopped onto his lap. Absentmindedly, he stroked their small heads. “I met Allison during her last year at Ole Miss. She worked part-time in a small bank that was privately owned. One day I bumped into her at a local pizza joint that was off campus. I worked a few doors down from the place and used to go there for lunch. She was with two friends. She dropped her book bag, and I picked it up. They invited me to sit with them, so I did. One thing led to another, and I finally asked her out. At first she said no because she didn’t want to get involved with anyone when she would be leaving at the end of the term. I finally wore her down.
“There were no bells or whistles, no wild passion or anything like that. We were just comfortable with one another. That fall we got married and moved here. Allison had a job in Washington, and I worked locally, as you know. Sometimes when I think back I realize perhaps I was too old for her. I was thirty and ready to get married. She was just out of college. And I was her first boyfriend.
“It was a pleasant enough existence for the first few years. Never having been married, I thought it was supposed to be like that. She traveled a lot in her job. That, I didn’t like. She’d always come back from those trips with an attitude. Things got worse when Allison got pregnant. She blamed me, said I didn’t care about her, I should have done this or that. She wasn’t ready for motherhood, that kind of thing. She moved out of the bedroom, and that was pretty much the end of our relationship. I thought all pregnant women acted like that. Then came the day of your birth, and she crippled me. She was so cold, so heartless, so uncaring. I felt like I’d been run over by a train. I probably would have had a nervous breakdown, but I had you to think about.
“I went back to the hospital to try to talk to her several times, but they wouldn’t let me in to see her. When I went back the last time, she’d been discharged, and she paid the bill herself. I never saw or heard from her again.
“I was stupid, Ollie. It wasn’t till that last time that I realized she’d taken all of her things out of the house. I don’t know when or how she did that. It was like she’d never been there, like the whole thing was just a bad dream. That’s my story.”
Olivia’s head bobbed up and down as she tried to come to terms with everything. There was just so much her weary brain could deal with. “Still, Dad, you should have told me at some point.”
“To what end, Ollie? I didn’t want you to have to deal with her rejection. I did what I thought was best. I’m sorry if you feel I was wrong.”
“I can forgive you, Dad. Now, what are we going to do?”
“I guess you and I are going to call Mr. Prentice O’Brien and see what the next step is. You okay, Ollie?”
Olivia smiled. “Sure, Dad. I’m a big girl now.”
Liar, liar, liar.
Chapter 4
It was almost like old times, Olivia thought, as she and her father cleaned up the kitchen. Even though they had a dishwasher, Dennis washed the dishes, and Olivia dried them. It was something physical to do other than sit across from each other in the great room—Olivia with accusing eyes, Dennis’s filled with guilt and shame.
Dennis squeezed the yellow sponge until it condensed into a tight little ball in his hand. His voice was low, little short of a whisper. “I can’t change anything, Ollie. If you want the truth, if I had to do it all over again, I’d do it the same way.
“Do you know how many sleepless nights I’ve had over this? Thousands. I don’t think I had a good night’s sleep until the day of your eighteenth birthday. I always
