Читать книгу Forever And A Baby - Margot Early, Margot Early - Страница 11

Skye said she wasn’t going anywhere at gunpoint. One of the men, who were mercenaries, yanked my father from our vehicle; my father clutched his arm and chest, crying out, moaning, eyes rolling back. “He’s sick!” I said. They shrugged as he fell, threatening to shoot me when I tried to go to him. I opened my door anyhow, because of the things my father had taught me about the nature of men. The gunman yanked me back into the vehicle by the throat. While I choked and coughed and he started the car, another held a Makarov to Dru’s head. But before we left, the third man turned the green Land Rover and drove over my father’s body.

—Ben, recollections of a fall

Nantucket

One week later

October 23

The office of Daniel Mayhew, Attorney At Law

THE WORDS WERE THERE on the pertinent pages, and Daniel had given each of them a copy to read. After she’d entered the office and Ben had stood, she’d told Daniel that of course they knew each other. Good to see you, to Ben. She couldn’t say his name again.

Now she studied black text on white paper, blurred in the photocopy machine, but not enough to misread “my natural son, the son of my loins, Ben Omar Hall.” And the mention of “other issue…or my wife, Dru-Nudar Haverford Hall, if pregnant at the time of my death…”

She felt Ben’s presence as she felt the sun through the clustered window panes, paneling the maple floor and walnut furniture with light. His knees, in jeans, jutted into the slanting edge of one section, brightly lit. The rest of him was in shadow, beyond the edge of her vision unless she twisted her chair. It couldn’t matter. Daniel would repeat nothing he saw.

Ben waited, eyes on the attorney.

She could pretend, too, pretend it was no surprise. Even though she wanted to demand, Did you know? Did you know you were his son?

Omar had known. Wasn’t that bad enough?

“Tell me if I’m right, Daniel.” Her courtesy was lost, smashed by surprise. “I understand the provisions for Sergio and others. This is what I want clarified. I will receive, in any case, one hundred thousand dollars a year and the Orange Street House. But whatever is in the attic vault, which I never knew existed, and everything else that Omar didn’t give away—we’re talking about a lot—will go to…” It took a long time, seconds, to decide what to call him. She broke her indecision with a sigh. “…Ben, unless I’m pregnant right now. Since he—Omar—and I have had no child up to this point.”

“Yes.”

Her face must look like a strawberry. Daniel knew as well as everyone else, everyone who had seen the tabloids, about her and Ben. Ben would also receive the contents of a safe deposit box and some other things she’d never known her husband owned. Did we need the cloak and dagger, Omar? She held down some high terror that couldn’t come from grief. “How soon must pregnancy be determined?” Her breath sounded coarse, unladylike, heaving like a horse. A tear hung in one eye. Not about money. Oh, maybe that, too. Who cares what they think?

She hated for Ben to see.

She took a handkerchief from her purse. It bore her monogram. Sometimes she’d used Omar’s. Still did, at home. She wiped off her invalidated grief. I want some answers.

“Because of the size of the estate—” Daniel’s eyes rested on her, apologizing “—as soon as an accurate result can be obtained.”

“And if I’m pregnant, he and I split the estate?”

“Correct. And the unknown contents of the vault become yours.”

The provisions were more complex than that. If she relinquished her rights. If he did. A web engineered to manipulate. Or so it seemed.

Beside her, Ben hadn’t moved. Hands on the chair arms. Eyes on Daniel. His face frozen.

Had he known he was adopted—Omar’s natural son? If he did…

Dru choked away her fears. Nothing real but this room. The will. “I suppose I’ll need a test in a medical facility?”

“Promptly.”

She could count. A test might be accurate seven days after conception. Nine to eleven, much better. But they couldn’t have succeeded, even with Ben’s tenacious effort and repeated donations. Her face heated again as she remembered things said, the emotions of an intimacy without touch, without invasion of each other’s sexual privacy, yet throbbing and slippery and quiet with the hunger for friendship. She’d never been closer to a man—brother or lover.

And, all the time, he was Omar’s son.

Who on earth was his mother?

Trouble silenced her curiosity. This new development would reach the papers. The world would watch to see…

If she was pregnant.

She said, “I relinquish my share in that portion of the trust.”

Keziah’s father chuckled sympathetically. “I would advise you strongly against that. But in any case, it’s not that simple. If you’re pregnant, then Ben—” his nephew, too, son of his wife’s brother, one of her brothers “—will receive a smaller portion of the estate in any case.”

Why had Omar done this to her? Confusion pressed in her skull. “Well, I might get a test.” She shrugged. Pretending. Muddled. “It seems unlikely, though.”

Nobody said aloud that she hadn’t been in the same room with Omar for seven weeks before his death. The papers would say it for them.

Had Ben known?

Her molars ground against each other.

She smiled at Daniel and rose. “Well, I have other things going on today.” Folding her copy of the document. Mitch would tag along while she shopped for things for Oceania. At home, they would write more notes. Do you want to tell me about the baby’s father? I want to help however I can. Early that morning, Dru had begun looking into what a deaf mother would need. A father for her child, she’d thought with a half-sob, like any other mom.

A shadow behind her took away the window’s light. “Uncle Dan, is there a room where Dru and I could visit?”

The attorney’s mouth, Keziah’s mouth, opened to get a word out. The word became a drawn-out sound. “Aaaaaahhh. Yes. Yes.” Looking around. “Yes, that’s possible. Ahhhh. Of course. You may use my office. I’ll be in a meeting till one. But, ah, I must caution both of you, absolutely, to surrender no rights regarding this estate. You are both, ah, grieving. This is not the time for rash legal decision-making or, between the two of you, discussion of the estate.”

Dru felt it was the perfect time. “Of course.” She leaned forward and kissed Daniel’s cheek. “Thank you for all your help and compassion. And your good advice.”

Walking past her, Ben saw the attorney out and shut the door.

His scent spilled into her. His woolly sweater, a Harvard cardigan that might be from the fifties and must have been Robert Hall’s, smelled of dry leaves. Dru wondered who had sewn the moth holes with such skill.