Despite still walking like a drunken penguin, Liza couldn’t help but smile, because other than the fact that she would be leaving the island in less than a week, everything was right in her world.
Kendall had come to see her several times, and contrary to what Francine had suggested, he had not bought her a brand-new golf cart. He did, however, bring Liza a slice of pecan pie from Morgan’s, which she’d devoured in a very unladylike fashion.
During Kendall’s many visits, there was no repeat of the previous weekend’s activities since Liza could not get past the idea of having sex while Ray was downstairs. There was also the issue of keeping Ray’s secret. Or her own secret. Hell, Liza didn’t know what she was keeping from whom at this point.
If she shared Ray’s confession with Kendall, and the mob connection was news to him, she’d not only be breaking Ray’s confidence, but conceivably, she’d also be revealing to one of the most upstanding men she knew that his father had been a criminal.
Liza could not have that on her conscience. Not when she already had the anxiety of sending an old man to prison. That was, if he hadn’t made the right choice thirty years ago. She’d hoped that Ray would put her out of her misery on Thursday morning, but he’d refused to even come out of his room. By lunchtime on Friday, she’d begun to really worry, but upon knocking on his door, Liza had found the room empty.
He’d failed to mention an early doctor’s appointment, which she hadn’t learned about until Friday evening when she’d returned from spending the day with Kendall. Ray had been on his way to bed, and in response to her inquiry about where he’d been, he said, “At the doctor,” and then disappeared into his room.
Hoping Ray felt well enough to attend the cookout, as he loved nothing more than a social gathering, Liza hobbled down the stairs to check on him. Despite what she’d learned about him, he was still the sweet man who’d brought her into his home with a ready smile and endless generosity. She was still struggling to reconcile the man she’d come to care about with the Mafia accountant she now knew him to be.
“Ray?” she called, searching in the usual places. He wasn’t in the kitchen or on the back deck. “Ray?” Liza called again, making sure he wasn’t out front before checking his room.
Easing the bedroom door open, she found an empty bed and nearly spun to look elsewhere before she spotted Ray in a chair by the window. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked.
He didn’t turn or answer her question. “Come in, Liza Ruth. There’s something I need to tell you.”
This seemed like an odd time to finish his story, since Kendall would arrive any minute to take them to the cookout, but Liza wasn’t about to put him off. She only wished she had her recorder.
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk at the table?” That way she could grab pen and paper from the kitchen drawer to take notes. This was not the part she wanted to get wrong.
His expressionless face turned her way. “We’ve reached the end of our road.”
If he was trying to be ominous, he was doing a damn fine job. Liza tried to read his expression, and for a moment, she feared he was canceling the project without ever giving her the ending.
“What do you mean the end of our road?”
“Do you see that picture over there?” Ray pointed to the dresser on the other side of his bed. “The one to the left of the mirror.”
A beam of sunlight cut across the image, creating a glare. “The one in the silver frame?”
“Yes, that one.” His hand dropped into his lap. “Will you bring it over here to the light?”
Honoring the request, Liza rounded the bed and retrieved the framed photo without looking at it. “Here you go.”
Ray shook his head. “I want you to look at it.”
“Okay.” Shifting so the light wouldn’t reflect off the glass, she was shocked to see a familiar face. “This is my grandmother.” Unable to look away, she said, “You knew my grandmother?”
He nodded. “That’s the last picture I have of her.”
Liza didn’t understand. “But how could you know Grandma Teller? I asked if you knew my family, and you said you didn’t.”
As the breath left his lungs, the old man seemed to shrink into his chair. “I lied. I wanted as much time with you as I could get.”
“You wanted time with me?” This didn’t make any sense. She wouldn’t have abandoned the project just because Ray knew her family. “Your knowing my family wouldn’t have caused a problem. That isn’t a conflict of interest that would force me off the project.”
Studying the picture again, she traced a finger over her grandmother’s kind face before realizing the size of the photo. An eight by ten, and it looked to have been taken around the time Liza was born, which would have been right before her grandfather passed away. “Please tell me you didn’t have an affair with my grandmother.”
“You remind me of her,” he said, ignoring her question. “Strong and beautiful. And the writing. Essie loved to write stories.”
Liza stopped breathing, and the picture crashed to the floor. “My grandmother’s name was Ruth. What kind of a cruel joke is this?” She backed away, nearly falling over when her knee caught the bed.
Ray rose to his feet, shaky and clinging to the windowsill. “Her name was Ruth Ester Rabinowitz Teller, and she was my wife. Liza, I’m your grandfather.”
No. That couldn’t be true.
“My grandfather died when I was a baby. He left behind a wife and a son who loved him.” Liza refused to even consider what Ray was saying. “My grandmother mourned her husband until the day she died, and she’s buried beside him.”
“Honey, I had to do it.” Ray’s hands shook, and he took a step away from the window. “To protect them, I had to let them go. I had to disappear or they would have killed us all.”
“People don’t disappear!” she yelled, tears blurring her vision. “Who? Who would have killed them? The mob? The scum that you brought into their lives?”
He reached for her, but Liza leaped out of his reach. All those years. He stole all those years from the people who loved him. The people he was supposed to care about.
“Listen. You have to listen to me.”
“I’ve been listening to you for weeks, and now you tell me this? All those questions about my family, pretending that I was talking about a bunch of strangers.” What kind of monster could look his own granddaughter in the eyes and not tell her who he was? “I’ve listened enough. Now I’m going home.”
The moment Kendall walked in the house, he knew something was wrong.
“Ray?” he called. “Liza? Where is everybody?”
They should have been ready and waiting to leave for the cookout. Kendall checked the deck first and was about to dash up the stairs to find Liza when Amos whimpered from the entrance to Ray’s bedroom.
Kendall’s chest tightened with dread. “What is it, boy? What’d you find?”
At the open doorway, Kendall was relieved to find the bed empty. “He isn’t there, buddy.”
Amos whined again and moved to the end of the bed. Kendall followed him.
“Ray!” Dashing around the bed, he reached the man slumped on the floor, a broken picture frame in his hands.
“It’s okay now. Let me take care of that.”
Rocking forward and back, the old man shook his head like a petulant child. “I ruined everything. I thought she would understand. I thought I could make her understand.”
“She’ll come around. You just surprised her.” Kendall assumed they were talking about Liza, though he couldn’t fathom why she’d leave a defenseless old man crumpled on his bedroom floor. “Careful now. Don’t cut yourself.”
Watery eyes stared up at Kendall. “I should have waited. I should have told her at the very end.”
The very end of what?
“Lean on my shoulder. We need to get you onto the bed.” Gently lifting the frail man, Kendall caught a glimpse of the face in the picture. There was something f
amiliar about her. Once they were both sitting on the bed, he asked, “Who is this, Ray?”
“That’s my Essie,” he replied, watery eyes locked on the picture. “Liza Ruth looks so much like her, doesn’t she?”
Kendall hadn’t known anything about Ray’s life before he’d come to the island, except for the events that had driven him there in the first place. Looking closer, he saw the resemblance.
“Ray, why would Liza look like your wife?”
“Because Liza is my granddaughter.”
Fearing Ray had had a stroke or some kind of mental break, Kendall leaned forward to catch his gaze. “Liza is a woman who came here to write your memoir. She isn’t your granddaughter. You’re confused.”
But Ray didn’t look confused or out of his mind. He looked heartbroken. “She’s my granddaughter, Kendall. And now she’s leaving me.”
The more Liza rubbed her eyes, the more the tears came. By the time she’d reached her apartment, her cheeks were soaked. and her vision was blurred. Without stopping to think, she pulled her suitcases from the closet and started throwing things in. There was no time to fold or organize. She had to go. She had to get off this stupid island.
Sweeping her belongings from the bathroom sink, she hobbled into the bedroom and tossed them into the smaller case. Another brush of her cheeks and she reached the clothes hamper in the corner and dumped it on the bed. At the bottom, she found the dress she’d worn to Kendall’s the night they’d made love.
As if she’d been punched in the gut, Liza toppled over, burying her face in the discarded garments.
“Liza?” she heard Kendall call.
Bolting upright, she grabbed a towel to dry her eyes. A useless effort, as the tears continued to fall.
“Liza!” he yelled, panic clear in his voice.
“I’m here.” She exited the bedroom but didn’t go to him. Liza didn’t trust anyone at this point, and her heart ached with the fear that Kendall had known. That he’d kept this from her.
Kendall rushed toward her, and Liza shifted to the right, putting the kitchen table between them. “Baby, please.”
No. He didn’t get to do that.
“Did you know?” she asked, voice low and raw.
He shook his head. “I had no idea.” Kendall took another step, and she held up a hand to stop him. “I swear,” he added. “I didn’t know.”
“You kept telling me Ray had secrets.” Liza hiccupped. “You said there were things I didn’t know. But you did.”
Strong hands gripped the back of a chair. “I knew that Ray got into trouble. I knew that he got mixed up with the wrong people, and to save his family, he ran away. Liza, I swear by all that’s holy, I had no idea he was your grandfather.”
Relief flooded through her, but Kendall’s innocence didn’t change the situation. Liza still had to go. Unless . . .
She swallowed, willing herself to be strong. “I can’t stay here.”
Kendall’s face contorted as a hand swiped through his hair. “Then Ray was right. You’re leaving?”
Liza nodded, a voice in her head begging him.
Ask me to stay.
“I understand.” Dark lashes dipped as his eyes dropped to the table. “I’ll take you to the ferry.”
“No.” The word ripped from her throat as her knees threatened to buckle. “No,” Liza said again, chin quivering. “I’ll have Francine take me. It’s better that way.”
Better than Kendall seeing her fall apart.
“Liza,” Kendall whispered, but she cut him off.
“Please. I need to finish packing if I’m going to catch the next ferry.”
His mouth opened, but no words came out. Instead, he nodded before leaving the apartment, the door clicking softly closed behind him.
Taking deep breaths, Liza stayed where she was, willing her heart to keep beating. Willing her feet to carry on. To carry her back to New York, where she clearly belonged. If only he’d said the words, then she would be moving across the island instead of leaving it behind. But the words hadn’t come.
At least now she knew. She knew the secrets her benefactor had been hiding, and that the man she’d fallen hopelessly in love with didn’t love her back.
Chapter 23
If Kendall was going to lose Liza, he was going to know the reason why.
Ray had moved to the back deck, and Kendall prowled the narrow landing, anger and frustration boiling in his gut. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t tell you before I told her,” he replied, as if that made some kind of sense.
“You’ve had her here for three weeks. What were you waiting for?”
Eyes locked somewhere in the distance, Ray scratched beneath his hat. “I had to wait. I needed her to know me first. I thought if she knew me, she’d understand.”
Kendall had known Ray all of his life, and he didn’t understand any of this. “You let your family think you were dead?”
“I had to. It was the only way.”
Doubtful. “Did Dad know about this?” Kendall couldn’t imagine his father helping anyone dupe his entire family in such a cruel way.
“Christopher knew everything,” the older man replied, hands gripping the arms of the rocker. “He even helped me plan the explosion.”
“Hold up.” This was starting to sound like a bad movie script. “What explosion?”
“The one the Carpetti family killed me with. Or would have, if I hadn’t done it first.” Finally meeting Kendall’s eyes, he added, “As my driver, Christopher would have died, too. I saved us both.”
“Jesus,” Kendall muttered, struggling to believe the far-fetched tale. Although owing Ray his life explained his father’s unflinching loyalty to the man. “Did Dad know who was after you?”
“Of course he did. He worked for them, too.”
Now wait a damn minute. “I thought he was your driver.”
Ray had the nerve to roll his eyes, as if Kendall were being purposely difficult. “He was my driver, but only because the family assigned him to me.”
“No.” Kendall refused to believe his father had worked for a crime boss. “Dad did not work for the Mafia.”
“Well, someone was paying him, and it wasn’t me.” Ray rubbed his forehead. “When the FBI came knocking, threatening to put me away unless I testified against the Carpettis, I tried to convince them to take my records and say they got them in a raid or . . .” He waved a hand in the air. “I don’t know. However they get stuff like that. They said they could protect me, but I’d been around long enough to know that if I agreed to testify, I’d be dead within a week.”
None of this matched the story Kendall had been told. “Dad said you went to the Feds, not the other way around.”
A sheepish look crossed Ray’s wrinkled face. “I’m not surprised. Things were moving quickly. There wasn’t a lot of time to hash out the details.”
In other words, Ray had let his driver believe the best of him. Nice.
“The day Christopher told me that they were sending someone else to change the oil in the car, I knew. Christopher had always changed it before. There was no choice after that. To save both our lives, I knew we needed a place to disappear. If I left without him, they’d know he tipped me off. And if I’d tried to take my family and run . . .” Ray shook his head. “No one ran from the Carpettis. At least not for long.”
Though he didn’t like it, Kendall had to admit that the story made sense. “So you landed here.”
Another nod. “I remembered an old army buddy talking about an island his family owned. They used it for hunting and fishing but hadn’t done much with it. Lucky for us, he was ready to sell, and I had a good bit of money banked in an offshore account.”
Offshore accounts. Holy hell.
Kendall dropped into a rocker. “What about the people you left behind? Did you consider them at all?”
Ray spun in his chair. “Everything I did was for them. To protect them. To keep them alive.”
&
nbsp; “By letting them think you were dead. You heard what Liza said. Her grandmother was devastated.”
Rounded shoulders drooped. “She was devastated, but she was alive.”
Barely, to hear Liza tell it. Whatever Kendall’s father’s sins might have been, at least he hadn’t abandoned his family. Processing what he’d heard, Kendall watched a bird flit from branch to branch. So Ray had faked his own death, and his father’s, too.
Wait.
“So your real name is Teller?”
“That’s right. Elijah Teller.”
“Then what the hell is my real name?”
As if this was funny, Ray chuckled. “Relax. Christopher James was a common enough name—we didn’t see the point in changing it. Besides, your dad was a driver, not an enforcer or an informant. They wouldn’t waste their time looking for him or his family.”
Releasing the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, Kendall leaned back in the chair. “Did Mom know all of this? Did she know the real reason we came here?”
Ray pushed himself out of the chair. “You’ll have to ask her that. I don’t know what your father told her.” Shuffling past Kendall’s chair, he said, “I’m going to my room. Let me know if Liza comes back.”
He couldn’t really believe she’d come back. Not after being manipulated and lied to. Dragged eight hundred miles from home under false pretenses and then blindsided with an undead grandfather.
Kendall had wanted to ask her to wait. Beg her to give him some time. But how was he supposed to say, “Wait until your grandfather dies again; then we can be together”? Besides being incredibly morbid, it didn’t seem like the right move to remind her of Ray’s betrayal in that moment.
Asking her to stay was never an option. He knew how that would turn out, and repeating his parents’ mistakes was the one thing Kendall would not do.
Eyes closed, he saw her face, puffy and red, streaked with tears. His hands, balled into fists, felt as if they were tied to the chair beneath them. They might as well have been, because despite all Kendall had learned about Ray, he still couldn’t abandon him. Couldn’t break the promise he’d made to his father all those years ago.
Ask me to Stay Page 20
