Abandoned

by Allison Brennan

  They had made something for themselves and the community. Yet it was all tainted if Phillip Colter was a criminal.

  “Do you want a drink?” Brian asked.

  “I want the truth.”

  “Then you’re going to have to explain what you’re talking about, because you’re making no sense.”

  Gabriel sat down and took a deep breath. “I think Colter is dirty.”

  “Like dirty money?”

  “I don’t know if his money is clean or dirty, but I think he is dirty. A criminal. I think Jimmy was into something with him and—”

  “Stop. Jimmy? Is this because of that reporter asking questions about Martha?”

  “No. Yes. No! It’s about the FBI coming in and telling me flat-out that Colter is a suspect in some major art theft or something. I don’t know what he did, but he did something, and that’s why the FBI was all over this place ten years ago. Jimmy was involved. And it’s why Agent Maguire is back now.”

  “Maguire is back?”

  Why wasn’t Brian listening to him? “Yes! I saw him the other night having dinner with Maxine Revere, and again tonight—only now he finally believes me and knows I didn’t help Jimmy.”

  “Of course you didn’t. I told you there was no way he could prove it, and now I really don’t see the problem.”

  “The problem? The problem is that Phillip Colter is the subject of an FBI investigation and Colter’s company owns half of our resort. We don’t have the cash to buy him out.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “You are not listening. If his money is dirty, the feds can seize all his property—including our resort.”

  “No.”

  “Yes!”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a company, Colter is only a small part of it. Yeah, he made the deal, but it still went through the company board of directors for approval, and the government can’t take over the entire company.”

  Gabriel rubbed his forehead. What Brian said made sense … but he didn’t know anything about white-collar crime or what the government could or couldn’t do. “I—I don’t know.”

  “I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”

  “I think you’re not taking this seriously enough.”

  “What do you know about the investigation?”

  “Nothing substantive. Do you think Maguire would just show me everything he had? He basically said he thinks I didn’t know what Jimmy was up to, and then explained why they were after him.”

  “And why were they after him?”

  “Because Jimmy stole something—a priceless painting—and sold it. Then disappeared the weekend he came here and wanted to take Eve from me.”

  “You didn’t tell the fed you saw him, did you? That would put you on the hot seat.”

  Gabriel hesitated. He almost told Brian everything, but there was something about his reaction that was just a little bit off. Gabriel had known Brian his entire life. What was wrong with this conversation?

  He didn’t ask about the painting. That it would be odd for Jimmy to steal a priceless work of art. Brian should think that it was as ludicrous as I do.

  It was as if Brian knew exactly what Jimmy had done. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it?

  Still, he said, “No, I didn’t tell the fed anything. I’d never admit to an FBI agent that I lied to him. Shit, Brian! I don’t care about any of that. I don’t care what happened to Jimmy. But I am worried that we’re business partners with a criminal. We have to find a way to get out from under this.”

  “Let it die down. It will. If the feds had anything on Colter, they’d have indicted him. You know how these law-and-order types work. They throw out a bunch of shit that scares law-abiding citizens, but when they can’t prove their case, they walk.”

  Gabriel couldn’t believe that Brian was being so lackadaisical about the situation, and that further disturbed him.

  “Brian, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing. You have been so intense and paranoid since that woman came to town. Let it go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Stay away from her, Gabriel. You broke into her cottage—do I have to remind you that you’re already on edge? Stay away, and all this will disappear. The feds are blowing smoke up your ass.”

  “This is our business, Brian.”

  “And our business is doing great. We have nothing to do with Phillip Colter other than he gave us our initial seed money—through his company. Boreal only owns fifty percent of the resort. We own fifty percent. We’re okay. Don’t worry about this.”

  “I can’t help it. It feels like everything is crashing down.”

  “Nothing is crashing down. Go home, Gabriel. Eve has a race tomorrow, bright and early. You need to be there to support her.”

  Brian was right, but Gabriel couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just been whammied. That Brian was too calm about the whole thing.

  Brian walked him to his car. “Gabriel, we’re friends and we’re family. You know that, right?”

  “I’m worried.”

  “Sleep on it a couple of days. Stay away from the reporter, from the fed. They’ll both go away and you’ll see that I am right.”

  “I hope so, Brian.”

  Gabriel drove off. He glanced in the rearview mirror of his truck and saw Brian standing there in the driveway, watching him leave.

  Brian, what have you done?

  * * *

  Eve stared at the ceiling, her face wet from tears that had been falling for the better part of an hour. She’d gone downstairs to talk to her dad—demand answers—and saw the note on the fridge that said he went to talk to Uncle Brian.

  An omen. A sign that she needed to figure this out on her own.

  But she couldn’t sleep because she would never forget what she heard at the Hendersons’.

  I had motive—he was going to take my daughter. I don’t care that I’m not her biological father, she’s my daughter.

  Her dad had lied to her for her entire life. No wonder he wouldn’t talk about her mother—he barely knew her.

  She loved her dad … and that made everything hurt twice as much.

  She didn’t know what to do. She was no one, nothing, and everyone who had ever said they’d loved her had lied to her.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Eve avoided her dad all morning. It wasn’t easy at first—they always ate breakfast together early before a race. But she gave him an excuse that she needed to meet with Jason and left before he could ask any questions, briskly walking in the cold morning toward the sailing club.

  She desperately wanted to talk to him, but at the same time what could he say? Would he lie to her again? Would he tell her there was nothing wrong with her birth certificate? Or that she heard wrong last night?

  She hadn’t heard wrong. Gabriel Truman was not her father, and nothing he said could fix that. She didn’t know who she was, who she belonged to. Her whole life was falling apart and she didn’t have anyone to talk to.

  Eve almost abandoned the race to find Maxine Revere. Max had said she wouldn’t lie to her, but Eve didn’t know if she could trust her. What a mess! Eve had never had these feelings, these doubts, about anything. Her life had been orderly, both simple and full. She was always busy with sailing, school, and helping her dad at the resort. She realized right then that there was no one she could confide in.

  She had friends, that was true—Pamela at school, they went to movies together and hung out and Eve told her about her crush on Wyatt Henderson and Pamela told Eve about her crushes, and her sailing club, she spent more time with them than anyone else, and they did a lot of fun stuff together outside of the club. But Eve had always felt older than her friends. Not like she was all that smarter and wiser, but her dad shared everything with her and she told him everything. Except about her crush on Wyatt. That was not for dads.

  At least, she had thought he told her everything. But
he hadn’t. He’d kept secrets. He’d lied to her. And Eve didn’t know how to talk to him about it, what to say, if she could ever trust him again. And this wasn’t the kind of thing she could talk about with Pamela or Jason. What would they say? Oh, Eve, that’s awful. Sorry.

  Sorry. Yeah, she was sorry. She almost wished she hadn’t overheard any of that stupid conversation.

  “Hey, Eve, what’s wrong?”

  It was Stephen, the head of the club. “Nothing,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Just tired. I didn’t sleep well.” She barely slept at all. “Do you have any coffee?”

  “Sure, you’re early, I just made it.”

  Stephen started talking about the course for the race, about the wind and what she needed to watch out for, but she was barely paying attention.

  Soon the others started coming in. The whole club showed up for the race, but only four of them were competing in the solo competition. Eve left the chatty group to check her boat, but she couldn’t focus. She almost wanted to call it off and not race. But then she’d disappoint everyone. This was an exhibition race, there would be a large crowd, potential sponsors, and Stephen had been talking about raising money and how colleges would look at the races when awarding scholarships, and every race should be considered important even if there wasn’t a big check or trophy at the end.

  She didn’t sail for the trophy. She sailed because she loved being out on the water, at one with the boat. For the joy of the sport.

  She felt no joy today.

  But still, she went out.

  It was nearly a fatal mistake.

  * * *

  Gabriel watched the race through binoculars, standing next to Stephen Galbraith. Eve had started out strong, but seemed almost reckless. Eve raced boldly all the time, but today there was a lack of … grace. She rounded the first buoy far too fast and was lucky she didn’t capsize.

  “Is Eve okay?” Stephen asked. “She was quiet and preoccupied this morning.”

  Gabriel didn’t answer. What could he say?

  His entire body was tense as Eve rounded the second buoy and the boom flew out and around.

  She was going to go under. His stomach twisted in knots as he watched her make a daring leap for the boom as it came around. She was listing port side, almost full stop, as she fought the wind and her sails to regain control of her boat. She had been in the lead; now she was almost in last place.

  Eve had made mistakes on the water before, but nothing like this—nothing this serious. By the time she rounded the last buoy, she had regained some ground, but it was clear her heart wasn’t in the race. She came in eighth out of the fifteen competitors.

  Gabriel watched as her teammates came up to talk to her and she brushed them off. She had a cut on her forehead, and a bruise was forming. She didn’t go to the reception hall where everyone would meet up, instead she walked down the dock toward the boathouse.

  Gabriel rushed up to her. “Eve, are you okay?”

  He’d never seen her falter like she had.

  “Fine.”

  “Was something wrong with the sails? What happened? Did a line break? You’re bleeding.”

  “No! I’m fine. I messed up, okay? It was my fault! Leave me alone.”

  She walked away from him.

  Gabriel ignored the scene that Eve caused. She didn’t have outbursts. Sure, she could get mad and snap at someone, but all day she had been testy, and she didn’t have breakfast with him this morning—a ritual they shared before every race.

  He followed her up the dock to the boathouse.

  “Don’t,” she said when she saw him. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

  Gabriel’s stomach churned. “Eve—”

  “You lied to me! You’ve lied to me my entire life! Go away! I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want to see you!” She absently wiped away tears and walked down to the Emily, the boat that they had been working on for the past two years. She stared at it, then walked past to the end of the indoor pier.

  His heart broke. She knew. Had Maxine Revere told her? She’d promised she wouldn’t … had she lied to him last night? He’d known Eve was preoccupied, but she seemed satisfied with the conversation she had with Max. He put her silence on the simple fact that all the new information was overwhelming for her.

  Now? What had happened?

  He followed her. He couldn’t let her stand alone in pain.

  “Eve, I’m sorry. Tell me what happened.”

  She shook her head and kept her back to him.

  “Did Maxine say something?”

  She spun around and hit him in the chest. “No!”

  She had never once—ever—pushed him. It surprised both of them.

  “You. I heard you talking to Max and that FBI agent. You told them—you told them that, that, I-I—”

  The tears came faster now, and Gabriel’s eyes burned. He tried to reach out for his daughter, but she pulled away.

  He slumped against a pillar. “You’re my daughter,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “I’m not! You—you had to have faked this!”

  She was waving a piece of paper in the air and it took him a moment to realize that it was her birth certificate.

  “I … I had to. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You lied to me. You and Grandma.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Then tell me! Maybe I’ll believe you. But I don’t know if I can believe anything you say anymore. What if you lie to me again? What if you make up something that you think I’ll believe just to make me think what you did was okay?”

  “You want the truth?”

  “Are you going to tell me the truth?”

  The tears had stopped and she stood defiant, waiting for answers … or waiting for him to lie.

  He wanted to lie. Not for him, but to protect Eve. But if he did—he would never have a daughter. She would never trust him again.

  “Your mother left you with Grandma when you were three months old. I didn’t know. I took family leave when I found out that Grandma had cancer, and she had been taking care of you alone for months. She told me my brother Jimmy had left Martha with a newborn, and Martha had some problems and left you with her. I was so angry—at my brother, at Martha for leaving an infant with a sick old woman—and then I saw you. And you looked at me with such trust and innocence. And I realized at that moment that you needed me and—I, I guess I needed you, too.”

  How could he explain to a sixteen-year-old what it was like to look into a child’s eyes and know that you were destined to be together? It was love—pure, innocent, unconditional love.

  “I always thought that Jimmy was your father. I tracked him down a year after Martha left you and he told me he didn’t want you, wouldn’t know what to do with a child, and I was relieved because I really thought he might take you from me.

  “Then you started school and I needed a birth certificate, Grandma gave me the one Martha had left. And she’d named you Genevieve Revere, not Truman. And under father, she’d put ‘unknown.’ I didn’t know what to do, so I paid someone to create a forgery, at least good enough to pass at the school. I don’t know why Martha did that—I don’t know why she did anything that she did, and that’s one thing that I think Maxine and I agree on. That woman—I know she’s your mother, but she left Maxine with her other grandparents, and you with Emily. She wasn’t fit to raise anyone.

  “I never thought you would learn the truth about Jimmy. I love you, you are my daughter, I don’t care if you come directly from me or not. I couldn’t love you any more than I do now—blood or not. I’m not sorry I didn’t tell you—how could I tell a little girl that her parents didn’t want her? That they’d abandoned her? I wanted you. You’re the brightest part of my life, Eve.”

  “But … but Uncle Jimmy came for me. My birthday.”

  Her voice sounded small and confused.

  “He said he wanted to take
you to California because the Reveres were rich and would pay for you. He wanted to—I don’t know, sell you? Leave you with strangers? I couldn’t let him—he gave me a day to tell you the truth, and I couldn’t. I would have fought for you. I would have sold everything to pay for a lawyer because in no world is Jimmy Truman a decent man or father. But he never came back. I kept waiting and he never returned.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. That FBI agent thinks that he got in trouble with someone—Jimmy was a thief. He stole something, sold it on the black market, I don’t know what happened and I honestly do not care because he didn’t come back for you. At the time, I thought he found another way to get the money he wanted, so he didn’t need you. Eve, I made mistakes. But everything I have ever done since the day I met you, I did to protect you. Please, please, honey, find a way to forgive me.”

  Eve bit her lip. She felt numb and sad and lost. She wanted to believe her dad—her uncle. If he was her uncle.

  But what else did she have? A sister she had just met? A sister almost old enough to be her mother? A family in California she didn’t know?

  “Don’t lie to me, Daddy. Never again, please.”

  “I won’t. Ask me anything, anytime, I will tell you the truth.”

  Her dad never cried, but he had tears on his face. He had never let her down until last night. Until she’d heard him say that he wasn’t her father.

  But she had no one else.

  She took a step toward him, and he walked briskly to her and hugged her tight. “I love you, Eve.”

  “I love you, Daddy,” she said through her sobs.

  She didn’t know who she was, but she would figure it out.