Summer Reads Box Set: Volume 1

by Freethy, Barbara

  She tapped quietly on the door. No one answered. She slowly opened it. The room was small but private. There was a man in the bed, lying perfectly still. There were machines surrounding him but no one else. Where were they—this family that he adored, that he could never leave, that he had chosen over her? Why weren't they here by his bedside, praying for his recovery, holding his hand, talking to him, pleading for him to wake up?

  Once in the room, she stopped by the bed, her heart breaking yet again as she looked at his face. There was a huge, ugly bruise just beneath the bandage around his head. Her eyes blurred with tears. It couldn't end like this. The charming, outgoing David Hathaway, who spoke so passionately about art and history and life, could not go so quietly out of this world.

  She picked up his hand. It had been a long time since she had held his hand. His skin was cool, as if the blood couldn't quite reach his fingers, as if his heart was slowing, his body shutting down. But the machine was still bleeping. She could see jagged lines of what must be his heartbeat. His chest moved in and out. He wasn't gone yet.

  "Don't leave me," she murmured. "Not like this, not without a good-bye."

  "What on earth is going on?" A woman's sharp voice broke through the silence.

  Jasmine turned, knowing whom she would find behind her.

  Victoria Hathaway stood in the doorway, her face shocked, her eyes angry. She drew herself up, throwing back her shoulders, lifting her chin. She was so beautiful, with her blond hair, her blue eyes, her perfectly made-up face, not a wrinkle, not a shadow anywhere, nothing to show she was worried about her husband. Dressed in a white suit with sheer stockings and high heels, she looked as if she'd come from work, as if her life hadn't changed at all since her husband's assault.

  Jasmine felt short and heavy, uncomfortable with her old, unstylish clothes and her heavy, thick black hair that hadn't seen a hairdresser in several years. Not for the first time she wondered how David could have left Victoria to come to her. But she hadn't always looked this way. There had been a time when men thought she was pretty, when she had laughed and enjoyed life. Meeting David had changed all that.

  "Who are you?" Victoria demanded, walking farther into the room.

  "Jasmine Chen," she replied.

  Victoria's face paled. Did she recognize the name? Had David actually spoken of her? Jasmine's heart lightened just a bit.

  "You have no right to be here." Victoria's harsh words sliced through Jasmine like a knife. "How did you get in here? Where is the nurse?"

  Jasmine didn't reply right away, not sure what she wanted to say. Although she had feared it was not her place to be, now that she had come, she wanted to stay. She had lost so much because of this man. Didn't she deserve to at least stand by his bedside at this moment? Everyone would say no. She was not the wife. She was not family.

  "How is he?" she asked, ignoring Victoria's request that she leave.

  "That is none of your business. Please go."

  "Why haven't you asked me who I am, how I know David?" Jasmine saw the truth in Victoria's eyes. "You know, don't you?"

  "I know that you don't belong here in my husband's room."

  "I love him, too." Jasmine was shocked by the words that had come from her mouth. She hadn't said them in twenty years, not to anyone, not even out loud to herself.

  Victoria stuttered over a reply, as if she couldn't believe what Jasmine had said.

  But it was done. It couldn't be taken back. Jasmine looked at David, wondering if he would be angry when he woke up. He had asked her for secrecy, and she had always given it to him. Until now. She had betrayed him to his own wife. Would he be able to forgive her? She told herself she should not care. But she did. And she was sorry. Would she have a chance to tell him how sorry she was?

  "Get out of this room now," Victoria hissed. "You have no right to be here. I don't care who you love. For that matter, I don't care who he loves. He's my husband. I'm his wife. And that's the way it will stay."

  "I didn't come here to cause you trouble. I simply wanted to see him." Jasmine cast David one last lingering look, wondering if this truly would be the last time she saw his face. She wished she could commit it to memory forever, so that she would never lose him. Not that she had ever really had him. She had been his lover, not his wife. That title belonged to the woman on the other side of the bed. "I'm sorry," she added belatedly.

  "I don't want your apology."

  "I shouldn't have told you, but I—"

  "I already knew," Victoria said harshly. "Did you think I was stupid?"

  A look of truth passed between them, and Jasmine realized that she had not betrayed David's secret at all. It had never been a secret, or perhaps only for a short time. His wife was not the fool; Jasmine was. In some strange way, the secrecy of their affair had made the love between them seem deeper, more important. Theirs had been a passion forbidden by society. In her heart she had always believed that only great passions dared to cross the bounds of propriety.

  "Did you think you were the only one?" Victoria added, taking delight in sending another shaft through Jasmine's heart. "Ah, I see. You did believe that. What a pity."

  Victoria was wrong. David had told her many times that he had only come to her and no one else. Was he the liar? Or was it his wife?

  She turned away from the bed, then stopped, startled by the presence of another woman in the doorway—Paige. Behind her was the man who had come to the apartment with her earlier. She wondered how long they had been standing there, how much they had heard.

  "Mother?" Paige asked. "Is everything all right?"

  "Everything is fine," Victoria said with ice in her voice. "Ms. Chen was just leaving. And she won't be back."

  No, she wouldn't be back. This was not her place. This was not her role. She didn't come to David; he always came to her, and having met the cold-hearted woman who called herself his wife, Jasmine understood much more clearly just why he had come to her in the first place and why he couldn't seem to stop himself from coming back. A spiteful part of her wanted to tell Victoria exactly that. But when Paige moved to stand next to her mother, the spitefulness faded. Paige was David's daughter, and unlike her mother, she seemed terribly worried about her father. Even now she had her hand on his arm, as if she would protect him from the tension in the room. Paige didn't deserve to be caught in the middle.

  "I am leaving," Jasmine said. "I wish your father well."

  "Ms. Chen, wait," Paige said unexpectedly.

  Jasmine felt a shiver run down her vine at the question in Paige's eyes, the nervousness in her stance as she looked from her mother to her father, to Jasmine.

  "Don't get involved in this," Victoria warned her daughter. "It does not concern you."

  "I think it might. I think she's Dad's—"

  "I know what she is." Victoria cut her off abruptly.

  "You do?"

  "Yes, I've known about her for years."

  "Have you also known about Alyssa?"

  Jasmine's heart stopped. How did Paige know about Alyssa? That was one secret she was sure David had kept. Victoria, too, looked taken aback, her face as white as her suit.

  "Stop, Paige, please just stop. Don't say whatever it is you're thinking," Victoria said.

  "I can't. I have to know. Do Alyssa and I share the same father?"

  Chapter Nine

  Alyssa checked her watch as she got off the bus early Friday morning and headed toward her mother's apartment in Chinatown. She hated going into the neighborhood, with its crowded buildings, the smells of fish and livestock in the butcher shops, her mother's small apartment with its dark rooms, its heavy cloud of incense, the memories of so many nights when she had gone to sleep hearing her mother cry—because of him. The him who remained a mystery even today. The man who had fathered her, who had left her and her mother, who had caused them to live in shame, who had made her half white, half Chinese, half of nothing.

  Her friends told her that her unusual looks—her brown eye
s, long black hair, pert, pointed, very un-Asian nose—made her more beautiful, more exotic, but she knew the truth. Different wasn't beautiful; it was just different. And her looks made her feel... wrong. There was no other way to describe it. Her own family didn't accept her, especially her grandparents, who treated her illegitimate birth like a mark of shame upon the family. Every New Year, they prayed at the family altar that her mother's sins would be forgiven and that the rest of the family would not suffer for those sins. They also prayed that she would not travel the same road, that she would not dishonor the family as her mother had done.

  She had no intention of dishonoring anyone. She just wanted to live her own life. She had a college degree now and a career in banking. Maybe it was just an entry-level job as a loan officer in a downtown bank, but she thought of it as a stepping stone to a future in high finance. She would not live hand-to-mouth as her mother had done. She would not have to sew late into the night to make enough money to eat, or sell precious pieces of her soul, as her mother had sold her paintings, to keep a roof over their heads. Someday she would have plenty of money and she would buy her mother a big house, and it wouldn't be anywhere near Chinatown.

  The familiar smells were already turning her stomach. She usually made her mother meet her downtown in a café where they could eat with a fork, drink Diet Pepsi, and munch on potato chips, instead of sipping tea and using chopsticks to scoop up endless piles of rice. It wasn't that she didn't like Chinese food. She did. She'd grown up on it. But she had a love-hate relationship with everything Chinese.

  Sometimes she wondered what kind of ethnic background her father had. Was he Italian? Irish? German? English? Was he a mix of something like she was? The only thing she knew for sure was that he wasn't Chinese.

  Crossing the street, she quickened her pace. She didn't know why her mother had asked her to come so early, but the tension in her voice had persuaded her not to argue. Still, she didn't want to be late to work. She took her job seriously. She supposed she took everything seriously, but she didn't know how else to be. It had become clear early in her life that she had not brought joy and lightness into the world with her birth. She had to work hard to make that better. To be worthy of being born.

  She took the steps to her mother's apartment two at a time, grateful for the tennis shoes she wore to work. They might look silly with her business dress, but they were comfortable. At work, she would put on her heels and add three inches to her five-foot-two inch frame. Then she would be ready to deal with the world. But that world would have to wait, at least for a few minutes. She had this world to deal with.

  Her mother opened the door before she could use her key.

  "What's wrong?" Alyssa asked quickly, sure now that something was up. It wasn't that her mother was crying or looking stressed, but rather that there was an unusual light in her eyes, an energy in her stance, maybe even a bit of anger in the tilt of her chin. Anger? That wasn't Jasmine Chen. Her paintings could be angry, but she was always quiet, complacent, accepting of her fate, her penance, her punishments. Sometimes Alyssa wanted to shake her mother, tell her to get mad, to tell her family to go to hell—that she didn't deserve to be treated like some lesser human being just because she'd had a child outside of marriage.

  "Come in." Jasmine took her hand and pulled her into the apartment. "We must talk."

  "You're not sick, are you?"

  Jasmine shook her head. "No. It's not that. I wasn't going to say anything, but somehow they know. I don't know how they know, but they do. They'll come to see you. I couldn't allow that to happen, not without talking to you first."

  Alyssa couldn't make sense of what her mother was saying. "Okay, start over and slow down. Who knows what?"

  "Your father."

  "My father?" Alyssa asked in wonder. She'd asked her mother many times to tell her about her father, to describe him, identify him, but Jasmine had always refused.

  "He is hurt. Hurt badly."

  "You know where he is? I thought you didn't know where he was."

  Her mother's expression was usually unreadable, but not today. Today the truth was written all over her face. Her mother knew where her father was. She had probably known for a long time. Every time Alyssa had asked, she had been told that he had disappeared and that her mother could not bear to speak of him.

  Jasmine wrung her hands. "I didn't want to tell you. I still don't. But I am afraid they will."

  "Who? Who will tell me?"

  "Paige.”

  The name didn't ring a bell.

  "She is his daughter, too," Jasmine added, drawing in a breath. "Paige Hathaway."

  "Hathaway? As in the Hathaways? My father is a Hathaway?" Alyssa asked in shock.

  "David Hathaway. He was attacked in Salmon Alley two days ago."

  "That's only two blocks away."

  "He came to see me."

  "He came to see you after all these years?" Alyssa's mind was spinning. "Why? Why now?"

  "He has come before. I am sorry, Alyssa. I only wanted to protect you. But his family knows of your existence now, and they may want to talk to you."

  Alyssa couldn't believe what she was hearing. "They want to talk to me? Why?"

  "Because it's possible that your father may not survive."

  She didn't know how she was supposed to take that information. Was she supposed to feel sad about a man she didn't know? Angry—because now it might be too late to know him? But why would she want to know him? Had he known about her? Had he ignored her all these years? She took a breath. "You said he came to see you. Why?"

  "That's not important."

  "Of course it's important. Does he know about me? Does he know I'm his daughter?"

  "Yes," Jasmine said quietly, painfully. "He knows."

  "For how long?" Her mother's dark eyes pleaded with her for understanding, but Alyssa wasn't sure she could give it. "How long?"

  "Since you were born."

  Her mother's words were shocking. "How can that be? How can he have known and not come to see me? He doesn't live that far away. My God! David Hathaway is an incredibly rich man. He lives in a mansion in Pacific Heights. I know, because there's a picture of the house on the wall of the bank I work in." Her anger grew with each word, each new realization. "And he let us live here, in this small apartment? You had to work two jobs when I was small. We barely had enough to eat."

  "I wouldn't take his money in the beginning. But when you got older, when you needed things, I asked him to help. He paid for your college. He bought my paintings to help us out."

  "To ease his guilt, you mean. He should have supported us, or at least me. I don't care what you told him."

  "He did give me some money. That's the only way I could afford for us to live here alone. But I hated every penny that I took from him. If I couldn't have him, I didn't want his money, but pride wouldn't pay the rent, so I took a little when I had to."

  Alyssa sat down on the couch, not sure she would have the energy to get back up again. She'd never felt so overwhelmed in her life. She had hated not knowing who her father was, but now that she did, she almost wished for that innocence again. It was bad enough to know that her father hadn't loved them enough to stay—but even worse to know he was a rich, powerful man who lived only a few miles away but had never wanted to see her.

  Jasmine sat down in the chair across from her. She tapped the teapot on the table with her finger. "Would you like some tea?"

  Alyssa shook her head. How could they have tea? How could they pretend that nothing had changed between them?

  For long minutes there was nothing but silence in the room. It wasn't unusual that they were quiet. Her mother had never been a talker, but now the air was filled with tension and distrust. Alyssa couldn't help it. She loved her mother, but she couldn't understand how she had kept such a secret all these years.

  "You don't have to see him," Jasmine said haltingly.

  "Of course I don't have to see him. I don't want to see him. He didn't
care enough to see me." Alyssa paused, her mind catching up with everything that had been said. "You said he was attacked in the alley?"

  "Yes. He was struck in the head. He has been unconscious since then." Jasmine's voice caught, and she lowered her gaze to the floor.

  Alyssa felt as if she were seeing her mother for the first time. She had known that her mother had loved a man, and obviously slept with him since she'd been born as a result, but Jasmine hadn't dated anyone since then. She'd always been alone, content she said with her daughter and her painting. Now Alyssa couldn't help wondering what her mother felt for David Hathaway. Was it possible she still cared about him? It seemed unthinkable. He had left her to fend for herself alone, with a child. But Jasmine had never said one angry word against him. She'd never complained about her life, just accepted her fate.

  It wasn't fair. David Hathaway had so much, and they had so little.

  "You must not blame him," Jasmine said, breaking the silence.

  She met her mother's gaze. "How can I not?”

  "There are things you don't understand. I feel responsible for what happened to him."

  "Why would you be responsible?"

  "He came to show me something. If he hadn't come, he wouldn't be hurt."

  "What did he show you?"

  Jasmine hesitated. "The dragon, Alyssa. He found the dragon."

  Alyssa's gaze flew to the wall, to the serpent-like creature her mother had painted so many times Alyssa could have drawn it herself simply from memory. "You said it didn't exist."

  "I know now that it does. I held it in my hands."

  Alyssa's body tightened. That dragon had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember. On many nights her mother had awakened from sweat-drenched nightmares, mumbling about the dragon. Sometimes it saved her. Sometimes it threatened her. Sometimes she couldn't find it.

  "So he...” She couldn't bring herself to call him her father yet. "He has the dragon?"