by Sharon Ihle
At that moment, Donovan did not want to discuss the position his father had offered him during the party the other night. While he'd been mildly interested at the time, he really hadn't given it much thought since. "I appreciate your making the offer, but frankly, I haven't had much time to think it over."
"Take all the time you need."
There was a rather magnanimous tone in his father's voice, something intangible that irked Donovan. Maybe he was just tired, given the fact that he should have been in bed hours ago, or maybe he was simply worried about how Libby was going to take more bad news. He'd been so sure that he could gain her just a little ground. How was he to tell her nothing had changed?
His thoughts turning darker by the minute, Donovan decided it would be better all around if he were to take his leave while he and R. T. were still on reasonably good terms. Gripping the arms of the plush leather chair, he pushed himself to his feet.
"You're not leaving already are you, Son?"
"I'm afraid I have to." He rubbed his brow. "In my line of work, daylight's for sleeping."
"Oh, I hadn't thought of that." Rising from his chair, R. T. circled the desk and came to within two feet of his son. Speaking now in a softer, more tentative voice, he said, "Before you go, I wonder... you haven't told me much about your mother yet. You look like her, you know."
Donovan nodded. "I'd rather not talk about her right now, if you don't mind."
R. T. glanced down at his manicured nails, then abruptly returned his gaze to his son. "As a matter of fact, I do mind but if that's what you prefer, I can wait a while for news of Lillian. What about your sister? Is she a forbidden subject as well?"
"My sister?" Donovan frowned in confusion, then burst out laughing. "You see what I mean? I must be overly tired to forget that I have a sister these days. Then again, I'm not used to having a family at all. I really haven't had much chance to talk with Susan, but I would like to get to know her better."
The faint lines above R. T.'s brow deepened into furrows. "I'm not talking about Susan. I was asking about your full sister, Lillibeth. What ever became of her?"
Chapter 13
Instead of heading right to the theatre as his impulses urged, Donovan forced himself to take a long walk along the waterfront area so he could collect his thoughts before confronting his mother. He hated to believe the story R. T. had told him, and yet, as he lost himself in the crowd of restaurateurs, poor folk, and buyers seeking bargains from Sicilian fishermen, his gut said that it was all true. Pausing at a wharf-side stall, the stench of rotting fish heads matching his mood somehow, he became aware of something tugging on the hem of his jacket.
Donovan glanced down to see a small boy looking up at him. "Hey, you come with me," said the youngster in broken English. "Come, my mama has fresh salmon. The best."
The boy reminded Donovan of how he used to hawk his own mother's many talents as an entertainer. He slipped a coin into the kid's palm. "Go back home," he said, ruffling the boy's mop of dirty brown curls. "Tell your mama to feed you some of that salmon."
"You come, too. She got more, oysters and shrimp."
"Go on now, get going."
Donovan gave the kid a gentle shove, then walked away from the wharf and started toward the theatre. He searched his memory as he sauntered along the waterfront, trying to pick out what was real and what was fantasy. The sister he'd dreamed up for himself so long ago was still easy to picture, a tiny pink bundle of coppery baby curls and bright blue eyes, but had she been real? And if indeed she had been, why couldn't he remember her as that—a living, breathing baby?
As he started up Pacific Avenue, Donovan's thoughts turned to his mother. He'd long ago accepted her for the kind of woman she was, lukewarm running toward cold, both inside and out. That was her nature, the way she'd been shaped and formed by her father and, to a lesser extent, her mother. Because of that and the years of struggling when all they'd had was each other, he'd managed to forgive Lil for hiding the truth about his own father for so long. But this... if it was true that his mother had borne a daughter after him, and then...
Donovan couldn't allow himself to imagine what had happened to this sister of his beyond that. Even if he could, he had an idea his assumptions might be not nearly as ugly as the truth.
Egged on by something other than anger—a deep sense of loss or something uncomfortably close to it—he increased his pace.
* * *
Patience had never been one of Libby's strong points—although earlier in the day, Donovan had made a very good argument against being in a rush to do some things.
As a child, she'd been so anxious for nature to fill in the gaping hole where her front teeth had been, that she'd carved a pair of uppers from a cake of her mother's best soap, and worn them until she couldn't bear the taste any longer. A few years later, when she'd been overly eager to see her very first article for the Tribune printed in black and white, Libby had jammed her father's press in her haste to get the edition out quickly, and wound up delaying the issue by two hours.
Now that she'd finished writing Jeremy another long letter, one in which she promised again to be back home soon, she could hardly keep herself from flying out the door and racing to Savage Publishing to find out what had happened. Why was Donovan taking so long? He'd promised to come back to the house immediately after his meeting with R. T.
She gravitated over to the bay window as she'd done every five minutes for the past couple of hours, and quickly scanned the street. There was still no sign of him. Idly running her hand up and down the edge of the window casing as she pondered what to do next, Libby caught her fingernail on a loose pocket of wallpaper, tearing a hole in it.
"Damnation," she muttered, absently working the tear back into the pattern, in hopes of patching it. As she smoothed the crinkled paper, a new thought occurred to Libby, one that filled her with horror. What if Donovan had never even made it to Savage Publishing? What if he'd been in an accident of some kind? No matter how anyone tried to convince her of their safety, Libby didn't trust San Francisco's cable railways. As far as she could tell, all that stood between a passenger and disaster was the brakeman's fragile hold on the brake. If he were to slip, let go of it just once...
As she imagined the car crashing to the foot of one of the city's steep hills, Libby cringed—and dug her nails into the wallpaper. The hole, which she'd almost masked from view, was now a long, ragged tear. After examining the new damage and deciding it was beyond repair, she concluded there was only one thing to do. Since the tear was near the window frame and wasn't terribly wide, she figured, if she were to neatly remove the offending strip from ceiling to floor, Donovan would never be the wiser.
Libby was about halfway through the task when she heard a key in the lock. As relief replaced her anxiety, she put the chair on which she'd been standing back in its corner position, wadded up the small bit of wallpaper she'd torn away, tucked it into her pocket, then dashed into the foyer.
A short, squat figure met her at the door in place of the handsome man she'd been expecting. "Oh," she grumbled, not bothering to hide her disappointment. "It's you."
"Ja." Carrying two bags of groceries in her arms, Gerda nudged the door shut with her knee. "You are still here?"
"I think you can see that I am." Libby started back toward the living room.
Still toting the groceries, Gerda trailed after her. "How long did Mr. Donovan ask you to stay?"
"Actually," Libby snapped, in no mood to spar with the housekeeper, "he hasn't exactly asked me to stay, not yet anyway."
"Nein?"
"Nein." Taking out her frustrations with Donovan and his father on the unsuspecting woman, Libby recklessly admitted, "In fact, he's tried to throw me out of this house—twice now—but I haven't had the good sense to stay away. Does that make you happy?"
Gerda smiled—at least Libby thought she was smiling. "You came back anyway and he let you in, ja?"
"Ja."
Gerda nodde
d thoughtfully, then lumbered off toward the kitchen, leaving Libby to finish removing the strip of wallpaper. She was on her second pass—from the bottom up this time, since she'd removed a wider piece at the top—when Gerda lumbered back into the room.
"You must eat," the housekeeper said, holding a supper plate out toward Libby as if it were a gift. Two plump sausages, a thick slab of dark bread slathered with butter, and a cup of milk graced the plate.
"For me?" she asked, whirling around to stand in front of the damaged wall.
"Ja." The housekeeper set the offering on the window seat, then folded her hands across her round belly, and smiled. This time, Libby recognized the expression as just that, a smile. "I clean your room now," Gerda announced; and then she waddled out to the foyer and disappeared.
* * *
By the time Donovan stepped through the theatre doorway, reasonably certain he could face his mother without exploding, the place was packed. It seemed every table in the center of the room was filled, as were several of the overhead boxes, and even the gaming area was doing a brisk business as usual. The roulette wheel was spinning almost continually, the steel ball bouncing into place time after time, and at the faro table, the shoe clacked incessantly as the dealer distributed cards. No fewer than three full poker tables were in action, with each of the seven player's seats taken, and the bar was well-populated with onlookers and losers.
As Donovan waded through the theatergoers on his way to Lil's office, his gaze flickered to the entertainers on the stage. Five of Lil's best actresses were warbling out the words to "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers" in unnaturally high voices. By turns, each of them bowed seductively to best show off her bosom, then turned to wriggle her cute little backside. But the routine wasn't the thing which caught his eye. To a woman, they were all wearing the same dress, hosiery, and garter that Libby had dared to parade around in last night before he'd dragged her back to his house.
His temperature on the rise as he recalled that his mother had been the party responsible for Libby's introduction into the saloon business, he glanced up at the seat with the best view in the house—the box dubbed the President's Suite—and saw that Lil was sitting at the rail waving a baton at the dancers like an orchestra conductor. He stared hard at her, willing her to look his way, and when she finally did, Donovan jabbed a finger in the air toward her office then headed that way.
Moments later when she burst into the room, he was staring out through the cracks in her painted window, his hands behind his back.
"Donovan?" Lil said breathlessly as she closed the door behind her. "I wasn't expecting you so soon. What is it? I have the girls working on a new routine, and I don't want them to get into any bad habits."
Feeling a chill settle over the room not so unlike the damp bone-chilling cold of San Francisco fog, he slowly turned to face her. "I'm sure they'll do just fine without you. I'm here about another... girl."
"Oh, that." She laughed, then turned toward the door as if the conversation were practically over. "I didn't do anything but make sure Libby had a place to stay for the night. You didn't expect me to turn her out on these streets, did you?"
"No, but thanks for reminding me that I do have a little score to settle with you on her account. We'll have to get to Libby some other time, though."
Her hand inches from the doorknob, Lil tilted her head toward her son. "If you're not here about Libby, what girl are you talking about?"
"Lillibeth."
Lil seemed to sag from head to toe, then might even have fallen had she not stumbled forward to lean against the edge of her desk. Donovan instinctively lunged toward her, even though, from the opposite side of the desk, there wasn't much he could do to help. When he saw that she'd managed to keep her legs under her, he backed away.
"I see her name is familiar to you," he remarked, pinning her with an accusing gaze. "Is there anything else you recall, maybe something insignificant, like the fact that she's your daughter?"
Still hanging onto the desk for support, Lil closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, looking as if she might faint at any moment. Although concerned about her, Donovan just wanted the truth, no matter how painful it might be or what he had to do in order to get at it. Trying to make her more comfortable and less likely to collapse, he carried his mother's chair from its spot behind the desk, and positioned it right behind her.
"Have a seat, Lil." It wasn't so much an invitation as an order. After she complied, Donovan circled her, clasped his hands to the wooden arms of the chair, and leaned close. "Let's talk about Lillibeth a while. When was she born?"
Her bottom lip quivering, Lil didn't look up at Donovan as she quietly admitted, "Shortly after your fourth birthday. On August twelfth."
"So it's really true?" His fingers tightened on the chair and he thought he might even have rattled it a little. "All this time, I've had a sister and you never thought to mention it to me?"
"I never wanted you to know about her at all." At last, Lil raised her head, but it was only to glare at him. "Now back away from me."
He didn't budge.
"Damn you, I said to back away. Now do it."
It cost him a lot, something Donovan didn't want to give until he had all the answers, but he reluctantly released his hold on the chair and stepped back a couple of feet. His voice hollow, almost devoid of emotion, he said, "This sister—she had a lot of curly red hair and big blue eyes, didn't she?"
Lil gasped. "Yes. Did R. T. remember that about her?"
"No. In fact, he didn't tell me a whole lot about her except her name. The rest came from my own memories. I used to pretend a lot about having a real and complete family—you know, a mother, father, sister, and even a couple of brothers. Did you know that?"
Looking miserable, Lil shook her head.
"Well, I did and I thought of this make-believe family often." He trained one eye on her. "Especially, all the times I was alone at night."
Lil flinched as if he'd struck her, but Donovan wasn't going to let up. Not until he had his answers. "I have kept that fantasy with me for a long, long time, and now I'm wondering if that baby sister with the curls-—" A sudden memory froze the words. "You called her Beth, didn't you?"
"Oh... oh, Donovan." Lil's hands flew to her face and then her head fell to her knees. The words, muffled but intelligible, she cried, "I swear I never dreamed you'd remember her. Never for a moment, did I think that. My God, what have I done?"
"I don't know. Why don't you tell me all about it?" Donovan was back at her chair again, and this time, when he hunkered down in front of it, Lil didn't try to send him away. "She was real, then, my fantasy sister wasn't something I made up?"
"No, no." Lil raised her head, looking haggard and worn. "She was with us almost a year, but I didn't know you remembered her, I swear it. I've never forgotten her for a minute."
Donovan raised a skeptical brow.
"Think what you will," Lil said, sounding defensive. "You probably haven't noticed that the dates are the same year after year. Every August around the time of her birthday, I have to take myself away for a couple of days to make peace with myself all over again."
Tears rolled over his mother's eyelids then and began to fall freely down her cheeks. Donovan couldn't ever remember seeing her cry. Not in his entire life. But the sight didn't keep him from asking the next question. "Why do you need that forgiveness so badly? What happened to Beth? Where is she now?"
Lil twisted in the chair, trying to turn away from him, but Donovan took her by the shoulders and held her in place. Beneath his hands, he felt her shrug as she said, "I honestly don't know where she is. Can't we just leave it at that?"
"I don't think so... Mother." He abruptly stood up. "I don't plan to leave any stones unturned now that I know how much you've deceived me all these years—first with my father, now with Beth. I want to know what happened to her, and I'm not going to let you out of here until you tell me." Her head hung low, Lil didn't even look up at him. Almost
afraid to hear the answer, he asked the question anyway: "Is she dead?"
"I don't know." A new round of tears dampening her cheeks, Lil raised up. "I gave her to a nice family passing through the gold country on their way to southern California. I like to think she's still alive."
"Gave?" Donovan's fingers went rigid. For a moment, he wasn't completely sure what he meant to do with them, so he bunched his hands into fists and jammed them into his pockets. Trying hard, so very hard to understand, he repeated, "Gave. You gave my sister away like she was a stray puppy?"
Nodding miserably, Lil dabbed at her nose with the back of her hand.
"How could you have done such a thing?"
"I had to, don't you see?" Lil's eyes were bright with something close to fear. "I was barely managing when it was just me and you. I tried for so long as I dared, but couldn't make a go of it after Beth was born. I decided she'd be better off with folks who really wanted her and could care for her."
Suddenly, Donovan couldn't look at his mother any more. He stalked over to the file cabinet, careful to keep his back to her. "Am I supposed to get on my knees now and thank you for being generous enough to keep me?"
"It wasn't the same thing when you were born."
His mother's tone told Donovan that he'd overstepped the bounds, but in this, he felt he had a right to set the limits. "Tell me how it was different, while I can still stand to be in the same room with you." He heard a little cry from behind him, like that of a wounded animal. Ashamed of himself, Donovan relented a little. "Sorry. I didn't mean that, but I've got to know everything. Tell me, please, and don't leave anything out."
"I'll try." She sniffed a few times, gathering herself, then blew her nose. "As I believe I've already mentioned, I honestly thought R. T. would do right by me after you were born. Shortly after I figured out that he never meant a thing he'd said, I discovered Beth was on the way. I had no one to help me, and by the time she was born, I was desperate."
