The Third Sister

by Sara Blaedel

  She told him his death certificate had been sent in with Maggie Graham’s forged signature on it, courtesy of Lydia. “But Maggie is dead, she can’t tell anyone she didn’t sign it.”

  “Dead?”

  Ilka nodded, then said she knew Mary Ann, not him, had been driving when the car crashed and she was disabled. And Ilka also knew that Maggie had blackmailed him afterward.

  “That woman was a true bitch,” he said.

  Ilka looked at him in surprise. “Why did you pay her?”

  At first, he seemed annoyed that she knew about it, but then he looked out the window for a moment. “I got off cheap. It wasn’t Mary Ann’s fault. She got in that car because of me, even though she shouldn’t have. I knew she wasn’t well, that sometimes she took tranquilizers to get through the day. I should have stayed home with her. I should’ve been there for her, even though living with her wasn’t easy at the time. She’d just told me she wanted to leave me, but instead of helping her stand up to her father, I turned my back on her.”

  He took a deep breath. “It would have been best for everyone if she’d been allowed to live with the man she loved, but I couldn’t deal with the consequences. I didn’t know what a divorce would mean for my future, except that I still couldn’t go back to Denmark. My father-in-law would never let that happen. I was still the father of one of his grandchildren.

  “I paid Maggie off. It was the least I could do, to spare my wife. At least that’s how I saw it at the time. Though if I was brutally honest, most likely I was just trying to save my own skin. Raymond would never have forgiven me if what really happened at the wreck had come out. It was bad enough that she couldn’t walk because of me.”

  Her father nodded off for a while on the final stretch.

  The afternoon traffic picked up as they drove into Racine. When she turned into the parking lot, the first thing she noticed was the closed venetian blinds in Lydia’s apartment. A jolt of fear cut through her chest as she woke her father and told him they’d arrived.

  Ilka hurried up to the front door. The CLOSED sign still hung there, and fortunately the door was shut—she’d been worrying about it being left wide open. She hesitated; several days had passed since she’d left the Rodriguez brothers there, but could they still be inside, waiting for her? She’d heard nothing from the police, and she had no idea what had happened after she told them the men who had attacked Artie were at the funeral home.

  She nudged the door open. The little bell above rang, and a single glance told her no one was around. The two coffee cups she had given to the brothers before she and Lydia had fled were still there, though they were now empty. She peeked out the window to see if anyone was keeping an eye on the funeral home, but the street was deserted, just like Racine always was in the middle of the day, something Ilka had gradually gotten used to. It was past four, so she assumed most people were off work.

  She walked through the foyer, past the arrangement room and office. The house was dark and quiet. Her father’s cane tapped the floor behind her. She turned on the hallway light. It took her two long strides to reach the door to the garage.

  There it was. The leather straps hung loosely over the dark-blue canvas bag. Her father reached the door as she picked the bag up. He looked pale. Ilka realized that in her relief at finding the bag, she’d forgotten that it meant Lydia hadn’t made it back.

  “Call her again,” he said.

  “I called right before we got here.” Even Ilka could hear the fear in her voice. She walked over to the dirty window in the garage and checked the parking lot, but her father’s old Chevrolet and the hearse were the only vehicles in sight.

  She pushed the button of the garage door opener, and moments later she backed the hearse in. Toward the end of the trip back, she’d noticed a growling sound in the engine, and she’d worried that it was about to overheat. But now they were home. She closed the garage door.

  When she brought the bag inside the house, her father was standing in the foyer, looking around. “What in the world happened? What have you done to my funeral home?”

  Ilka followed his eyes. The glass cases were empty. The big round table with the tall glass vase was gone, as were the paintings on the walls and the candelabras on the console. All of it had been sold at the flea market she and Lydia held, to scrape together enough money to pay her considerable debt.

  Her father walked over to the wall where the paintings once hung and touched the wallpaper. “It can’t look like this when customers arrive. It’s like some abandoned old house. What happened? Artie was supposed to take care of things.”

  He sounded so indignant that Ilka stared at him in astonishment for a moment before exploding. “I’ll tell you what happened! We thought you were dead, and we were trying to keep your funeral home afloat—I fought like hell for this place, and you are not going to criticize me for not being able to pull it off!”

  Her father was sitting down now on the single chair left beside the door to the guest bathroom. He listened silently as she told about how she’d tried to plug the holes—she’d exhausted all her modest savings from Denmark, as well as most of Artie’s savings. They never had enough time to plan what to do before the IRS was due to take over the entire business. However, she didn’t mention botching the sale of the funeral home that Artie had arranged before she’d arrived in Racine. When she had seen her father’s room upstairs, she’d been too overwhelmed by memories and longing to think straight.

  “I did the best I could,” she said.

  His long, lanky frame looked feeble, surrounded by the remnants of his daily life for the past thirty years. He looked up at her. “Didn’t anyone help you?”

  “Artie and Lydia did, yes. We fought together.”

  “But not Amber or Leslie? Didn’t they treat you well when you showed up?”

  Ilka smiled at that, but he didn’t notice; he was reaching around for his cane to stand up.

  “It’s only because Amber’s in the hospital that I’ve been able to talk to her. And I’ve never had contact with Leslie. No, your family hasn’t exactly welcomed me with open arms.”

  “What, Amber is in the hospital?”

  “Oh God,” she mumbled. It was all way too complicated. But she made her father sit down again, then she told him about the afternoon at the Fletcher ranch when her half sister had been trampled by several spooked horses.

  It was difficult for her to talk about the atrocious way his family had treated her. Not because she felt the least bit guilty about making them look bad. But even though she was livid with her father because of the situation he’d put her in, she also understood that it was a lot for him to swallow.

  “She’s doing better now,” she said, hoping that would comfort him.

  But he was obviously shaken. “I have to get to the hospital. I need to see Artie too. You have to come with me and tell them I’m still alive, so I don’t walk in and shock them to death.”

  Artie. She’d been thinking about him all the way down to Key West, but on the way back she’d been so preoccupied with Lydia and her all-important bag that she’d completely forgotten him.

  Ilka carried the blue bag upstairs and into her father’s room. If he was disturbed by what he had seen downstairs, he definitely would not be one bit happy to see the room he sometimes slept in. She’d been through everything in there and had tossed out what she didn’t want to take back to Denmark. The wardrobe had also been sold at the flea market, and most of his clothes had been thrown away. She had been trying to clean up and get the place in shape to be sold.

  Ilka had noticed a cabinet door leading to storage space behind the desk. She pulled the table away from the wall to hide the bag in there, but just before pushing it inside, she loosened the strap and opened the bag.

  There was no sign of a toothbrush, nightgown, or anything resembling personal items. For several moments Ilka stared down at the stacks of money, thick bundles lying side by side that almost filled the bag. She could barel
y believe her eyes. The eighty-seven thousand dollars taken out for Artie’s hospital bill had barely made a dent in the fortune in front of her.

  Ilka’s hands shook as she closed the bag and refastened the strap. The money had been sitting there in an unlocked house since she and Lydia drove off four days ago. She grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote Call, along with her Danish cell phone number, though without the country code. She didn’t want to reveal too much, and no one would realize they had to punch in 0045—no one except Lydia. Ilka knew she’d probably be even more paranoid from now on. She decided to put the paper in the garage, at the spot where the bag had stood, in case Lydia came back while they were at the hospital.

  Ilka held her father’s arm as they walked to the elevators in the towering lobby. Today she could waltz into Artie’s ward with head held high, without being the target of disapproving looks. The bill was paid, and she’d returned as promised. She nodded at the woman in the office and headed for his room, but they were stopped by the head doctor she’d spoken to before leaving for Key West.

  “Mr. Sorvino is conscious now,” the doctor said. “We brought him out of the coma this morning, and it went well. He can speak, and he seems to be aware of where he is.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Ilka said. “You promised to call if there were any changes in his condition. I would have come if I’d known. Someone he knew should have been here when he woke up, I thought we’d agreed on that.”

  She felt her father’s hand on her arm, and she stopped. Her voice had become thick as she criticized the doctor; she just hated to think Artie had been alone, no one to tell him everything was going to be okay when he opened his eyes. She should have been there, holding his hand.

  Ilka turned away and took a moment to get hold of herself.

  “He’s sleeping now,” the doctor said. “And we had to move him to a new room. You can go in, but don’t wake him up. He still needs as much rest as possible.”

  Ilka stopped at the doorway, appalled by the sight in front of her. There were eight beds in the room, and all the other patients had visitors except for one man watching the noisy crowd. Artie lay in the next-to-last bed, sleeping with his mouth open a crack. He looked like some sort of exhibit, lying there among all the strangers. A black stocking cap covered his head.

  Without a single glance at the others, she walked over and pulled the curtains on both sides of his bed to give him some privacy. The head doctor followed along.

  “Why does he have that stocking cap on?” Ilka asked. She glanced at her father, who was misty-eyed now. She lugged a chair from the foot to the head of the bed so he could sit down.

  “He was very annoyed when he discovered we’d shaved his head, which we had to do, to insert the drain. He borrowed the cap from one of the porters.”

  Artie’s hair had been long. A sort of statement, Ilka guessed. He usually tied it up in what twenty-somethings called a man bun, though to her it was just a plain bun. But now it was gone, without him having a say in the matter.

  Her father reached out and carefully laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “He’s still in a lot of pain, and we’re giving him something for it,” the head doctor said. “We’ll be planning a course of treatment soon, but first we’ll do a new scan, and also test his vision and hearing and brain responses to stimuli. It’s going to take time for him to regain fine motor skills in his fingers, and the normal use of his arm. You should be prepared for a long rehab. It’s going to require a lot of patience on his part, but the chances are good that his arm will be fine. We’re more concerned about his head.”

  One of the other patients was having a birthday party, and his guests began singing. The doctor stuck her head through the curtain and asked them to keep it down.

  “He has to have another room,” her father said. “Lying here in the middle of all this noise is making him worse.”

  “There are no other rooms available.”

  Ilka thought that was rather abrupt. “He was in a private room when he arrived, so I know there are other rooms.”

  The doctor turned to her. “Those rooms are for patients who arrive in critical condition, before we assess their chances of survival.”

  She merely nodded when Ilka added that he’d also been in a room earlier with only two other patients, where it had been quieter. “All the rooms are occupied. Everyone in this room will be going through a course of treatment.”

  Course of treatment! That phrase annoyed Ilka to no end, but she tried to sound friendly. “When do you think he’ll wake up again?”

  Her father laid his hand back on Artie’s shoulder. “Old buddy.”

  “Tomorrow,” the doctor said. “We’ve given him something to help him sleep. Again, it’s important for him to get lots of rest.”

  If rest were so important, Ilka thought, a quieter room would help. “Can we take that as a good sign, that he was awake earlier today? Does it mean he’s recovering? That he hasn’t suffered brain damage?”

  She knew those were leading questions, but surely it meant something that Artie had been angry about his hair. That gave her hope.

  The doctor was blunt. “It’s difficult for him to speak. And it’s still too early to say if his memory has been damaged.”

  She’d retreated a bit, but now the doctor stepped close to them. “Unfortunately, it’s also too early to say if his frontal lobes have been damaged, but hopefully we’ll find out from the next scan. If they have, it can affect his behavior and personality. The next several days are vitally important for his recovery. After that we’ll be able to assess how serious the injuries are.”

  Ilka asked again to be kept informed should anything happen. She added that she would try to be there as much as possible the next few days.

  She reached out and held Artie’s hand. She wanted to stay until he woke up, but at the same time she hoped he would sleep through until tomorrow, as the doctor had said he would. The most important thing was for him to be himself again. She leaned over and kissed him, then she asked her father if he wanted to see Amber.

  9

  The private room of Ilka’s half sister was in the section of the hospital where wealthy patients could buy much better service in more comfortable surroundings. The lower building was set back behind the rest of the hospital, and on the way there Ilka sensed her father was beginning to tire. She was exhausted herself, with a pounding headache on the rise. She felt stiff from the long drive, and she couldn’t wait to lie down. Suddenly it seemed like years since she’d found him on the terrace behind the small bar.

  It wasn’t going to be easy to walk in and tell Amber that her father was right outside her room, but they might as well get it over with, she thought. Then she could leave the two of them alone.

  A few moments after entering the building, a message beeped in on her phone from a number she didn’t recognize.

  Fuckdate? was all the person had written. Signed, Jeff.

  She stared at the message in astonishment. How had he gotten her number? They’d met on Tinder, but back then she hadn’t known he worked for Fletcher. And the next-to-last time she’d seen him, they practically got into a fight.

  She ignored the message and stuck her phone back in her pocket. The conversation she’d soon be having bothered her more by the minute. Even though Amber was the person in her father’s new family she’d talked to the most, it would be wrong to say she knew her well, or that they were close.

  She decided to take a page from Lydia’s book.

  “It’s a long story, and I think he’s the one who should tell it.”

  Amber stared at her. “Dad’s not dead?”

  She’d been lying in bed, reading a book, when Ilka stepped in the room. Her half sister had more color in her cheeks, she noticed, and the metal frame around her hip was gone, as were her bandages. She simply looked much better, and Ilka assumed she’d be released in a matter of days.

  “No. He’s not dead. He’s outside in
the hall and wants to see you, very much.”

  “Isn’t that great! My mother’s in jail and my father isn’t dead after all!”

  Ilka looked at her in surprise. She hadn’t thought about how Amber would react, but she definitely hadn’t expected a fit of laughter.

  “Does that mean I should tell him to come in?”

  Amber held her tongue for a moment, then narrowed her eyes. “Are you really serious, Dad is alive?” She sat straight up in bed.

  Ilka nodded. “A situation came up, and he had to make it look like he’d died.” She decided not to say more; her father would have to explain it all.

  “But did something happen to him?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Did you know?” Amber said. “Know all along he was alive?”

  Ilka shook her head in annoyance. “Of course not. If I’d had any idea at all he was alive, I would have gone back to Denmark a long time ago. Maybe I haven’t been clear enough, so I’ll say it now—all the stuff that’s happened to me here, I wish I’d never gone through.”

  Amber’s expression smoothed out as she nodded. “I know. I’m sorry! I just haven’t been myself lately.”

  Ilka smiled. It suited Amber, actually, to flare up the way she did. “I’ll tell him to come in.” She felt Amber’s eyes on her back as she walked to the door.

  Her father was standing right outside the room and apparently had heard what she’d said about coming to Racine.

  “I’m sorry you ended up in the middle of all this. It wasn’t how I’d hoped you’d meet my family here.”

  Again, he made it sound as if he’d always counted on Ilka meeting them. And maybe he had, she thought. He’d been waiting for Raymond Fletcher to die so they could all be with him. And now it had happened. Only he wasn’t the one who had brought them together—that was Ilka’s doing.

  She stayed in the background as he walked to the hospital bed and gave Amber a kiss. When he straightened up, she noticed the tears in his eyes. He caressed his daughter’s cheek while whispering something to her Ilka couldn’t hear. Amber took his hand.