Watching Amanda (24 page)

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Authors: Janelle Taylor

BOOK: Watching Amanda
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The dinosaur barely fit through the door. Amanda and Jenny laughed as Paul tried to squeeze it through.
“Oh, Paul, Tommy is going to love this!” Amanda said. “Paul, you remember Jenny, right?”
“Of course,” Paul said, extending a hand, which Jenny shook. “It's nice to see you again.”
“You too,” Jenny said, a bit coolly.
“Thanks for coming over to cheer up my girl,” Paul said, leaning in to kiss Amanda's cheek. “She's been through quite an ordeal.”
Jenny eyed Amanda with a smile at the
‘my girl.'
“Well, sweetie, I'd better get going. I have to be at work in twenty minutes.” She grabbed her coat and hugged Amanda. “You take care of that precious boy.” She turned to Paul. “And you make sure she doesn't exhaust herself, okay?”
Paul smiled. “You got it.” He closed the door behind Jenny and came inside. “Can I see Tommy? Is he sleeping? How's he feeling? Does he need anything? I can run to CVS or the supermarket—”
Amanda laughed and put a hand on his arm. “He's fine right now. And yes, he's sleeping. He wakes up every hour or so because he's so congested, but he goes back to sleep pretty easily. The humidifier and Robitussin are helping.”
“You'll give him this?” Paul asked, pointing at the dinosaur. “You'll tell him it's from Daddy?”
Amanda smiled. “I absolutely will.” Truth be told, she couldn't wait. This was the first time Paul had brought something for Tommy, and it couldn't be more appropriate.
Paul caressed Amanda's cheek with the back of his hand. “You're sure you're okay? I can head in late to work. I can take the entire day if you need me. You just say the word.”
“I'll be okay,” she said, pulling open the door. “Scat. Off to work with you. Oh, and Paul ... I can't thank you enough for last night. You were really there for me when I was scared to death. And I really appreciate you stopping by this morning. Tommy's going to love his dinosaur.”
He gave her a one-armed hug and kissed her gently on the nose. “My pleasure. I'll call later.”
As she watched him head toward Columbus, she realized she felt good inside. Not confused. Not tormented. She was not in love with Paul, but she had been once, and perhaps she could get that loving feeling again. For Tommy's sake. Paul was certainly making it easy enough on her.
 
Amanda was folding laundry when the phone rang. She grabbed the extension on the hall table in the lower level. It was George Harris, her father's attorney.
“Amanda, I'm so glad I caught you in,” he said. “Look, there have been a number of developments that I thought I should alert you to. I've tried your sisters, but according to their places of employment, both are out of the country.”
“That's right,” Amanda said. “Olivia's at a shoot in Paris until next week, and Ivy's in Ireland with her fiancé.”
“I apologize for having to heap this on your shoulders then,” the lawyer said. “But a woman has come forward insisting that William Sedgwick fathered her child and she's demanding money from the estate or she'll go public.”
“Public?” Amanda repeated. “As in the tabloids?”
“And reputable newspapers,” the lawyer said. “I told the woman I would arrange a paternity test but she said she wanted fifty thousand dollars or she would tell the world about her affair with William and offer pictures of their ‘love child' to prove it.”
“Will she talk to me, do you think?” Amanda asked. She wasn't particularly concerned about the field day the tabloids would have with the rumors, but she did want to talk to the woman herself and try to see what truth there might be to her situation and what her relationship had been to William Sedgwick.
It was crazy, but every possible new suspect took the heat off Paul, which she desperately wanted.
“Her name is Tara Birch. I have a telephone number where she can be reached,” the lawyer said.
Amanda jotted it down. “Thank you so much, Mr. Harris.”
“Before you go, Amanda, there's one more thing. Clara Mott, your housekeeper, tried to commit suicide last night. Her sister found her and got her to the hospital in the nick of time apparently.”
Amanda gasped. “That's awful! Which hospital?” Amanda wrote down the information, then said her good-byes and replaced the cordless in its dock. She sat there for a moment, unable to register the terrible news.
Poor Clara. Why had she tried to kill herself?
Amanda raced upstairs to find Ethan. She filled him in, and he was as stunned as she was.
“I'll call Lettie. Maybe she can come stay with Tommy while we go see Clara. Maybe if there's time we can even see Tara Birch.” Amanda said. “Lettie has taken care of Tommy before when he's been ill. She's so good with him. I can ask her to come after I'm finished sitting on the sofa.”
Ethan agreed and Lettie was more than happy to come over. After she arrived, Amanda instructed her not to let in a single soul, no one, under any circumstances, and then she and Ethan left for the hospital.
CHAPTER 25
Clara was in room 722. Amanda poked her head inside and saw a woman in her sixties sitting beside Clara's bed, holding her hand. Amanda knocked gently, and the woman glanced up and then came over to the door.
“My name is Amanda Sedgwick,” Amanda whispered. “Clara was my father's housekeeper for many years, and now she's been—”
The woman nodded. “Ah, yes. You're now living in the West Side brownstone.”
“May I talk to Clara?” Amanda asked. “I honestly don't know what to say, but I just want her to know that I care.”
The woman glanced at her sister. “I really don't think that would make Clara feel better.” She gestured for Amanda to step back into the hallway and then stepped out of the room, too, closing the door behind her. She glanced at Ethan, who was standing just outside the door. “She told me about the two of you. Talking, plotting, planning, practically having sexual relations while she was there cleaning.”
Amanda's cheeks burned. “How dare you—”
“Did you know that Clara was deeply in love with William?” the woman asked Amanda. “I'm sure you didn't. I know my sister wasn't one to wear her heart on her sleeve. She stayed with him for more than twenty years, to his death, cleaning his house through hundreds of his love affairs. Do you know how many women she found sleeping in his bed when she'd go to clean in the mornings? He broke her heart constantly, but she couldn't bear to be away from him and so she stayed.”
“My God,” Amanda said. “She devoted her life to him.”
The woman nodded, her expression grim. “Nothing I ever said got through to her.”
“Were they ever involved?” Amanda asked.
“Some years ago, he did make a pass at her,” the woman said. “But he was drunk and he called her by another woman's name, his girl of the week, and she got out of there quickly before she let herself be compromised that way. She probably wanted to be intimate with William more than anything, but she wouldn't give up her dignity. Not completely anyway.”
Amanda shook her head. “Why she did try to kill herself?” she asked gently.
“I asked her, and I think I understood what she was trying to tell me. She was under sedation and really emotional when she told me, but I think she was saying that she'd always felt like William was hers when she was in that brownstone. She would go in with her key and take care of his house, almost feeling like his wife, and when he died, as devastated as she was, she was still able to access the house, to feel his presence. She'd look at his portrait and he'd fill the room, fill her heart, and it sustained her since his death.”
“And then I moved in,” Amanda said softly.
The woman nodded. “And suddenly William's presence was gone. He was gone.”
“But I'm William's daughter,” Amanda said.
“Couldn't she find William in me? Why didn't she try to get to know me? I did try to befriend her, but she wouldn't speak to me beyond saying yes or no.”
“I think she felt that since you and your sisters were estranged from William there was no connection between you and him for her.”
“I know how she feels,” Amanda said sadly. “We could have talked about that, if only she'd let me in.”
“Well it doesn't matter now,” the woman said. “She won't be coming back, by the way. You'll need to find a new housekeeper. I already informed Mr. Harris, your father's attorney.”
“Will you tell her that if she ever does want to talk, if she ever needs anything, if she wants anything that belonged to my father, something that meant something to her, all she needs to do is ask.”
The woman nodded. “I'll tell her.”
As Amanda and Ethan were about to turn away, the door to Clara's room opened, and she stood there, pale and devastated, barely able to hang onto her IV pole. Amanda instinctively grabbed Ethan's hand for support, and he held on tightly.
“Clara! You shouldn't be up,” her sister admonished gently.
“I do want something,” Clara said. “Something I've looked at repeatedly for twenty-two years.”
“Name it,” Amanda said.
“I want the portrait,” Clara said. “The one that hangs in the living room. I want that portrait.”
Amanda stared at her. “Even though my sisters and I are in it as well?”
“He loved you girls,” Clara said. “He was incapable of showing love, incapable of understanding how it applied to him, but he loved you. I know it. I always knew it. What I didn't know was that you loved him.”
But that didn't make sense. Clara's sister had said she couldn't feel any connection between Amanda and her father. That emptiness she'd felt in the brownstone had led to the despair that led to her suicide attempt.
Clara eyed her and offered the explanation that Amanda had silently asked for. “You wouldn't be here if you didn't love him.”
 
“Wow,” Amanda said as she and Ethan left the hospital. “That was intense.”
Ethan nodded and zipped up his leather jacket against the chilly wind. “I wanted to ask her if she happened to have tried to kill you a couple of times, but it didn't seem particularly appropriate.”
“I really don't know what to make of her,” Amanda said. “She seemed to be trying to make some sort of amends with me. But there is such a coldness to her. Do you think she was the one?”
Ethan shrugged. “She certainly seems desperate enough. But I don't know. All I do know is that her story is very sad.”
“I can't understand it,” Amanda said, drawing her scarf more tightly around her neck. “She's the second woman who loved him despite his inability to love back.”
“Sometimes I think that for some people, the love they choose is more about them than about the person they supposedly love,” Ethan said. “Was that English?” he asked, smiling. “I mean, perhaps we shouldn't feel so bad for the Claras of the world who choose to love unattainable people. Perhaps that's why they choose them ... So that they never have to risk themselves, not really. You can't get hurt if the person you're in love with doesn't even see you. You're really just living in your own fantasy world. Does that make any sense?”
She nodded. “I think I understand what you mean. You can't get hurt if you're not really involved with the person you're in love with. You can suffer from unrequited love, but it's different.”
“And it's complicated. I think something in all this would explain your father and his relationships—or lack thereof—with his own children. If he refused to be a father, he couldn't get hurt by one of you. He couldn't get disappointed. He couldn't be ignored. He couldn't be shunned. He couldn't be used.”
“But what makes someone like that?” she asked. “Why would anyone choose to live like—” She stopped and stared at him.
“Remind you of someone else you know?” he asked grimly.
“You're not like my father, Ethan. You're here. You've been here. You've put your neck on the line for me.”
But there's a difference between my neck and my heart....
“I think we should call Tara Birch and see if she's available,” he asked, changing the subject quite effectively.
“I guess we're done with this conversation,” she said.
“That's right,” he answered, wondering how she managed to bring every conversation back to him, back to them. She brought him in circles when all he wanted was to continue in a straight line.
“Ethan!” Amanda said suddenly, staring into the restaurant window adjacent to where they were standing. She pushed him gently to the left, then craned her neck to peer into the restaurant again. “I'm 99-percent sure that Olivia's and Ivy's mothers are sitting at a table right by the window!”
Ethan reached into his inside coat pocket for his mini binoculars. He put them to his eyes. “That's them, all right. Thick as thieves.”
“Suddenly they're best friends?” Amanda said. “Maybe their little showdown at the reading of the will was all an act, to make me think they hated each other when they're really working together to get me out of the way. Maybe they want more of the pie to go to their daughters.”
“Now you're thinking like I do,” Ethan said, winking at her.
“Great, you've turned me into a cynic.”
He shook his head. “Just a realist, given the situation. Remember, Amanda, all I've been saying is that anything is possible. And when it's life or death, take nothing for granted.”
She nodded. “It's also possible they really do fight like cats and dogs but found some common ground after the reading of the will. If my mother were still alive, maybe they would have invited her into the mix. Who knows?”
“It's entirely possible that they decided to join forces to make sure their daughters' interests are protected. They probably see you as a big threat, the one who gets to go first, the one without a big, bad mother to bark and protect.” Amanda let out a breath. “Let's get out of here. My head is spinning and I still need to call Tara Birch to see if she's home and will see us.
As luck would have it, Tara was home, and after Amanda had spoken to her Ethan raised his hand to hail a cab. “Just know that you're doing great, Amanda. I know this can't be easy.”
A taxi pulled up, and in moments they were headed downtown to the Gramercy Park neighbor-bood in which Tara Birch lived. The woman had been surprised to hear from Amanda; she'd expected to hear from her only through the lawyer. But she'd agreed to let Amanda and Ethan come over for a chat.
The child in question was three years old.
“So this child would be Tommy's aunt. He'd have a three-year old aunt,” Amanda said, shaking her head. The taxi pulled to a stop in front of a tall brick building. Amanda glanced up at it, her expression a combination of nerves and anger.
“Stranger things have happened,” Ethan said, paying the driver. “But Tara Birch could very well be full of crap.”
They exited the cab and headed inside the building, which was somewhat shabby. Inside the vestibule, Ethan pressed the button marked
2A—Birch
, and the door buzzed. He pulled it open, and they decided to take the stairs. The smell of food cooking—onions, chicken, and steak—filled the stairwell. At the door to 2A, Amanda knocked.
The door was opened by an adorable little girl. “I'm Lucy,” she said.
Amanda kneeled down and smiled. “Hi, Lucy. I'm Amanda and this is Ethan. We're here to talk to your mother.”
A woman pulled open the door wider. “Lucy, why don't you go play in your room while Mommy chats with these nice people.”
Ethan took a good long look at Lucy. Her hair was black. Jet black. And her skin olive. Her eyes were also black, huge, dark and round. Tara Birch, on the other hand, was one of the fairest women Ethan had ever seen. She had whitish-blond hair, which was so light that you could see her pink scalp. Her eyelashes were so fair that mascara probably didn't even take. And her eyes were a pale blue.
Now, Ethan wasn't a rocket scientist, granted, but did this woman really think that even a total idiot wouldn't know there was no way that she and William Sedgwick's genes, in any combination, produced this child?
“Tara, I'm Amanda Sedgwick. This is Ethan Black. He's been retained by my father's estate as a sort of executor.”
“Look, I'm really sorry that things have to be this way,” Tara said. “But when the lawyer told me that William didn't leave anything in his will for Lucy's care, I got angry. She's his child,” she whispered. “And if he didn't want to acknowledge her, fine. But he still owes child support.”
“Tara,” Amanda said, “Are you 100 percent sure that William Sedgwick is Lucy's father?”
The woman nodded. “I mean, his name isn't on the birth certificate, of course, but I know who I slept with and when.”
Ethan had gotten to know Amanda so well that he could tell she was unaffected by that last comment. When he'd first met her, when they'd first started investigating, a statement like that would have undone Amanda. Not anymore. She was either tougher or just used to it. Or a little of both.
“Please forgive me for saying this,” Amanda began, “I'm just going by looks here, but given your coloring and my father's and Lucy's, I'm having a hard time believing that William Sedgwick is Lucy's father.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Tara asked, her lips tight.
“No,” Amanda responded. “I'm just saying that on a purely physical basis, it seems impossible that you and my father created this child together.”
“Are you saying I'm not the mother?” Tara asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “Because I have a birth certificate saying I am. And I can attest to being in labor for over fifteen hours. Just because she takes after her father doesn't mean—oh shit,” she said angrily. “Shit!”

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