Body Double (32 page)

“I forgive you,” Andrea whispered, hoping that was what he wanted to hear.

His gaze hardened. He pulled his hand away. “I knew it. Imposter. You’re not my daughter. What do you want? Money?”

“No,” Andrea said. She dropped the Southern accent. “I don’t want anything except for you to have some peace and closure before... I’m sorry.”

“Why do you care?”

“I just do. It’s who I am. I care about everyone.”

Tears trickled from his eyes. “My only child wouldn’t come to see me, even on my deathbed.” The beeps on the machine slowed, the numbers ticking steadily downward.

He was letting go.

“No,” she said urgently, her nerves about to explode. “She wanted to come. She did. She’s still in Colombia and couldn’t get here fast enough.” She couldn’t let him die thinking his own daughter didn’t love him. Even if Sarah was bitter and angry, surely there was some love there.

“You look just like her,” he said with a glance at her face. “I should have known you for an imposter. Anna would have. Was it you at the wedding too?”

Andrea nodded. “Sarah gave me power of attorney so that I could pledge her in marriage to Blake.”

“Why did you come here?” His voice sounded sad, not angry. “Haven’t you done enough?”

She began to cry, realizing that she was breaking this man’s heart just as Sarah was. “I thought I could help repair your relationship with Sarah before it was too late. I didn’t want you to be alone or feel unloved.” But his daughter’s absence, her lack of even a phone call to him said more loudly than words that she didn’t love him.

He was quiet for a moment, sniffling through his ventilator. She plucked a couple of tissues from a box nearby and tucked them into his limp hand. “Andrea?” he asked. “Is that your name?”

She nodded. “Andrea Lindholm.”

“She never told you why she hates me.”

Andrea shook her head.

He closed his eyes. “When she was fourteen years old, I caught her skipping school—with a nineteen year old woman. I couldn’t prove that anything sexual was going on, but I suspected. By this time, Sarah’s mom had passed away, so it was up to me to handle it. I ran the woman off and told her I’d have her arrested if I even thought she was hanging around my daughter again. Sarah was angry. So angry. She hit herself all over with a Ping-Pong paddle and then told the school counsellor I’d...
beaten
her.” He gritted his teeth, and the beeping machines protested.

Andrea put her hand on his shoulder to offer comfort.

“I’ve never laid a hand on that girl, never even spanked her as a toddler. She betrayed me.”

Just like Anna had
, Andrea thought.

He took a few deep breaths and coughed, but the insistent beeping began to calm. “They put her in a shelter for girls. My business partner, Hiram Banks, wanted nothing to do with me, our stock price plummeted, and my life was all but over. I sat in jail for six days before she recanted. Meanwhile...” Tears streamed from his eyes. “Do you know what other inmates do to child abusers? I was brutalized in prison.”

“Oh, my God.” Andrea slapped a hand to her mouth. She never would have thought the formidable Harold Gentry could be anyone’s victim. Maybe that was one reason he’d become so ruthless.

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” he said. He might have been formidable two weeks ago, but now he looked so alone, so helpless.

“It’s okay. Whatever you say is just between us.”

With a trembling hand, he reached for the cup of water on the side tray, and Andrea picked it up for him, angled the straw toward his mouth, and waited for him to drink his fill. He thanked her with a small nod and relaxed into the pillow.

“Finally,” he went on, “the charges were dropped and I was freed. Sarah came home, and she treated me like I was the one who’d done something wrong. She quit speaking to me, quit listening to me, started getting into trouble, so I sent her away to boarding school. She hated it—hated me. She wouldn’t even let me hug her at her high school graduation. Giving her money was the only way I ever got to see her because I insisted on handing her a check in person.”

Andrea didn’t know what to say. Why would Sarah have blamed him for their problems? It seemed she never learned to see the situation from anything but that of a willful teenager. It occurred to Andrea that he might have been leaving something out, that his side of this story was the tip of a much bigger iceberg. Even the thinnest sheet of tissue paper had two sides.

“When I asked you to say it,” he whispered, “I was asking for an apology. Never in all these years has Sarah acknowledged her wrongdoing in sending me to jail over a false accusation. But in fairness, I never told her what happened to me in prison. I let her think they’d put me up in a country club where rich, white-collar criminals are reputed to go. This was in Georgia, where that kind of prison doesn’t exist.”

“Mr. Gentry, I’m so sorry,” Andrea said. “I had no idea.” If Harold had never faulted his wife for her role in the affair with Blake Sr. or acknowledged that she was a willing participant, maybe it was that unexpressed anger that started the rift between him and his daughter. Might he have unknowingly burdened Sarah with all that unspoken pain?

“I’m dying. Was an apology too much to ask?”

“Of course not, but do you truly need one? Sarah will come to recognize her error in her own time. You can’t control when that happens any more than you can control who she loves. You can control when you forgive her for it though. It’s never too late to let go of anger and resentment. If this is your time, don’t take it with you. Letting go of it now might help you heal, and if you leave this hospital under your own power, imagine how free and fulfilling your life can be.”

Harold nodded, tears streaming down his face, and reached for her hand. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it. “You have a gentleness about you, even when you’re laying bare the truth. Tell me honestly, do you love Blake Thomas?”

“Yes,” she said and immediately worried that her automatic answer would upset him. Blake was his son-in-law. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with him. He was marrying another woman, but the more I got to know him, the deeper I fell. Saying goodbye to him is going to ruin me, but if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“I appreciate your honesty. You’ve been a better daughter to me in the last ten minutes than Sarah has in twenty years.” He patted her hand and kissed it again. “Now, if you’ll hand me my cell phone. It’s right over there.”

Andrea saw it on the table and fetched it for him. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be using that here.”

“To hell with their stupid rules.” He punched a few buttons and lifted the phone to his ear with one trembling hand.

Andrea was about to leave to give him privacy to make his call, presumably to Sarah, but he held her wrist.

“Franklin, take down this name: Andrea Lindholm.”

She froze, wary of what was about to happen. Was he going to have her charged with fraud or identity theft for impersonating his daughter? “What are you—”

He silenced her with a sharp look. “Add it to file five. That’s right. Yes, I’m sure. No, make it ten. All right, start the recording. Ready? I, Harold Gentry, being of sound mind and... well, never mind about the body... do hereby attest that my last will and testament is to be amended as indicated.”

Her heart raced, her face tingled, and her knees weakened. His will? What in the world was he doing? What was he
thinking
?

“I make this change of my own free will, effective immediately.” He checked the LED display on his phone and recited the time and date. “I’m making this amendment by phone with Andrea Lindholm as my witness.” He held the phone toward her. “State your name and whether you heard my amendment.”

“Um, I really don’t—”

“Say it. Please. Don’t deny me my final request of you. You owe me that at least.”

She leaned closer to the phone. “I’m Andrea Lindholm, and I heard Harold Gentry’s amendment.” She had no idea what it meant, but whatever it was gave Harold some peace, and she did owe him one request for her part in the deception.

He put the phone back to his ear. “Got it? Good. That’s all for now. I’ll call you back later. There are some more changes I want to make.” He snapped the phone shut and closed his eyes. “It’s done.”

Andrea was both horrified and excited. What he’d done was crazy. He barely knew her. Why would he put her in his will? “Mr. Gentry, for whatever it was you gave me, thank you, but you shouldn’t have done that.”

“Maybe not, but good deeds should not go unpunished.” He chuckled humorlessly and coughed. “I’m tired, dear. Is Blake here? I need to tell him something before I fall asleep again. Send him in, would you?”

“Yes, of course.” She paused and searched the older man’s face. No matter what kind of cutthroat tycoon he’d been, right now, he was only a lonely, old man without his family by his side. Nobody should have to die alone. She brushed the graying blond hair from his forehead, leaned over, and placed a gentle kiss there while tears streamed down her face. “I’ll be back to see you later. Sleep well,” she whispered.

Blake tried to stay calm, but he could practically hear his blood pressure whistling in his ears like a tea kettle. At first, he paced the length of the waiting room, wondering whether Harold was treating Andrea respectfully. He didn’t hear yelling or crying, but that didn’t ease his mind. Even on his deathbed, Harold would be Harold—controlling, rigid, and judgmental. It was hard not to storm in there to protect Andrea from him, but she had that calming presence and the training to get people talking. She could handle herself.

“You should sit down and relax. What happens next is out of your hands.”

He spun around and met the green eyes of his half-brother, Richard. For a moment, they simply stared at each other. Blake wanted to ask what Richard was doing there, but he supposed he could guess. He had a choice: to accept this man as a brother or as an enemy. “Richard. Good to see you.” He approached with his hand extended, and the other man shook it. “What do the doctors say?”

Richard had Blake Senior’s sturdy square jaw and cleft chin, and of course the same wavy brown hair Blake had inherited. The green eyes must have come from his mother. Sarah’s mother. He shook his head. “The prognosis isn’t good. There was a lot of irreparable damage to the heart tissue. They don’t expect him to make it another twenty-four hours. We need to keep him as calm as possible.”

“Damn,” Blake said. “I’m sorry to hear it. My mom’s praying for a miracle right now.”

“Isn’t Gloria in there with him?”

“No.” He didn’t want to lie and say it was Sarah, but he wasn’t ready to name Andrea yet.

“Ah. I’m surprised Sarah was able to get back from Colombia so quickly. I only called her with the news a couple of hours ago.”

Blake snorted, a half-smile on his face. Busted. “Let’s cut the bullshit. We both know that’s not Sarah in there.”

Richard’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t expect you to openly admit it.”

“There’s no point in denying it now.”

He craned his neck to see into the room. “Looks like Sarah from here. Who is she?”

“I’ll tell you that if you tell me about your family. Anyone looking at us would assume we’re brothers.”

Richard smiled and studied his shoes as he paced slowly. “Yeah, especially you. Look, I understand Harold, but I don’t agree with him. He hangs onto past grievances like they were life preservers, and look where that’s gotten him. I don’t like being used as a pawn in his little revenge scheme.”

“Then why go along with it?”

“I’m as trapped in it as you are.”

“How so?”

“Because he pays me extraordinarily well, and my daughter was born with a heart condition.”

Blake wondered whether the heart condition was genetic. He didn’t know whether his father had suffered from any heart problems, but his grandmother had died young from heart failure.

“Blake, I’m not your half-brother.”

“What?”

“I met Harold at the park one day, when I was out with my daughter. He kept staring at me as if he knew me and eventually came over and introduced himself. He offered me a job on the spot, without even knowing what kind of work I did or what my background was. I thought he was a crackpot, but he checked out. With all those medical bills piling up, I’d have been a fool not to take his offer.

“The first time you and I met, I saw the resemblance right away and questioned his motive for hiring me. I started digging for information, but I didn’t find much. It took time to earn his trust and to get him drunk enough to talk about it. He’s angry about what he perceives was a significant transgression perpetrated by your father upon his wife. He’s convinced himself that Anna was the innocent victim of a ruthless sexual predator. I’m damned good at my job, but I’m also another tool for him to use against your family, and for that I’m sorry. I wasn’t in a position to tell you this until now.”

Blake’s relief felt like someone had pulled a wrecked truck off his back. “Why would he take it out on my mom? If my father was such a ruthless predator, wouldn’t she be a victim too?”