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.
Ilka carried a chair over to the bed for him to sit down, then she sat in an easy chair by the balcony door.
Her father kept swiping at his tears as Amber told him about being injured out at the stables. Ilka didn’t listen. All the hours behind the wheel were catching up to her, and their voices were a murmur in the background until she heard something that made her sit up.
“I’m pregnant,” her half sister said. “And I felt so bad I couldn’t share my joy with you. At first, I spent some time sitting outside the funeral home, on the bench under the big tree, pretending you could see me and feel how happy I was. That’s how you were there for me.”
“Oh sweetheart!” Her father was so moved that Ilka couldn’t breathe for a moment. She rose and stood by the balcony door.
The father was Tom, the stable manager, Amber said. They had kept their relationship a secret because they didn’t want anyone interfering. Soon Ilka understood that Amber’s pregnancy was why she hadn’t been released. The doctors wanted her to stay in bed until they were sure she could carry the baby to full term, after all that had happened.
“Mom doesn’t know yet. I don’t know how she’s going to take it, but I’ve decided to go away. To move. It just felt so lonesome, starting a new life you were never going to be a part of.”
“What does Leslie think?” he said. “You told her, right?”
Amber shook her head. “I haven’t talked to Leslie since all this happened. I can’t get hold of her.”
“What do you mean?” Ilka said. “She hasn’t visited you?”
Ilka frowned. Just before the police took her away, Mary Ann had told Leslie to come in and tell her sister what had happened, so she wouldn’t hear about it from someone else.
“No, I haven’t seen her at all. Tom told me Grandpa was dead. And of course, it was in the paper, even though there was only an obituary.”
“But they must have written that he’d been shot,” Ilka said, thinking that the murder of a wealthy man, one of the city’s most public figures, had to be a major story.
“No. Even dead he’s somehow above being dragged into that sort of scandal.”
Ilka hadn’t heard her half sister speak contemptuously about her grandfather before. She’d thought the two of them were very close.
“Is Leslie staying out at the ranch?” Ilka hadn’t given a single thought to Amber’s older sister since leaving Fletcher’s ranch four days ago.
“I don’t know where she is,” Amber said. “Mom called from jail, but she only mentioned that the practical stuff with my stay in the hospital was taken care of. Insurance covers my rehab and R-and-R at a place in California somebody recommended to her. But I’m not going anywhere without Tom, and, like I said, Mom doesn’t know about the baby.”
“Your mother hasn’t heard from Leslie either?” Ilka already had picked her bag up off the floor.
Amber shook her head. “Nobody’s been able to get hold of her.”
“I’m going out to the ranch,” Ilka said. She turned to her father. “Can you take a taxi home? I have to find her. The last time I saw her, she was in no shape to be alone.”