Will slowly shook his head at the television screen in his kitchen as he flipped channels. His shoulders fell further with each station he landed on. He scraped his uneaten plate of toast and eggs into the sink, now that he was officially sick to his stomach, and turned on the garbage disposal. Its loud grinding momentarily drowned out the drone of the television. He leaned back against the counter.
“Dupré’s 30-Year-Old Secret!” a red banner read as it zoomed across the screen. Suddenly, Dupré’s and Keisha’s pictures appeared side-by-side, making Will cringe.
The titillating story of the powerful Vincent Dupré’s “long-lost daughter” had hit the newspapers and twenty-four-hour news channels like a hurricane three days ago, and it seemed that the hurricane still had not weakened. The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, Fox News…they were all covering it ad nauseum.
“Must be a slow news week,” Will muttered as the watched the newscast.
The news outlets and political bloggers hadn’t been able to resist the inherent drama of the story: self-proclaimed staunch white conservative congressman gets a poor black teenaged-girl pregnant thirty years ago while he’s slumming and on vacation from law school. He then deserts her and her baby to move on to greatness. Throw in the twist that his child grows up and gets involved in politics, only to seek revenge on her father by working for the man who wants to rob him of his congressional seat. Now there you had the stuff of soap operas!
But Will sensed the story wasn’t true. Not all of it, anyway. There were a lot of assumptions being made, mainly because neither Keisha nor Dupré were granting interviews and sharing their sides of the story. Dupré had even banned Gretchen from issuing any press statements on his behalf. The whole topic was strictly “No comment.” The talking heads were left with nothing to do but speculate and the story was getting bigger and bigger, wilder and wilder with each passing day.
One blogger speculated that Keisha had really been in cahoots with her father and had been sent to work for Parker to destroy his campaign. One pundit argued that Dupré should lose his congressional seat since he probably owed years of back child support. The National Enquirer ran a story online that another woman had come forward saying that she was also Dupré’s daughter. And so on and so on and so on.
Once he got past the initial shock of the story, Will instantly thought of Keisha. What was she going through right now? He had heard through the grapevine that she had quit the Parker campaign. No one had seen her since the news broke. He imagined she was pretty torn up—to see your personal life dissected on television had to be horrendous.
Dupré wasn’t doing much better. He hadn’t been to the headquarters in days and hadn’t returned anyone’s phone calls. George said yesterday he had finally gotten an email from the old guy. It was filled with three simple words: “SUSPEND THE CAMPAIGN.”
“He’s given up, Will,” George had said over the phone earlier that morning. “He’s just…given up. I don’t think the election matters to him anymore.”
Will knew the feeling. He sighed before pushing himself away from the counter. He needed to do some talking and needed a few questions answered.
No more phone calls. It was time to pay Vincent Dupré a visit.
* * *
Will took a deep breath before he raised his hand to knock on one of the maroon-colored French doors of the tawny D.C. townhouse. He watched as Sara Dupré hesitantly pulled back the muslin curtains. Blonde curls fell about her face. She gave Will a weary smile before dropping the curtains and undoing the lock.
“Come in, Will,” she said quietly, cracking the door only wide enough for him to creep inside. “I’m so glad it’s you. I was hoping it wasn’t one of those reporters.”
Will slowly shook his head. “No, they’re all hovering across the street.” He looked around the foyer and then the family room. Kendall was perched at the end of the sofa, talking loudly on her cell phone. Paul sat on one of the love seats, silently flipping channels on the widescreen TV. The young man, who was the spitting image of his father, lowered the remote long enough to turn and look at Will. He nodded his head and gave a weak smile in greeting. Will waved in return.
“How is he?” Will asked Sara quietly.
“Kendall,” Sara said tightly, “can you keep it down, please?” She then shook her head as she shut the door and locked it behind him. “Not too good. He just started accepting a few phone calls today. One from George, another from his cousin Jeffery. No visitors, though. But it isn’t like we’ve had to turn anyone away besides reporters. None of our neighbors have come by. None of our friends.” She sighed forlornly. “I guess it doesn’t matter, though. When times get tough, you find out who your real friends are. Perhaps we had more acquaintances than friends after all.”
He reached out and touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sara.”
She shrugged. “Oh, it’s okay, Will. Even if he…” She cleared her throat and wiped away a tear from her eye. “Even if he loses the election, I’m fine with it and so is he—deep down. There are worse things. I just hate for it to happen this way. He doesn’t deserve this, Will. He’s a good man and it’s so heartbreaking to see what he’s going through right now.” She sniffed as she peered down at her feet. She then glanced at Kendall who laughed loudly on the phone. “Vincent hasn’t left the house in five days, Will,” Sara whispered. “Five days.”
Will didn’t say anything in reply. If Sara thought Dupré was suffering, he could only imagine what Keisha was feeling right now. Did Sara, or anyone else in this house, give any thought to that?
Will had come today to help Dupré if he could, but also to ask a few important questions. Had Dupré really deserted Keisha’s mother all those years ago when she needed him the most? If so, all sense of loyalty toward Dupré would end. Will needed to know the truth and hoped that Dupré would tell it.
“Where is he?” Will asked, looking around the room again.
“He’s holed up in his study,” Sara muttered, tilting her head toward the back of the house. “You can see him. He’s probably in need of a visitor, someone who can distract him from his melancholy.”
Will nodded and quietly walked down one hallway and then another before arriving at Dupré’s private study. The door was ajar but Will knocked anyway.
“Yes?” Dupré asked softly.
Will pushed the door open and breathed in audibly, taken aback by what he saw.
Dupré sat at his desk. His face was partially illuminated by the orange glow of a Tiffany lamp and small shafts of light coming through the drawn shades of his plantation blinds.
He looks horrible, Will thought.
The fifty-eight-year-old man looked at least fifteen years older. His normally handsome face now seemed haggard with wrinkles that had miraculously developed overnight. His once luminescent green eyes were dull and watery and he looked as if he hadn’t shaved in days. He was wearing a terrycloth robe, T-shirt, wrinkled pajama pants, and slippers. Newspapers and magazines were splayed on his desk. All the pages were opened to pictures of him and Keisha. Will watched as Dupré tore his attention away from them, slowly looked up, and smiled.
“Hello, Will,” he said, gradually rising from his leather chair. “How you doin’, son?”
“I’m okay, Vincent,” he said as he shook the older man’s hand. “How about you?” he asked quietly.
Dupré chuckled. “I’ve…been better,” he said. “Have a seat, Will.” He motioned to the chair on the other side of the desk.
Will lowered himself into it and faced the older man. “You haven’t been returning phone calls, Vincent,” Will began quietly.
“No desire to,” Dupré said succinctly as he sat back in his chair and shuffled one of the newspapers on his desk. “Mostly reporters on the phone anyway. Those who aren’t reporters are usually trying to talk about campaign strategy and spin, which I couldn’t give a fig about.”
“Where’s your fighting spirit?”
Dupré sighed and continued to stare at the pages in front of him. “It didn’t get out of bed this morning.”
Will tilted his head, watching as Dupré scanned a few lines of text. “So you’re just giving up, then?”
The older man suddenly looked up at Will. His gaze hardened. “Look, Will, I love you like a son, but if you’re here to give me a pep talk, you might as well leave now. I have no interest in hearing it from you or anybody else. Understood?”
Will paused and then slowly nodded. He watched as Dupré tapped Keisha’s photograph with his index finger.
“You know, I knew it…deep down. The minute she told me her name, I knew it,” he muttered. “I said maybe the last name, Reynolds, was just a coincidence. And that locket. I tried to talk myself out that, too. I kept telling myself its one that’s just like my grandmother’s, Mama Jeanette’s.” He slowly shook his head in bewilderment. “I thought she might be Lena’s daughter but I never…I never imagined in a million years that she was mine. After all these years, all this time,” he murmured. He gave a soft chuckle. “I thought Lena went to New York to try her hand at Broadway. I didn’t know…I didn’t know…” His voice faded.
“She was the dancer?” Will asked quietly. “The one with the amazing body?”
Dupré barely nodded his head, still engrossed with Keisha’s picture.
“Is the baby what made things so…complicated?” Will asked, making Dupré’s eyes leap up from the broadsheet’s pages again. “She wanted the baby and you didn’t?”
Dupré gritted his teeth. “Well, that’s what the newspapers are saying, isn’t it?” he spat. “I deserted her when she was pregnant because I didn’t want to be a father. I was ashamed of my little half-black baby! That’s what they’re saying. So it must be true! I was coldhearted and power hungry back then! And I’m an old racist hypocrite and liar now! ”
Will closed his eyes. “Vincent, I’m just—”
“No!” Dupré bellowed. “No, that’s not what happened!” He shoved the newspapers and magazines aside and stood from his desk. “But what does it matter anyway? Who cares?” he said as he grabbed one of the papers and walked across the room to his study windows. He opened the shades, glared at the stone terrace in his backyard and then stared at the broadsheet again.
“People are going to think what they want to think, Will. That doesn’t hurt me. What hurts me is that I can’t understand why Lena did this. Why did she walk away? I mean…does she remember it happening this way?” he asked as he jabbed at one of the articles. “Because I sure as hell don’t. She told me she wasn’t going to have the baby. That’s not what I wanted. I begged her to keep it! But it wasn’t what she wanted! Or at least…at least…that’s what I thought. But that was so long ago,” he said quietly. Dupré cringed. “Keisha must hate me so much. Maybe that’s why she went to work for Parker.” He shook his head ruefully. “Revenge against the old man who deserted her.”
“That isn’t why she worked for Parker,” Will said as he quickly rose from his chair. “She’s not like that. She wasn’t trying to get back at you. She didn’t even know you were her father, Vincent. Her mother told her that her father was dead. She said that you…you died in a car crash before she was even born.”
Dupré frowned. “A car crash?” he mumbled as if in a daze. He suddenly turned to Will. “Wait, how do you know all this? How do you know what her mother said?”
Will cleared his throat. “Because…because she told me.”
“She told you?” Dupré’s tossed his newspaper aside. His frown intensified. “Well, what else did she tell you?”
Will sighed. “That she missed you. She missed never having a father around and always wondered what you were like, what you looked like. She wished she knew more about you.”
Dupré tilted his head as he searched Will’s face. “You seem to have gotten to know her very well.”
“Yes.” Will cleared his throat again. He figured he might as well share his own secret. “Yes, we became…friends,” he mumbled.
“Friends?” Dupré repeated, his stare now unwavering. “Rather close friends, I should say, if she told you all that.”
Will lowered his eyes. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Yes, we were.”
“Were? You mean you aren’t anymore?”
“No,” Will said tersely as he turned his back toward Dupré, hoping that Dupré would change the subject. Wasn’t it obvious that talking about his relationship with Keisha made him uncomfortable? Couldn’t Dupré see the hurt on his face? Because Will felt it. The hurt weighed on him like a leaden shroud.
“Why not?” Dupré persisted. “What happened? If you two were such close friends—”
“Vincent, just like there are things that are painful for you to talk about, I have things that are painful for me to talk about, too, okay?” he said loudly, his nostrils flaring. “So can we just drop it? I’m telling you that she’s not angry at you. She’s not trying to get back at you. So let’s just leave it at that!”
Dupré’s eyes widened as he gazed at Will in surprise. Even Will was taken aback. He had never raised his voice to Dupré before, nor could he have ever imagined a circumstance when he would do so. But here he was, glaring down the older man, yelling at him to back off.
“Well, well,” Dupré remarked as a smile slowly crept to his face. “I guess my daughter must be one extraordinary woman.” Dupré slowly walked over to Will and rested his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “She’d have to be for you to fall in love with her.”
Will frowned.
The older man shook his head as his smile widened. “You had me worried for a second there with that whole ‘friends’ baloney.” Dupré snorted and rolled his eyes. “I may be old but I’m not in a coma. I know what that means. I’ve always known that you’ve had your share of friends, Will, being the ladies’ man that you are. But I’m glad to know that my daughter wasn’t one of them. It sounds like she meant a lot more to you.”
Will didn’t respond.
“So you really don’t want to tell me what happened?”
Will gritted his teeth and shrugged. “It’s an election and we’re playing for different teams so…things got complicated.”
“And you both decided to go your separate ways?”
“Yes,” Will said succinctly.
“Sounds familiar,” Dupré said with a grimace as he crossed his arms over his chest. “It also sounds like Keisha inherited a lot more from her mother than good looks.”
Will slowly nodded his head, giving a forlorn smile. “Your daughter is a very stubborn, very argumentative, and very proud young woman, Vincent. Once she gets fixated on something, it’s hard to convince her any differently.”
“But you love her, don’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You did…but not anymore?”
Will gritted his teeth. “I don’t know. I think…I might…still love her.”
“There’s no think, son,” Dupré said flatly. “Either you do or you don’t.”
Will contemplated for several seconds before slowly nodding his head. “I do.”
Dupré frowned. “So why let history repeat itself?” he exclaimed. “So what if she’s stubborn? Shout her down if you have to! You don’t want to be like me, son,” Dupré urged, furrowing his brows. “An old man left always wondering what could have been. What could have happened if I’d fought Lena harder that night? What could have happened if I hadn’t left her alone in the apartment the next day? I should have stayed. I should have stayed and talked to her, but I was so angry and disappointed and…” He closed his eyes. “Look, don’t get me wrong. I love my wife. I love my children, Will. But I will always regret the way I handled that day. I will always regret that Keisha had to grow up without a father. Don’t let regret plague you for the rest of your life, son,” he said quietly. “It will make you bitter and old before your time.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do, Vincent? Knock her over the head with a rock and kidnap her? Tie her up and make her listen to me?” he asked, raising his hands helplessly. “She is set in her ways!”
“Just go to her,” Dupré said softly. “Not call her or email her. Just go to her and…I’ll go with you.”
This time, Will frowned in confusion. “You’ll go with me?” he repeated, wondering if he had heard Dupré correctly. “You’re serious?”
“Yes, I am,” Dupré said firmly, vehemently nodding his head. “Why wouldn’t I be? I didn’t get to meet her properly the first time we spoke and I don’t have another thirty years to waste hoping that the opportunity will come again.”
The two stood in silence for several seconds as Will considered the older man. “Well, if I am going to take you over to her apartment, you’re going to need to change your look a bit.”
Dupré’s hands instantly reached for his face. “Yes,” he said, running his hands over his stubbly, unshaven chin and then glancing down at his T-shirt and pajama pants. He gave a sheepish smile. “I don’t look very presentable, do I? It’s been a hard week. I will need to shave and change clothes, I suppose.”
“Not just that,” Will muttered with a slow shake of the head as he gave him the once-over again. “Do you have a hoodie and sunglasses?”
“A hoodie and sunglasses?” Dupré asked, a little confused.
“Don’t worry,” Will assured. “I’m sure Paul will have them if you don’t.”
Dupré frowned. “Wait, why am I—”
“You’ll need them if you’re going to see her, Vincent. You want your reunion with her to be private, don’t you? If that’s the case, you can’t show up at her apartment door in a suit and tie. All those reporters and photographers hanging around there will know instantly who you are. Why give the media more fodder to gossip about?”
Dupré slowly smiled. “You’re right, Will. I knew I hired you for a reason,” he said. “I should go to her in some type of disguise. I’m sure I have suitable sunglasses, but I’ll have to ask Paul about the hoodie.” He snapped his fingers as his eyes widened. The dullness of each iris had disappeared and the familiar bright gleam of Dupré’s green eyes was coming back. “You know, Will, I think I still have the fake pirate mustache from the Halloween costume party Sara and I went to last year. It’ll be perfect!”
Will cocked an eyebrow, fighting back a smile. “A fake…pirate…mustache?”