36
Sienna
“CC!” Dad says on the other end of the phone call. His voice is plumb full of all the relief and gladness and happiness I expected. It’s real, I can feel it, and I mourn how easy things once were between us and despair that we may never find our way back to that place.
Tears fill my eyes, and Tyson squeezes my hand. He got here a few hours ago and is managing the details like I knew he would. This detail, however, is mine to take care of. I pull my hand from his, smile, and then wave toward the door. He isn’t offended by my asking him to leave. It was four a.m. in London when I called him, and he didn’t even hesitate to catch the earliest flight he could. I’ve been in the hospital for twenty-four hours, talked to Beck three times and Dr. Sheffield twice. I can’t put off calling Dad any longer.
“Gosh, I’ve been worried about you, kiddo,” Dad says while Tyson pulls the door quietly closed, leaving me to the sterility of the room and the hums and beeps of the machinery around my bed. “Everything okay there in Chicago?”
“I’m not in Chicago, Dad.” I pause for a breath. “I’m in Hamilton.”
Dad is silent for six full seconds. I do not rescue him, and finally he repeats the single word. “Hamilton?” The anxiety in his voice is thick as paste.
I swallow and smooth the woven blanket over my legs. I’m shaking slightly, but I don’t know if it’s from nerves or meds or the lingering effects of last night. “There is a lot going on with me right now, Dad, and I’m going to explain that to you in a few minutes, but I have some questions first, and I need you to promise me that you’ll tell me the truth.”
“CC.” He sounds so hurt and sad. I scrunch up my eyes against the sympathy rising in my chest, and the emotion making my nose burn. “Of course I’ll tell you the truth. What’s going on, sweetie?”
Of course. That helps strengthen my resolve.
“I need you to promise you’ll tell me the truth about Mom even though you haven’t told me the truth before now.”
He’s silent.
I open my eyes and take a breath. “I know Rachel wrote the letters, Dad. I know Mom’s name is really Maebelle Gérard. I know you and Mom never married and she was only eighteen years old when I was born. I know she died of a drug overdose and that you and Grandma took me from David Vandersteen’s house the last night anyone saw her alive.”
The silence on the line is so deep and so heavy that I nearly hang up to be spared its intensity. Instead, I make it worse.
“Did you love my mother?”
A hushed beeping emanates from one of the machines pumping fluid and medication into my body, and a nurse laughs from the hallway.
“Oh, gosh, CC. I loved her so much.” His voice breaks, and tears finally come to my eyes. I hadn’t been lied to about that, then. It makes the story so much sadder, though. She did break his heart, and he never recovered. “I did everything I could, everything, to keep us together as a family. I wanted to marry her, I wanted—”
“Did you kill her?”
Every other sound has gone silent. I can picture Dad sitting in his favorite chair.
“CC, can you come home so we can—”
“Answer me.” The words are pleading, and my voice shakes as the emotional impact of what we are facing attaches itself to every syllable. “I deserve the truth, Dad.” I hate that my voice is shaking. “The real truth, and if you can’t tell me that, then I need to go. I came to Canada. I read the newspaper articles about Maebelle’s arrests. I met David Vandersteen.” I pause to take a shaky breath. “You and Grandma were the last people to see her alive. She was found in a river a few days after that. You have lied to me my whole life, but you can’t lie to me about this, Dad, or I will never be able to believe anything you say. Did you kill my mother?”
He doesn’t pause this time. “No.”
I let out a breath and suck in another.
“Did Grandma Dee?”
A pause. A breath. “CC, we need to—”
“Tell me!” I shout, a sob rising in my chest. “Tell me or I’m hanging up.” That I am saying these words to Dad is yet another knife wound in my belly. And in his.
Another pause. Another breath. Another prayer.
“Yes, CC, I think she did.”