Looking slightly mollified, she sighed. “I guess I’d better go try convince my boss of that.” She left the room.
Her father turned back to Letty. “But why are you crying? You really thought I was dead?”
She tried to smile. “You’re crying, too, Dad.”
“Am I?” Her father touched his face. He gave her a watery smile. “I’m just glad to see you, I guess. I was starting to wonder if you’d ever come.”
“I came the instant I heard,” she whispered, feeling awful and guilty.
Howard gave a satisfied nod. “I knew he’d eventually tell you.”
“Who?”
“Darius. Sure, I promised I’d never contact you. But there was nothing in our deal that said I couldn’t contact him. I left him a message four weeks ago, when I woke up in the hospital. I’d collapsed in the street, so an ambulance brought me here.”
Four weeks? Letty was numb with shock. Darius had known for a month that her father was in the hospital, just an hour away from Fairholme?
Her father stroked his wispy chin. “Though I’m pretty sure he knew even before that. He’s had me followed since the day you ran off with him. The guy must have noticed me going to my doctor’s office three times a week.”
She sucked in her breath, covering her mouth. Not just one month, but two? Darius had known her father was sick, dying, but he’d purposefully kept it from her?
Your father is spending his days playing chess with friends down at the park.
A lie!
Last night, when she and Darius had been cuddled by the fire, dreaming about their child, even then, her husband had been lying to her. While Letty had been eating cookies and drinking tea, her father had been spending yet another night in this hospital. Alone. Without a single word of love from his only daughter.
A cold sweat broke out on her skin. She trembled as if to fight someone or flee. But there was no escaping the horrible truth.
Darius had lied to her.
The man she’d loved since childhood. The center of all her romantic dreams and longings. He’d known her father was dying, and he’d lied.
How could Darius have been so callous? So selfish, heartless and cruel?
The answer was obvious.
He didn’t love her.
He never would.
A gasp of anguish and rage came from the back of her throat.
“He never gave you the message, did he?” her father said, watching her. When she shook her head, he sighed. “How did you know I was here?”
“Mrs. Pollifax.”
“I see.” He looked sad. Then his eyes fell to her belly and he brightened as he changed the subject. “You’re so big! You’re just a week or two from your due date, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve almost made it.” His voice was smug. “The doctors said I was a goner, but I told them I wasn’t going anyplace yet.”
Letty’s body was still shaking with grief and fury. In the gray light of the hospital room, she turned toward the window. Outside, she saw November rain falling on the East River, and beyond it she could see the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Where Darius was right now.
Howard said dreamily behind her, “I was determined to see my grandbaby before I died.”
She whirled back to her father. “Stop talking about dying!”