“Wendy, you lie as much as you tell the truth. How am I supposed to know the difference?”
“I would never lie about your father, Ryan. You and he are everything to me.”
“Then where is he? Why did you let me think he was dead all these years?”
“I don’t know where he is, Ryan.”
“That’s bullshit. Why are you keeping me from my father?”
Her blue eyes misted. “I wish I did know where he is. I do know that he’ll come for me one day and get me out of here.”
“Can you get in touch with him?”
“I have something for you,” she said.
“Don’t change the subject on me, Wendy.”
“Please. Could you call me mother?”
When hell freezes over. “Fine.” I would do whatever it took to get the truth. I had to force the word from my lips. “Mother.”
The orderly sitting next to her handed her a jewelry box. She slid it across the table to me. “For you.”
I opened the box. Nestled on cotton was a sapphire bracelet set in platinum or white gold. I couldn’t tell which.
“What is this? And what am I supposed to do with a woman’s bracelet?”
“Your father gave it to me the day you were born. He said it belonged to his mother. I’ve never worn it. I could never bring myself to. Every time I looked at it, I thought of you and what I had given up. So I want you to have it. Keep it as a way to remember me.”
My immediate reaction was that the bracelet was tainted. Tainted with the betrayal of my father, my mothers. Yes, both of them. Daphne Steel had furthered the deception. Nothing good could come from anything Wendy could give me.
But then I looked at my mother. Wendy looked genuinely sad. Her eyes were sunken and glazed over. Without meaning to, I actually felt a sliver of pity for her.
Maybe the way to get her to do something was to treat her as my mother. To feign love for her. I hated the idea of it, but I needed information. So I took the bracelet from the box and fingered it. Had it truly belonged to my grandmother? She’d died before I was born, and Talon and Joe would be too young to remember whether she’d ever worn a sapphire bracelet.
“It’s a beautiful piece,” I said. “My father must have loved you very much.”
I had no idea, but maybe he had. Maybe… I never really knew Bradford Steel. None of us had. Maybe this woman had truly known him, and not just in the biblical sense. Maybe she was the key.
“Thank you for saying that,” Wendy said. “We were each other’s true loves.”
Then why didn’t he go to you after our mother died? The question hovered on my lips, but I didn’t ask it. Mentioning Daphne Steel wouldn’t get me where I needed to be right now.
“This is an expensive bracelet,” I said. “Why did you keep it? You could have sold it.”
“I couldn’t part with it, and I didn’t need any money. You know that.”
True. She’d said my father had paid her five million dollars to give me up. But the timing didn’t quite coincide. The five-million-dollar transfer had left the Steel account twenty-five years ago, around the time Talon was taken. I’d been born thirty-two years ago.
“If you couldn’t part with it, why didn’t you wear it?”
“I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Then help me. Help me understand…Mother.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ruby