“Get them out and be quick about it,” he ordered, and the nurse ushered them out of the room.
“It’s the morphine,” she said. “Sometimes he’s completely lucid, others . . . well, he can’t distinguish reality from his dreams. Please understand, he’s very ill.”
“Was my husband here?” Marla asked, reeling from her father’s violent rejection. It was as if he hated her. “Alex Cahill, did he stop by . . . with someone?”
“Not on my shift, but you might check with the desk. Maybe someone there might remember. Guests are supposed to check in, to register, but not many do.”
“We didn’t,” Nick said as a bell dinged softly and the call light over the doorway of Conrad’s room blinked on again. “I see it’s one of those days,” the nurse apologized as she turned on her heel.
“We’re going.” Nick grabbed Marla by the elbow and halfpulled her down the long carpeted hallway. Smooth wooden rails were mounted along the walls of the corridor and wide windows opened to manicured lawns with neatly tended flower beds and an expansive view of the Bay. Every so often there was a sitting area, filled with couches and chairs, lamps and tables that, Nick suspected, were rarely used. The complex was plush. Elegant. But it was still a home. An institution. A place for rich people to come to die.
At the front desk, Nick checked the register. If Alex had appeared in the last few days, he hadn’t bothered to sign in. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Marla. A guard buzzed them through electronically locked French doors and Nick felt better. God, that place was a prison. No matter how it was dressed up.
Outside, a salt-laden breeze pushed a few clouds across the blue sky. Seagulls called and swooped at the glassy surface of the Bay and the air held an icy chill of winter. Crisp. Cold. Cutting.
“Conrad always was a miserable old bastard,” Nick said as they walked along a sidewalk to the parking lot.
“He’s ill.”
“And he wasn’t much better when he was healthy, believe me.”
At the door of his truck, Marla finally glanced up at him. She’d regained her composure to some extent, but two points of color still stained her cheeks. “The next time I get a brilliant idea to meet my relatives without an invitation, just shoot me, okay?” she suggested.
“I’ll try to remember.” Nick opened the door and Marla hitched herself onto the old bench seat.
Nick climbed behind the wheel and fired the engine. “He didn’t think you were Marla.”
“I caught that.” She snorted. “But then, can you blame him? Even I doubt it at times.” Squinting against the sunlight piercing the windshield, she added, “And he called me Kylie.” Her fingers drummed on the armrest as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Kylie.” The name sounded familiar. But why? Was it hers? No . . . it couldn’t be. Did she know someone with that name? She concentrated so hard, her eyebrows slammed together as she tried to recall a past that was beginning to appear to her. It was still shadowy and dark, as if veiled, the final curtain not yet lifted.
Nick sliced her a glance as he guided the truck toward the highway. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
“Yes—I mean, maybe.” Blowing out a breath, she reached for the purse she’d taken from her closet, found the sunglasses and slid them onto her nose. “It seemed . . . oh, I don’t know.” She wiggled her fingers as if trying to grasp something elusive, then concentrated so hard trying to recall anything about her life before the accident that her head ached. “It’s all a jumble in my mind, but I’m sure I’ve heard the name before . . . that . . . oh, this sounds crazy, but at some level, deep down, I felt that Conrad knew who I was more than I do. Isn’t that weird?” She rolled her eyes and cracked her window, letting in the salty air. “It’s so odd. Everything about my life seems out of kilter. Sometimes I don’t know what’s real and what’s not, but the animosity he felt for me, the pure hatred on his face, that seemed more like the truth than all the other things I’ve heard.”
“He wasn’t too keen on seeing you.”
“He hates me.”
“At least he does today,” Nick allowed.
Marla stared out the window, to the green hills. “So what’s with all this talk about how close I was with my father, how he showered me with gifts, how I was basically the light of his life? As far as I’m concerned it’s all fake and way overblown. Or maybe even downright wrong. Ever since I woke from the coma I’ve had this gut feeling, this intuition, that he and I didn’t see eye to eye. That we really didn’t like each other.” She slid Nick a look. “I guess that’s putting it mildly, huh?” She almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation. Except that it was too painful. The sorry truth was that she was related to so many people and felt connected to none. Except the baby and Nick. Not even her own daughter. Not her husband. “So much for fatherly affection,” she muttered, then asked, “Why did he think I’d been there earlier with Alex?”
“The nurse said he’s in and out of reality because of his drugs.” Nick shifted down as the truck took a sweeping corner where the road rimmed the Bay.
“Are you buying that?” She stared at him hard.
“I don’t know, but something’s not right.”
“Amen.”
“I guess we’ll ask Alex.”
“It should make interesting dinner conversation,” she said, then lapsed into silence. Her father thought her a fake, an interloper, an imposter. He acted as if she was someone else, someone who a woman he referred to as a whore had tried to pass off as his daughter. Did he dream it? Or was it part of his past?
“Did you know that most of Conrad’s estate will go to James when he dies?” Nick asked.
“The baby? My father’s estate goes to my son?” That was crazy.
“Yep.”