“I know I’ll lose.” For the first time Kylie noticed the lines of strain around her mother’s eyes, the tired slump of her thin shoulders.
“I wouldn’t give up,” Kylie declared brashly, condemning the woman who had borne her as weak. “Never.”
“Then you’re foolish. Or like your father.”
“Who is?”
“Conrad Amhurst. He’s married. Has a couple of kids with his wife.”
“And doesn’t want to be bothered with me,” Kylie had added, wounded to her soul. She’d known she had a father of course, but hadn’t realized he’d lived so close and that he never saw her, either by choice or circumstance. “What kind of a bastard is he?” she asked, then she cringed at the use of the very derogatory term she’d heard about herself.
“Powerful. Harsh. Unforgiving. Relentless.”
“He sounds like a jerk.”
“He is. But he did give me some money and then there were the hand-me-downs.”
“Crap! You mean . . . you mean those dresses you said you got at the church . . . that they were from . . .”
“His daughter. Marla.”
“His real daughter.”
“You are his real daughter,” her mother had said, a little of her old backbone resurfacing.
“No, Mom, I’m not. I’m just the bastard. As you said, an embarrassment.” But she’d listened to every word as Dolly explained everything then, about being a waitress at an exclusive club and being swept off her feet by the dashing, rich and very married man who had eventually gotten her pregnant. Dolly had known of his children and of a wife who, he claimed, bled him dry and would never ever consider divorce. Dolly had also learned that she hadn’t meant a whit to her lover. “He gave me a hundred thousand dollars,” she admitted.
“And you blew it.”
“We lived on it, damn it, Kylie.” Dolly angrily jabbed her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. “Someday you’ll understand.”
“Never. I’d never roll over and play dead like you did!” Kylie had gone to her bedroom, thrown open the closet door and hurled all her clothes on the bed, clothes with designer labels that, though a few years old, would rival and outdo any girls’ in her school. Skirts and sweaters and blouses that Kylie had worn self-consciously as they were so different from the jeans and T-shirts that her mother had bought at the discount stores.
“You have to know that you mean everything to me,” her mother had said, walking up behind her and wrapping her arms around Kylie’s waist as outrage burned through Kylie’s body, the sting of being unwanted biting deep. “I’ve always been proud of you and he should be, too. The odd thing is that you look so much like her, like Marla. The Amhurst genes run strong, I guess.”
Kylie had refused to cry but had decided to get even. With her father and with that snot of a privileged half sister. But first she had to meet them and to that end she’d devised a plan.
The first of many.
It hadn’t taken long. She was barely fifteen when she was able to sneak into the city. With the help of the telephone directory, Kylie had located the offices of Amhurst Limited and gained access as far as her father’s offices where a fussy secretary had bluntly told her that Mr. Amhurst was in meetings all day and far too busy a man to see her.
“Then I’ll wait,” Kylie had insisted and plopped down in a wingback chair in a reception area, while pretending interest in the Wall Street Journal. Men in business suits occupied the leather couches and fiddled with the clasps of their briefcases, only to be called one by one through the cherrywood doors emblazoned with gold letters that read, Conrad Amhurst, President. Kylie had waited until her bladder had been ready to burst.
At five minutes after five in the afternoon, she’d been ushered outside by a no-nonsense janitor who had flatly told her to go home.
She hadn’t. She’d parked herself on the bench across from the private parking lot. Chewing on red licorice and sipping a Coca-Cola, she watched as the expensive cars rolled away from their designated spaces and took off through the city. Finally, near dark, a sleek black town car with smoky windows purred out of the lot only to drive away. She’d known her father was in there, had seen a man’s profile, had imagined him locking eyes with her, only to turn from her.
As if he hated the sight of her.
She’d visited his country club, only to be told by a snooty receptionist that “members only” were allowed in. She’d left messages that were never answered, telephoned his office and home only to have no call returned. It was as if, to Conrad Amhurst, she didn’t exist.
Kylie didn’t give up.
One Sunday she had the confrontation she’d waited for.
She knew the church he attended, had seen him from afar, with his family, walking into the cathedral-like building one fog-shrouded spring Sunday. Kylie had worn one of Marla’s cast-off dresses, a deep green velvet that was too hot, but the nicest of the lot. She’d attended the service, sitting in a pew only a few rows back. Marla had seen her then, their eyes, so like each other’s, had locked for a few seconds. Marla was older, but her hair was the same red-brown as Kylie’s, her nose as straight, her chin a little sharper, her eyes the same green. It had been spooky, like looking into a mirror that was slightly off, the reflection not quite perfect. Victoria Amhurst had turned as if she’d sensed the intrusion into her perfect life, spied Kylie, whispered something to her husband and then quickly faced the altar, her back ramrod st
iff, not so much as another glance being tossed over her shoulder as the organist started to play and the congregation launched into the first hymn. She nudged her daughter and Marla, taking the cue, never looked over her shoulder again. But she knew Kylie was there, staring at her, Kylie had felt the other girl’s fascination, her curiosity.