The Unknown Daughter. Anna DeStefano
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had kept her tossing and turning for hours. Once she’d nodded off, she’d slept like the dead until after eleven.
Nurse Able, according to her name badge, stepped around the nurses’ station and attempted to lead Carrinne into the visitors’ lounge. “I’m sorry, Ms. Wilmington, but we only allow one visitor at a time. If you’ll just wait over here.”
“But I’m his granddaughter.” Carrinne evaded the nurse’s grasp.
“Oh, I know who you are, dear.” The nurse clasped her hands in front of her and smiled. “I’m sure you don’t remember, but I used to change your diapers every Sunday when I worked in the church nursery. You’re just as beautiful now as you were then.”
Carrinne fought to keep her eyes from rolling heavenward. Hadn’t anyone else moved away from this place in the last seventeen years?
First, the clerk at the motel had been one of the varsity football players all the cheerleaders had fawned over back in high school. Then the volunteer at the welcome desk downstairs had turned out to be the lunch-room lady who’d sneaked Carrinne extra pudding in elementary school. Now Nurse Able.
“When can I see my grandfather?” She tried to smile, she really did.
“Oh, call me Glinda. It sure has been a long—”
“It’s really important that I see him as soon as possible.” Carrinne let her voice roughen, shamelessly harnessing the emotion swimming ever closer to the surface of what used to be her composure. “It’s been so long, I don’t want to waste another moment.”
“Of course you don’t,” Glinda replied. She took Carrinne’s hand. “Tragedy brings us together in the most difficult way.”
“It would really mean a lot if you could get me in to see him now.”
“I’m sure you have a lot to talk about.” She squeezed Carrinne’s fingers. “Let me go see what’s keeping Mr. Brimsley.”
“Brimsley?”
“Why, yes. He usually stops by on his lunch break. He has your grandfather’s power of attorney, you know. Sometimes they meet for hours, going over all kinds of paperwork and whatnot. I can’t tell you how many times the doctors have warned your grandfather to slow down, but he says he wants to stay up-to-date—”
“You said you could check on what was keeping Mr. Brimsley?” Every minute that man was with her grandfather was a minute too long.
“Of course, dear. Let me see what I can do.”
Carrinne watched her go, clenching her fists and trying not to stomp with impatience as she stared down the brightly lit hallway. The reality of her surroundings seeped through her frustration. The antiseptic smell. The beige and green tiles on the floor. The hum of hushed voices and whirring medical equipment. This could just as easily be a hallway at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, her home away from home for the last few months.
Her need for Oliver’s assistance was the only thing short of a medical emergency that could have coaxed her into yet another hospital. And running into Eric had red-lined the necessity to get what she’d come for and get the heck out of Oakwood. She needed her grandfather’s help now. Whatever it took.
Glinda returned, her affronted scowl dampening what Carrinne had assumed was chronic perkiness. “That man! He—”
“I’ll take it from here, nurse.” Brimsley appeared behind Glinda, his stern frown directed at Carrinne.
“You let me know if you need anything,” Glinda said to Carrinne as she marched to her station. Her eyes shot daggers at Brimsley the entire way.
“You do have a way with people, don’t you?” Carrinne’s skin crawled as the lawyer sized her up. He could still make her feel like the six-year-old he’d once caught doodling all over some important business contracts he’d laid out for Oliver.
“I want to know what you’re going to say to him.” Brimsley pointed a finger for emphasis. “Your grandfather’s a very sick man, and he doesn’t need you unsettling things even more.”
“Unsettling things? This meeting was your idea.”
“Because I want whatever you’ve got to say out of the way with the least amount of stress to Oliver. The first thing he heard when he woke this morning was that you were back in town. He was in a frenzy when I got here, demanding that I track you down and bring you over. Though why he cares after all these years, I can’t imagine.”
Oh, but she could. It was too much to ask that her grandfather would dismiss her out of hand as Brimsley had. A cold, disinterested Oliver Wilmington would have been so much easier to handle. But true to form, as soon as he’d heard she was in town, he’d expected her to present herself upon demand.
And here she was.
“What I have to say won’t take long.” She reined in the urge to run and moved to pass Brimsley. “So if you don’t mind—”
He grabbed her arm. “Why are you back?”
Yanking away, she looked him up and down. “Maybe I’m here to remind myself why I fled this insufferable place and everything connected to it. Maybe I needed a good dose of Southern bad manners to remind me how good I have it up north.”
A giggle to her right caught Carrinne’s attention. Glinda smothered another laugh as she straightened the files scattered across the station counter. With a wink to Carrinne, the nurse answered the phone that never seemed to stop ringing.
Carrinne turned on her heels and headed down the hall, mentally pulling herself together. Her steps slowed as she neared her grandfather’s room. She’d left Oliver Wilmington’s warped brand of control and manipulation behind years ago. Since then, she’d proven that she had the nerve and the brains to succeed when he’d been so sure she would fail without him. She was successful and sophisticated, where she’d once been painfully timid and shy. She’d earned the right to face him with confidence.
Instead, she felt only dread.
She needed Oliver’s help. And that gave him far more leverage than good sense told her was wise.
“I WANT TO SEE my great-grandchild,” Carrinne’s grandfather repeated from his hospital bed.
In the five minutes since she’d stepped into his room, Oliver Wilmington had refused to talk about anything else. His imperious tone was everything she remembered, though time and illness had done their dirty work on his diminished frame. He struggled for every breath.
“And I’ve already told you,” she repeated. “That’s not possible.”
“I’m an old man. I’m paralyzed down one side, and my heart’s giving out. I’m dying.” He pushed himself up and yanked at the sheet, as impatient with his infirmities as he’d always been with anything he couldn’t bend to his will. “I think I’m entitled to meet my only great-grandchild before I go.”
“Well, I’m thirty-three, and I’m dying.” She threw her purse into the guest chair, watching her revelation sink in as she played the only ace up her sleeve. Oliver lapsed into silence for the first time since she’d gotten there. “Does that mean I win?”
CHAPTER THREE
“WHAT ARE YOU talking about?” No longer fussing with the sheet, Oliver grew unnaturally still.
“Primary sclerosing cholangitis.” A chill raced down Carrinne’s spine as she said the full diagnosis out loud. “It’s chronic, and it’s degenerative. And if I don’t find a liver donor in the next year or two, it’ll most likely be fatal. They’ve put me on the national transplant registry, but my rare blood factors make the chance of finding a match outside of the immediate family minuscule. I’m hoping my father will agree to be a living donor.”
“Is that what this is all about?”
Carrinne