She did the math. That would do it. She’d have enough to pay for the DNA testing. “You’re amazing, Kenneth. You have no idea.” She gave him a huge hug before he was swooped up by another guest.
Renzo stood and began to congratulate her, but she stopped him. “I know what you’re trying to say, and I appreciate it. I realize I have to figure this out on my own.”
The confusion in his face crushed her. He fixed her with a serious look, all shadow and gravity. “In meetings they say to stay on your own side of the street. For some reason, this has me all stirred up. I guess because all this—the building, the tenants, the history inside these walls—it means something to me. I know it affects you the same way.” He lifted both hands, then let them fall to his sides. “As a matter of fact, you mean something to me.”
Her breath caught in her throat and she looked away, overcome.
The pianist’s last note quivered in the air before dissipating. Renzo took a couple of steps back. “I’m sorry I veered into your lane there. I’m normally a much better driver.”
“Thanks.” If she had had the courage, she’d have let him know how much his concern meant to her, but he’d caught her off guard. And she had to get to Jack; there was no time to smooth things over. “I appreciate it, I really do. But I gotta go.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Bailey’s father sounded tired when she finally reached him at eight o’clock that night. Apparently, the fishing had been fruitless, or rather, fishless. Which, from past experience, meant his mood would be impatient and surly.
So she’d botched the explanation of her meeting with Fred Osborn and the DNA testing, all logic lost in a nervous dribble of words. Jack had been confused at first, and then wary, before she’d finally gotten around to the urgency of his taking a blood test to prove that they were, indeed, real Camdens.
“I’m not kidding, Dad. I hope you’ll consider doing this for me. For us.”
She’d learned to use consider from Tristan, which was employed when they wanted to push a client beyond their budgetary comfort zone. It softened the request, and almost everyone took the bait, believing they’d made a conscious choice, when in fact the decision had already been made for them.
“How much did you say this testing costs?”
“I didn’t. Because I am paying for it myself.”
“How much, though?” he insisted.
She told him.
“You’re going to blow a grand on the hopes that you land a bigger fish? Why on earth would you want to do that?”
She didn’t bother making a joke about the fish metaphor. “I have the money, and I don’t mind spending it on this. I know I’m right. I’m absolutely sure of it. There’s research and documentation to back it up.”
Of course, if the test came back negative, not only would she be out a grand, but there’d be no chance of getting any payment for all her work for Melinda, who’d be livid at Bailey’s workaround. She’d be right back at square one.
Through the receiver came labored breathing. “My father wanted nothing to do with that family, and for good reason. I regret the day I allowed your mother to get us back under their influence. I don’t see why neither of you are able to settle for what you already have.”
He spoke as if her mother were still alive. Which broke Bailey’s heart and pissed her off at the same time.
“We have two different perspectives.” She kept her voice even, trying to persuade him, not put him on the defensive any more than he already was. “The way I see it, and the way Mom saw it, was that it’s a big world out there. You and Granddad hid from it, and Mom and I didn’t.”
“It’s not a matter of hiding. You’ve been trying to run from me ever since you were in high school. Like you’re ashamed of me, who I am.”
She couldn’t deny that it wasn’t true, because it was. “I want more out of my life. What’s so wrong with that?”
“So go ahead and go after it.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. But I need you. The blood sample has to come from the male line: from Theodore Camden to Granddad to you.”
“Here’s what I don’t get: You disappear for months at a time, then call demanding me to prove I’m related to a family my father despised.”
The words stuck in her throat. “I was in rehab, Dad. I should have told you earlier, but I wasn’t sure how. I’m sorry.”
“When did you get out?”
“Last month.”
Silence. She pictured him shaking his head, his shoulders caving in under the weight of disappointment.
“You’re battling the same demons as my father. I saw what it cost him.”
He was skidding the conversation off topic, and she refused to be deterred. “Maybe there are some long-lost family members who deserve to be brought into the light, ones that your father never even knew about. I’ve been reading about the madhouse where Sara Smythe was sent to. It’s horrifying, the suffering she most likely endured. The woman who might very well be your grandmother.”
“What you’re doing here, trying to unravel the past, is no good.” His irritation radiated through the phone line. “Whatever happened back then, in madhouses or fancy apartment houses, has nothing to do with us, with you. I know who I am. I run an auto repair shop and when I have free time, I go out on the ocean and fish. That’s it, but it’s real. You, meanwhile, are chasing ghosts. Stop muddying your life up with all this crap.”
How dare he tell her what to do? First Renzo, now this. She might have made bad decisions in the past, but she was trying to make amends. In the meantime, there was a good chance she shared a bloodline with a woman who’d fought her own demons and lost. Bailey refused to let that happen to her, and Sara Smythe was the key to figuring out how. Certainly not through any of the men in her life, who had let her down when she’d needed them most. Jack was the one who’d retreated into a shell since his wife’s death, letting his daughter run amok in the city with no guidance, no refuge.
Her voice cracked, as it always did when she was livid. “I’ve admitted I’m an alcoholic. I’m going to meetings; I’ve been trying to stay sober. You may not have the same drinking problems, but I learned all about dry drunks in rehab. They’re withholding, negative, defensive. That’s you. So don’t think that you’re any better than me or Granddad. Or that you’ve escaped the past.”
For a few seconds, she couldn’t hear anything other than the blood pounding in her ears. Until it was replaced by the faint click of Jack hanging up and the dull murmur of a dead phone line.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
New York City, October 1885
“Where were you?”
Sara didn’t waste any time when Theo came in to work the next morning. She followed him into his office and closed the door. The air behind him smelled of sweat and alcohol, although he looked fine. Fresh, almost.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“Your wife was ill last night and there was no one there to take care of her. Your daughter was out in the hallway, the boy crying in his crib.”
With a deep sigh, Theo hung up his coat and hat on the coatrack. He didn’t bother answering right away, instead leafed through the stack of correspondence she’d put on the corner of his desk. “Has the check from Mr. Smith-Roberts arrived?”
The audacity of the question, and lack of response to her own, stunned.
“You are trying to change the subject?”
He rubbed his eyes, and for a brief moment a look of utter exhaustion crossed his features. “No, I am not trying to change the subject. Minnie needs to be sent back upstate, the doctor is insisting on it, and that sum will cover part of the funds to do so.”
“I see.” She sat down in the chair opposite him, still unwilling to offer any comfort. “Yes, it did come and I’ll deposit it today.”
He smiled and stared at her as if for the first time. “You are a goddess, Sara. I am sorry to put you through what you went through last night. I have tried so hard to keep you and my family separate, as I promised to do.”