Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
It takes another twenty-four hours before I can sit up.
The nurse adjusts the pillow at my back. The shower switches off. Silas is showering in the bathroom in my room. He wouldn’t leave, apparently, not even to bathe.
“Human body is incredible, isn’t it, hon?” The kind nurse asks. “You lost so much blood. Neither your father nor your husband were a match or I’m sure they’d have given all of theirs to save you. Now that husband of yours,” she pauses, glances at the door. “I’d tell you to hold on to that one, but I don’t think he has any intention of letting you go.”
“My dad wasn’t a match?” I ask, not sure why I’m caught on that.
The bathroom door opens, and Silas steps out. His hair is wet, and his beard is gone. I smile to see him, and she never gets a chance to answer as he walks to my side, a cloud of steam behind him.
The nurse looks at him, then turns back to me and gives me a wink before leaving, telling us she’ll be right back with lunch.
“You smell better,” I tell Silas.
He smiles. “How do you feel?”
“Okay.” He sits down. “Tell me what happened now. All of it.”
His face darkens. “We don’t have to—”
“I want to know, Silas.”
“Hamish is gone.”
I nod sadly. “Ethan killed him. I’m so sorry about that. How did he know where I was?”
“Your phone, I think. He must have been able to track it.”
“That’s why he gave it back to me, isn’t it?”
“I think so.”
“It was really him? To kill his dad?”
Silas nods. “He confessed as much. They’re doing a mental evaluation. Sly did a number on him. He had it worse than I did, really.”
“God. How sad it all is.”
Silas draws a deep breath in. “Enough about Ethan.”
“Silas, what were you burning?”
“What?”
“That night I walked in on you at the fireplace at Nigella’s. You said you were lighting a fire, but you were burning something. I got the papers out after and was going to ask you but never had a chance. Ethan had taken them.”
“Ethan?” Silas’s face darkens.
“From what I could make out, they were medical papers about my mom and dad. Ethan had taken them, and he told me I needed to see something, but he never had the chance to tell me what. I tried to get the gun from him, and he knocked me out and then…”
Someone knocks on the door just as Silas opens his mouth, and we both turn to find my dad peer into the room.
“Knock, knock.”
“Dad!”
He walks inside, and he’s carrying a giant bouquet of balloons in a rainbow of colors. I can’t help but smile at them. “You look good, Phee.” He comes over to kiss my cheek.
Silas takes the balloons and ties them to the back of a chair. My dad reaches into his pocket to retrieve my eyeglass case.
“Picked these up on my way,” he says and hands me my glasses. “Police cleared the brownstone.”
I feel sad at the memory of Hamish lying on the floor, dying. The nurse comes in pushing a tray table and my dad turns to her. She greets him and I watch him while Silas watches me, and thoughts circle my mind. My dad wanting to burn down the house to burn those papers, so I’d never find out what they’d said he’d done. My dad still afraid of being found after my mom died. Still afraid my grandfather would take me from him. The Type A circled in red sharpie on my mom’s medical record. Her blood type. The nurse saying my dad wasn’t a match.
No. That’s nothing. It’s not so unusual. Is it?
Ethan casually questioning whether or not we could be sure Horatio Hart was my father at all.
“Are you all right?” Silas asks me as the nurse leaves and my dad makes some comment about the quality of hospital food.
I meet my dad’s eyes. I look like my mom. Exactly like her. I haven’t inherited a single physical trait from my father.
Dad smiles warmly at me, his eyes welling up and I look from him to Silas and my heart is full to overflowing.
Some things are better left unknown.
Maybe Silas was right all those years ago.
It doesn’t matter what was on those sheets of paper. None of it matters.
I look up to Silas.
“I’m perfect.”
EPILOGUE
SILAS
6 months later
Gordon Carlisle-Bent is a formidable old man. When I take her to that beach to marry her properly, he’s there, medical staff in tow, the three of them looking more worn out than their patient. He barks instructions at them as they carry him and his wheelchair to the waterfront, where he insists they take off his shoes so he can feel the water on his bare feet.
I stand watching, shaking my head.
Father Emiliano is at my side. He’ll perform the ceremony. Lourdes and Nigella will witness.