They both looked up at him in surprise, barely glancing at Sydney where she stood in the doorway.
“What is the meaning of this?” Caro asked, her voice cool.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Griffin replied.
Hollister reached out a trembling hand and picked up the picture closest to him. He made a harumphing noise and then let the picture drop. “Is that the best—” his words were cut off by a series of hacking coughs “—you can do? A thirty-year-old picture?”
Griffin stood at the foot of his father’s bed, his hands propped on his hips, staring down at his parents. There was a slight tremble in Caro’s chin and she appeared to have lost all the cruel bravado that had carried her through lunch.
He felt only the slightest twinge of remorse. He didn’t want to do this, but he wasn’t the one who had started this, either.
“This thirty-year-old-picture is of the woman I believe wrote the letter. Dalton believed it, too. She worked here as a nanny when I was an infant. And I refuse to believe that neither of you remember anything about her. Especially since she appears to have stalked Hollister and stolen a family heirloom. Mother, if Sharlene is to be believed, before this girl—Vivian—disappeared forever, she had you so worked up, you demanded that Sharlene call the police and have her arrested. The idea that neither of you remember her at all is so preposterous as to be laughable.”
For a long moment no one spoke. Hollister was glaring at Griffin, and the enmity in his gaze was strong enough to abolish the illusion that he was a fragile man. Caro had gone as white as Hollister’s hospital-issued bed linens.
Finally, Griffin said, “I want some answers, and you should think very carefully before you give them. Because these may be the last words you speak to me.”
Hollister gave a snort of disbelief. Caro’s hands twitched nervously on the newspaper, causing it to rustle. Then she carefully folded the paper up and stood, placing it on the seat of the chair before crossing to look out the windows at the sprawling green lawns.
“This is all your father’s fault.”
“Of course it…is,” Hollister gasped out through his coughing. “You always bl-bla-blame me. For everything.”
Caro threw back her head and laughed. A desperate, maniacal laugh that seemed to echo through the room. “That’s because it is always your fault. But this time especially.” She spun to glare at her husband. “Why couldn’t you just let it go? Why couldn’t you just get the letter, feel the gut-wrenching sense of betrayal and just accept the fact that there’s someone out there you don’t have under your thumb? That’s what you were supposed to do, damn it!”
Hollister looked at his wife, blinking in surprise. For the first time—maybe in his entire life—his expression wasn’t arrogant and defiant. Instead, it was confused. “What do you mean?” He coughed again. “What I was supposed to do?”
And suddenly, Griffin got it. He understood what should have been glaringly obvious right from the very beginning. All the tension washed out of his body and he bent his neck, dropping his head forward and shaking it back and forth. “Mother, what did you do?”
“Caro?” Hollister asked, his voice sounding strangely hollow.
She turned back to the window, wrapping her arms tightly around her thin body, which suddenly looked frail, too. “I never meant for any of this to happen.” She sent a pleading look over her shoulder at Hollister. “I just wanted to punish you. To hurt you like you’d done me so many times. And I knew it would drive you crazy, not knowing more about your daughter.”
“So you sent the letter,” Griffin said flatly. He stared at his mother, but for a long moment, she said nothing at all. Finally, he closed his eyes and scrubbed a hand down his face. “For the love of God, can’t you be honest about at least this? Can’t you—”
“I did.” Her tone was as flat as his. “I never imagined what he would do. I never dreamed it would come to this.”
“But when it did, when he first called us all into this room, showed us the letter and lay out the challenge, why not just come clean then?”
She whirled back to face them, her expression desperate. “Because I’d lost everything! He had cut me out of his will already. All I had was the hope that you’d find the girl, get everything and take pity on me.”
“Mother, you—”
“Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked trying to get you clues? How hard it was to keep Dalton off the right trail? How complicated this has been to try to feed you information without revealing how much I knew?”
Caro’s voice was rising steadily toward hysteria. Griffin just stood there, shaking his head slowly back and forth. He was so tired of his mother’s manipulations. If just once she’d stood up to Hollister, maybe he could feel more sympathy for her. But over and over again, he’d watched his mother sacrifice her pride, her dignity and her children to her own greed. She would never stand up to Hollister because doing so might jeopardize the status quo. Even this one tiny rebellion she’d tried to hide and bury beneath a wealth of lies. Another woman would have divorced Hollister long ago, but Caro was either too proud or too greedy, Griffin wasn’t sure which.
Hollister’s expression had sharpened into bitter distaste. “Caro, you ignorant twit,” he said.
All three of them turned and stared at him. It was the same phrase the letter had used, and Griffin felt another pang of sympathy for Caro. No matter how manipulative and mean she might sometimes be, she didn’t deserve to have her husband speak to her like that. Ever. Let alone in front of her son.
Griffin turned his back on his father and spoke to his mother, his voice softer now. “Mother, is there any truth to the letter at all? Does Hollister have a missing daughter, or did you just make it all up?”
Caro clenched and unclenched her hands in front of her chest, the tears in her eyes now spilling over. “Vivian really was Dalton’s nanny. She really did give birth to a girl and I believe that girl is Hollister’s child. Why else would Vivian have been so obsessed with Hollister? Why else would she have taken his mother’s ring?”
“She could have just been angry that you fired her. Did you think of that?”
“No,” Caro shook her head. “If you’re angry, you take something valuable. You steal a thousand dollars’ worth of silverware that no one will notice until Christmas. You take the five hundred-dollar bills off the dresser. I wasn’t wearing either ring that day. She overlooked my engagement ring with its eight-thousand-dollar diamond as well as probably ten grand in other jewelry, all so she could take Hollister’s damn heirloom. That’s either stupid or crazy.”
He turned back to his father. “Okay then, it’s on you. Did you sleep with that young woman?”
Hollister didn’t even look at the picture. “Of course I did. But Vee turned out to be crazier than a June bug in July. Following me back here. Hiring on as the nanny. I refused to see her.”
“So this girl, Vivian, Vee, you never even knew she was pregnant, did you?”
“If I had known, do you think we’d be having this conversation now? But don’t you start thinking you’ve won, buddy boy. Identifying the mother was never what this challenge was about. I don’t care who sent that letter.” His long speech caught up with him and he once again dissolved into a fit of coughing. When he spoke again, his voice was thin. “You have to find the girl.”
“No. No, I don’t.” Griffin looked at his father first and then back to his mother, once again shaking his head. “But if Cooper wants to, this will give him a place to start.”
“What are you saying, boy?”
“I’m out,” Griffin said simply.
“You’re what?” Sydney asked. It was the first time she’d spoken in the entire conversation and everyone looked at her. Caro still looked tearful and broken. Hollister looked like he hadn’t even realized she was there. Griffin turned and smiled at her.
“I’m done. Just like Dalton. I’m done looking for the heiress. I’m done working for Cain Enterprises. I’m tired of being a part of this sick, dysfunctional family. So I’m done.” He walked back to where Sydney stood beside the door and held out his hand. She put her hand in his automatically, even though she knew she couldn’t hold it long.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
She let him lead her out of his parents’ house. He moved so fast it was like he was fleeing.
She stumbled along, taking three steps for every two of his. He knew he was walking too fast for her, but he also knew she’d be able to keep up. And he just wasn’t willing to stop until they were well clear of the house, crossing the lawn back to his car. Then she dug in her heels and tugged her hand from his.
“Wait. Griffin, wait.”
Griffin turned to look back at Sydney, half expecting to see that she’d stopped because she’d lost a shoe or something. But instead, she was just standing there under one of the sprawling live oaks that draped over his parents’ lawn.
“What?” he asked. He wanted to keep moving. To get into his car, slam it into gear and tear down the highway. It was the same adrenaline fest he’d experienced earlier today, but instead of being fueled by anger, this time it was the sweet heady buzz of freedom.
Sydney took a step back from him. Almost as if she was afraid of him. “You’re making a mistake.”
“What?” This time it was flat-out confusion. What did she mean a mistake?
“Giving up on the search. Quitting Cain Enterprises. It’s a mistake. You need to go back in and tell them you’ve changed your mind.”
He let out a bark of laughter. “Are you crazy? Did you hear that conversation in there? I’m not going to change my mind. I quit.”
“You can’t quit. You can’t leave Cain Enterprises.”