A Deadly Cliche

they’ve worked themselves to the bone trying to do right by the man you see lying in this bed.” She sent Olivia a defiant, sidelong glance. “I might have gone overboard with the block print and the weird grammar, but I just wanted to get your attention and I succeeded. I’d do it all over again too, because you’re here and that’s what Willie wanted.” She straightened a corner of bed sheet. “I only hope he wakes up one more time so he can see you in the flesh.”

Neither woman spoke for a moment. Olivia listened to the contradictory sounds of her father’s labored breath and the industrious, steady clicking of Betty’s needles.

“How long has it been since he was lucid?” she asked quietly, deciding that both Hudson and Betty were right. The letter and the doubt had put her through hell, but she was here. She hadn’t missed seeing her father, and if she was lucky, there’d still be time to find out the answers to the questions she’d waited her entire life to ask.

“Two days.” Betty sighed. “He had some broth this morning, but even then, with his eyes open, he wasn’t seeing anything. He’s drifting between worlds, confusing the past and the present, dreams and reality. Mumbles all sorts of fishing tales and whispers about some little dog and a storm.” Gathering up her crochet materials, she rose. “I’ll leave you alone. I’m sure you’ve got things to say and I truly think he’ll hear you. I’ve seen this kind of thing before.” She paused at the threshold. “I believe he’s been waiting for you so he can let go. Talk to him, honey. It’s not too late.”

Olivia accepted the counsel with a nod, but when the door shut behind Betty, she found she had nothing to say. She reached for Haviland, who had sniffed every nook and cranny of the room and was now sprawled at Olivia’s feet. He raised his head as she stroked the curly fur on his flank, a question in his ale brown eyes.

“No, Captain. It’s not time to go.”

She stared at her father for a long time, wondering in angry silence about his life on Okracoke. He’d landed on its flat shores, been received and cared for by the locals, and had come to marry one. Olivia felt freshly abandoned, but most of all she felt betrayed. She believed he might have lost his memory for a time, but eventually he had remembered that he had a daughter and that the woman he had loved was dead. He’d simply decided to do his best to forget them both.

Suddenly, Olivia wanted evidence of his other life. Assuming the room had been her father’s before his illness, she began to open drawers. It never occurred to her that it wasn’t right for her to rifle through his belongings. She’d had no chance to lay claim to this man for thirty years, but now that she was here, Olivia planned to exercise all the authority that a blood tie granted her.

If she’d expected to find a neat file of important documents, personal letters, or photographs, she was to be disappointed. Her father’s room was Spartan. The drawers and closet contained clothes. There were a few books and magazines, but Olivia’s father had never been much of a reader. She found a wooden toolbox filled with his whittling tools in the dresser and on top of a nightstand, a tin of tobacco, matches, and a pipe. The walls were decorated with vintage blueprints of famous sailing vessels.

Frustrated, Olivia paced around the room, stealing nervous glances at her father as though he might awaken to find her snooping through his things. She was certain he wouldn’t approve of that. Like her, he’d always been fiercely protective of his privacy.

“Didn’t anyone matter to you? Isn’t there a single piece of evidence that you shared your life with other human beings?” she addressed the motionless form in the bed. Strangely, it was all she could say to him. She no longer felt like ranting at him, accusing him, or trying to make him feel guilty for leaving her. She just wanted to know who he was, one adult to another, and it was far too late for that.

Olivia paused at the window, which faced west toward Oyster Bay. She wondered if Rawlings was back at the station tying up loose ends, how Laurel was handling Steve, whether Harris had been missed at his work meeting, and if Millay truly believed Olivia’s blood test meant that she was pregnant.

“I’m going to have to clarify that little detail as soon as I get back or Rawlings will think I’m carrying Flynn’s child,” Olivia remarked drily to Haviland.

Kneeling down to pet the poodle, Olivia furtively stuck her arm under her father’s bed. Her hand came in contact with something solid. It was a struggle to pull the object out with only one arm, but once her fingers closed around a handle she was able to drag it into the light.

It was an old suitcase. Olivia tried to pop open the central latch but it was locked.

Undeterred, she grabbed one of her father’s whittling knives and began working on the lock. It was difficult going with only one hand and she cursed aloud more than once, but eventually, the knife blade pried the lock loose and the latch snapped open.

She wasn’t prepared for what she found. Inside the suitcase, stacked in a tidy pile and tied with a piece of string, was a collection of letters written by Olivia’s grandmother. Olivia read the first one, which dated back to her first year in boarding school. Her grandmother had written to her son-in-law about Olivia’s recent activities. She’d even included a school photo of Olivia in her uniform, looking lovely and poised but far too serious for a girl her age. And so it went. Every six months there were updates, photographs, report cards, and occasionally, one of Olivia’s charcoal sketches or a copy of a poem she’d written for English class.

Olivia was floored by the realization that her grandmother had been communicating with her father throughout Olivia’s childhood. A fresh, hot wave of anger swept through her. Why hadn’t her grandmother told her that her father was alive? She’d let her grow up believing she was an orphan. It was so cruel, so heartless.

“I bet you didn’t want Daddy to get his hands on the Limoges trust fund,” she hissed at her grandmother’s perfect cursive. “You never liked him. You never wanted him to marry my mother. I bet you told him he could never raise me properly and he agreed. Maybe you were even right about that, but to let me believe, for all those years, that I had no family except for you . . .” Tears burned her eyes. “How could you do that to a little girl?”

Olivia sat very still for several minutes, trying to calm the cyclone of thoughts in her head. It was as if all she had known had been turned inside out, yet there was no going back. The past was over and done and the present was steadily slipping away.

She continued to look through the contents of the suitcase.

After her grandmother died, the letters ceased, but Olivia’s history lived on in yellowed newspaper clippings from the days in which the media followed her every move, hoping to catch the young and beautiful heiress doing something scandalous. Mostly, they detailed her presence at a museum gala or opening night at the Met, focusing on her escorts, who were usually handsome executives of the Fortune 500 variety.

There was even a clipping from the Oyster Bay Gazette announcing Olivia’s revitalization projects downtown. Lastly, there was an object wrapped in an old towel and secured by two rubber bands.

With care, Olivia removed the rubber bands and unrolled the towel on her thighs. A pair of metal objects fell to the floor. Olivia recognized them right away. They were her parents’ wedding bands. Forever tied together on a piece of frayed blue yarn, they’d been tucked in a fold inside the towel.

Olivia clutched the rings briefly to her chest, cherishing the relics of happier times and then set them on the ground in order to continue unwrapping the towel. Peeling back the final fold, one of her father’s carvings was revealed. Olivia inhaled sharply, her eyes darting over the lines and indentations, the contours that formed the shape of a young girl standing in the shadow of a lighthouse, her hand shielding her eyes as she stared outward, searching, searching.

It was her girl-self and the lighthouse was not Okracoke’s, but Oyster Bay’s. The beacon that had guided William Wade home time after time after time.

“I’ve been so close!” she yelled at her father. “Why?”

Olivia began to cry. “Why didn’t you come?”

Cradling the carving in her hand, she sat in Betty’s chair and, after calming down, began to read her grandmother’s letters out loud. She relived a dozen years, explaining her version of events to her father. She spoke for over two hours, until the sun dipped below the waves.

Turning on a single lamp, she eventually stopped talking. She pulled her chair closer to the window and then eased it open a few inches, inviting the ocean breeze into the room.

Her father seemed to breathe easier as soon the sound of the water became audible. The rhythmic chant of the waves was faint, but to a man who’d lived a lifetime in tune to their music, it was enough to coax him into a more restful sleep.