alike coming in for espresso and cappuccino and her grandmother’s sandwiches and pasta salads. Her mother, Anna, worked at the store in her teenage years.
That was how she met Tony Skouras, who had a second home and moored a pleasure boat in Bodega Bay. He seemed like the perfect gentleman. Anna knew he was married, but she was young and swept away.
Skouras supported his illegitimate baby financially until Anna married a nice working man, a roofer. After that he sent several checks a year anyway, for extras, nice Christmas presents, and piano lessons. Teresa always knew the roofer wasn’t her real father, but she loved him. And when she met her biological father in her last year of high school, she was as charmed, in a very different way, as her mother had been. Skouras was mannerly and interested in her. He was willing to pay for whatever higher education Teresa could win through her grades and aptitude testing. She went to college back east, then to grad school in London. Tess, as she became known in England, stayed in touch with Skouras. She sent him notes and small gifts on holidays. Of course, she’d become aware of who this man really was, where his success in business came from. But like many middle-class civilians, she had a romanticized view of organized crime. She never stopped writing him notes and sending small gifts on holidays. She revered him.
“The truly ugly side of that, I didn’t see that for a long time,” she said. “My father made it possible for me to become who I am, and not just financially. I love my mother and her family, but they were simple people. None of them had any success in school, or much in business. It was my father who gave me my intellect. I wasn’t brilliant like Adrian, granted, but my mind… it was a good deal more than my stepfather could have given me.”
I realized I’d been thinking of her as Tony Skouras’s daughter, not Adrian Skouras’s half sister, but clearly that was equally true.
She added, “I briefly considered taking his last name, but my family in Bodega Bay… they were my home. I’m part of them.”
“Tess of the D’Agostinos.”
“Are you commonly this acerbic, or is it your way of making yourself feel unscathed after everything that’s happened?”
She’d nailed me. I lowered my face to my steamed milk. Actually, I’d decided I didn’t like it, and had been scoping for a trash can in which to discreetly deposit it behind Tess’s back, but now it made a good diversion.
She went on: “I know it’ll be particularly hard for you to sympathize, given what you’ve been through at my father’s hand, but an inheritance like that… your very genetic material, the stuff of who you are, that’s a big gift, and hard to reject outright.” She reconsidered. “I mean, it’s hard to reject outright the person who gave it to you, no matter what you’ve learned about his private life.”
“After last night,” I said, “do you think you’re any closer?”
Her gaze went to my bandaged hand. She said, “When I walked into that room… Hailey, I never saw anything like that before.”
“You seemed very calm.”
“I was acting,” she said. “I didn’t feel it.”
“How did you know where we were, anyhow?”
“My father was lucid in the hospital, between the first and second heart attack,” Tess said. “He must have suspected he didn’t have much time, and he was unusually honest with me. About the baby, everything that was going on. I think he hoped I’d understand, that I’d see that this was about family, about our line continuing.”
That brought up an interesting point: “You’re his daughter, and you’re obviously young enough to have children. Why didn’t he hold out hope that you’d give him an heir?”
Tess smiled, a private, interior smile, and lifted a shoulder. “I’m thirty-two and never married,” she said. “I suppose he’d simply given up on that option.” She paused. “At any rate, I knew the overall situation because of my father, and then Mr. Costa was able to tell me where they’d taken you, because Joe Laska had been keeping him apprised.”
Babyface. Joseph Laska. I filed that name away for future reference. “Are you really thinking of taking over your father’s businesses?”
“I’m considering it.”
“Tough line.”
“I know,” she said.
“What about you, what are your plans?” she said. “If you don’t mind my asking. I’ll understand if you still don’t feel comfortable enough with me to have me know where you are.”
“Miss D’Agostino-”
“Tess,” she corrected again.
“I’ve learned something from all this,” I said. “I’m not the kind of person who can hide much of anywhere. I have a birthmark on my face and a nickname in Latin tattooed on my back, and now”-I held up my hand-“only nine fingers. Not to mention, my fingerprints are on record and my DNA is in the Pentagon’s battlefield registry. For good or bad, I’ve got to live my life out in the open.”
“The battlefield registry?” she echoed. “You’re a veteran? At your age?”
“I was at West Point.”
“And then what?”
“I left.”
“That’s obviously not the whole truth, Hailey. A West Point cadet represents a substantial financial investment by the U.S. government. They don’t just let you walk away from that.”
“No,” I told her. “They told me to walk away.”
“Why?” she asked. “Oh, I see it on your face already: It’s another story you’re not ready to tell me.”
“Don’t take it personally,” I said. “I don’t tell anyone.”
We had reached the Fairmont but stopped outside, as if the conversation was too important to carry inside among other people and their light and noise.
“I’m just trying to understand you,” she said. “I meant what I said earlier. When I walked into that theater, I’ve never seen anyone behaving the way you did before.”
“I wasn’t behaving any particular way. I was being held down on a table.”
“Don’t be flippant,” she said. “You went to great lengths, and let yourself be tortured, for the son of two dead strangers. You weren’t even saving the boy’s life; he was in no physical danger from my father. You nearly died to preserve his moral and spiritual welfare.”
“But I didn’t die,” I said. “Look, I don’t know if I can explain my behavior in a way you can understand. Have you read the Book of Jonah?”
“Jonah?” she repeated, her brown-gray gaze curious on my face.
“Yeah,” I said. “Even if you have, read it again. That’s the best I can do.”
epilogue
DECEMBER 26
If I’d cared to make a list of the things I’d lost in the past six months, suffice it to say it would be extensive. Every piece of paper that documented my identity-driver’s license, passport, even my birth certificate. Two guns, the Airweight and the SIG. Two cars, one of which I didn’t even own. And, of course, my finger.
What hurt most was the loss of the things I’d asked Shay to get for me, the
