A Deadly Cliche

hung limply down her back and her watery blue eyes were wary. Glancing at Haviland, she placed a protective hand on her swollen abdomen.

“Are you Kim Salter?”

The woman nodded. “You must be Olivia. My husband said you would probably come.” Her tone was apologetic. She pointed at Olivia’s sling. “What happened to you?”

“That’s not important.” Olivia clenched her jaw, her blue eyes darkening with intensity. She disliked being short with the woman, especially since she was both tired and pregnant, but it couldn’t be helped. “I came to see my father and I want to see him now.”

“I’ll get Hudson.” Kim turned and hurried through a swing door leading into the kitchen.

Olivia didn’t wait around for Hudson Salter to emerge from within. She didn’t trust the man and she didn’t want to give him the chance to manipulate her in any way.

Bursting into the kitchen, she found him boiling a pot of stone crab claws while a little girl carefully cut a lemon into tidy wedges. Hudson, whose back was to the door, had been speaking to his wife but immediately broke off and swung around to face Olivia. His cheeks were flushed from the steam billowing out of the stockpot and his eyes were hooded and unreadable. He glanced between Olivia and Haviland and then wiped his hands on his apron.

“Caitlyn,” he said in a deep, authoritative tone. “Take those lemons out to the bar. Kim, you go on too.”

Kim seemed about to protest, but a steely glare from her husband silenced her. Putting a gentle arm around Caitlyn’s bony shoulders, she led the girl out of the kitchen. They both gave Haviland a wide berth.

“I suppose we need to come to terms before you’ll let me see my father,” Olivia stated, dropping her purse on an unused cutting board. She pulled out her checkbook and wiggled it impatiently. “How much?”

Hudson was clearly taken aback. “This isn’t the time to talk about money. I’ve gotta fill this order and then I’ll bring you upstairs. And for the record, I don’t like animals in my kitchen. I take pride in my cooking.” He shot Haviland a distasteful look and then fixed his gaze on Olivia again. “Your daddy’s been sleeping most of the time. He’s pretty doped on morphine. Got a local lady to watch him while we work. He doesn’t have much life left in him now.” His voice had suddenly lost its edge. “You should expect the worst.”

Olivia put her checkbook away and watched Hudson finish with the crab claws. After draining them, he dumped them into a bowl and then untied his apron. “Follow me.”

“As you might imagine, I have many questions,” Olivia said, struggling to remain civil.

Hudson continued walking. “He started getting sick about three months back. It came on real quick. Got a bunch of scans on the mainland and found out about the cancer. Those tests ’bout bankrupted us. Kim asked him if there was anything he wanted, you know, before it was all over, and he wanted us to find this lady named Olivia Limoges. So we got on a computer and tracked you down.”

Following him through a hallway connecting the restaurant to the first floor of the house, Olivia tried to absorb what Hudson had said. “He asked about me?” She hated how much it mattered to her that her father had initiated the chain of events that had led her to Okracoke.

“Yeah. First we ever heard about you—that he had a daughter.”

“And how long have you known him?”

Hudson gave a wry chuckle. “My whole life, lady.”

Olivia didn’t answer. She was trying to rein in her anger, but failed. “So you found me and someone else decided to blackmail me into coming out here just in time for my father’s last days on earth?”

Hudson stopped and turned to face her. “I didn’t send you that letter. Kim and I were going back and forth over how to tell you about your daddy, but Betty did it for us, behind our backs.”

“Who the hell is Betty?” Olivia demanded.

“She’s his nurse. The woman we hired to take care of him when we’ve gotta work.” He frowned. “I don’t blame you for being mad, but she swears she did it because it’s his dying wish. She didn’t care how she had to make it happen, she just wanted you here.”

Olivia rolled her eyes. “Feed me another lie. She could have just called me. Why did she ask for cash?”

Hudson dropped his gaze to the ground. “For us. This whole place is going down like a ship with a cracked hull. Betty’s known Kim and me since we were in diapers. She delivered Caitlyn. She’s our closest family friend.” He reached out his hand to touch Olivia’s arm, but he let it hover in the air near her shoulder without making contact. “I’m sorry about how you ended up here, but you’re here, and that’s what matters now.”

Every muscle in Olivia’s body constricted when Hudson put his hand on the knob of the guest room at the very end of the hall. Olivia keenly wished there were no witnesses to this moment, but she knew she had no control over the situation. Pushing aside her dread and fear, she followed Hudson inside, unable to see around his broad back.

“How’s he doing?” Hudson asked an older woman seated in a chair against the left wall. She was crocheting a pastel blanket and watching a cooking program on television.

Olivia heard genuine concern behind Hudson’s question and she knew he had told her the truth. The woman in the chair was the blackmailer. Hudson was just a cook trying to keep his family afloat while an old man slowly died in one of his rooms.

“Same as this morning,” the woman answered. Putting her needles aside, she switched off the TV and scrutinized Olivia. “This his daughter?”

Hudson grunted in assent and stepped aside. “Olivia, this is Betty. She’s a nurse. She’s been helping out since he got real bad.”

“Who can’t spell apparently,” Olivia said and shot the woman a hostile glance.

That was all the attention she had to spare for the blackmailer at the moment for the figure in the bed became the center of Olivia’s universe. The very walls could have fallen away from the house and she wouldn’t have noticed. She hadn’t laid eyes on her father’s face in thirty years, but she knew that the gaunt and bearded visage on the pillow belonged to William Wade.

Her face was a blank mask but her heart silently cried, Daddy!

In a flash, Olivia Limoges was gone, replaced by skinny, tow-headed Livie Wade. She approached the bedside on the balls of her feet, as though the groan of a floorboard would break the spell and her father would disappear once and for all. But her adult eyes knew he was going nowhere. The painfully thin arms, the loose, jaundiced skin, and liquid, labored breaths made that clear. So did the IV bag dripping a steady supply of blissful morphine into his body.

Olivia knelt on the floor but did not touch her father. She cradled her hurt arm and stared at his hand. When she’d last seen it, it had been the hand of a man in his prime. Calloused and weathered, tough and powerful. This hand was all bones and swollen veins. The nails looked ragged and tissue-thin. It was easier to look at this than to gaze upon his sallow, wrinkled face.

Her father was an old man. Though Olivia knew his age and that he was very sick, she hadn’t been prepared to see him in such a reduced state. All the strength and forcefulness teeming beneath his skin was gone. He was a shell, a sinking ship, a pitiful thing.

“You can touch him, honey,” the nurse said gently. “That man had plenty of bite in him for most of his life, but he’s got none left now.”

Without glancing away from her father’s hand, Olivia said, “You knew him.”

“Shoot, I tended to him when he first came here. Half drowned, concussed, practically pissing whiskey.” Betty shook her head. “When he finally came ’round, he said he couldn’t remember what had happened and he was sure he didn’t want to remember. He sold his boat and started working as a shrimper and then ended up as the caretaker for this place. He met Meg not long after that, back when the grill was just a little hole-in-the-wall—a place to grab a cup of coffee and a sandwich.”

Now Olivia did look up. “Meg?”

“His late wife.”

Olivia turned to see if Hudson had anything to contribute to this string of revelations, but he was already gone. “A second wife,” she muttered.

Betty heard her and chuckled. “That was news to everybody. Meg had no idea. Nobody knew about your mama until a month or so ago. Didn’t know about you either. We thought the man was raving, but Willie wouldn’t let up and I took it upon myself to track you down. I figured you had enough money to share with the Salters, but I didn’t know if you’d part with it willingly. Those two have a precious child to raise and another one on the way and