Tall, Dark_.Westmoreland! - Brenda Jackson [41]
Cathy shook her head. “No, their relationship goes back further than that.”
Olivia blinked, surprised. She had a feeling Cathy knew a lot more than she was telling. Definitely a lot more than Olivia or her brothers knew. “So, what’s the relationship?”
Cathy, Olivia noted, was nervously biting her lips. “I’m not sure it’s my place to say, Libby,” she said.
Olivia knew that if she didn’t get the information from Cathy, then she would never get it. Deciding to go for broke, she said in a low and soft voice, “I know you love Dad, Cathy.” At the woman’s surprised look, Olivia lowered her voice even more. “And I’m hoping Dad realizes, and very soon, what a jewel he has in you, not only as an employee, but, more importantly, as a woman who, I know, has his back. But I’m honestly worried that something is going on that my brothers and I wouldn’t agree with, and if that’s the case, then we need to know what it is.”
Cathy stared at her for a long moment. “Your father feels indebted to the senator.”
Olivia raised a brow. “And why would he feel that way?”
Cathy didn’t say anything for a long while. “Because of your mother,” the older woman said.
Olivia’s head began spinning. “How does my mother have anything to do with this? My brothers and I haven’t heard from her in over twenty-something years. Are you saying that my father has? That he and my mother are in contact with each other?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
With a desperate look in her eyes, Olivia took hold of the woman’s hand. “Tell me, Cathy. You need to tell me what’s going on and what my mother has to do with it.”
“Years ago, your mother ran off with another man, a married man,” Cathy said.
Olivia nodded. She knew all that. Although she had been only three then, years later she had overheard one of her grandparents talking about her mother in whispers. “And?”
“The man’s wife had a child.”
“Yes, I know that as well,” Olivia said. “I also know the woman was so torn up about what happened that eventually she and her child moved away.”
“Yes, but what you probably don’t know is that eventually, a couple of years later, that woman committed suicide. She could never get over losing her husband.”
Olivia gasped. Cathy was right. She hadn’t known that. “How awful.”
Cathy nodded sadly in agreement. “Yes, it was. And what’s even worse, when she decided to stall her car on the train tracks and just sit there waiting for the train to come, she had her child in the car with her. They were both killed.”
Tears she couldn’t hold back sprang into Olivia’s eyes. It was bad enough that her mother’s actions had broken up a family, but they had also caused a woman to end her own life and that of her child.
“I didn’t want to tell you,” Cathy said softly, handing Olivia a tissue.
Olivia dabbed at her eyes. “I’m glad you did. But what does all that have to do with Senator Reed?”
Now it was Cathy who reached out to hold Olivia’s hand. “The woman who committed suicide was his sister, Libby, and your father feels responsible for what eventually happened to her and her little girl because of what your mother did.”
The first thing Olivia did when she got home was to pull out her sketch pad and water colors, determined to go to the park. Painting always soothed her mind, and she needed it today more than ever.
She had come home soon after her conversation with Cathy; otherwise, she would have gone looking for her father just to cry in his arms. It just wasn’t fair that he felt responsible for the choices his wife had made over twenty years before, choices that had ultimately led to a sad tragedy. And if Senator Reed was intentionally playing with her father’s conscience, he would have to stop.
Once at the park, she found several scenes she could concentrate on and tried her hand at doing a few sketches, but her concentration wavered. A part of her