The President's Daughter - Mariah Stewart [73]
She parked her car in front of the carriage house, though she barely recalled having driven home, and simply sat there, staring blankly out the window, trying to make sense of what had happened. The hollow area inside her had spread until she felt empty, as if everything had been removed and the void where her organs had once rested had been filled with a terrible chill.
From an open window somewhere she heard a phone ring several times. With no sense of urgency, she opened the car door, slid out, and walked woodenly into her house. She sat on the edge of a small side chair in her living room and looked out the window with eyes that saw nothing beyond the frame.
How can you not know that your mother isn’t really your mother? And this man who had been her father . . .
A former President of the United States.
How absurd. Who could believe such a thing?
Dina picked up the photo of Frank McDermott that stood on a nearby table, the same photo that was prominently displayed in Jude’s home. “Who did you think I was? Did you know the truth?”
A million questions gathered, ebbed and flowed, until Dina’s head began to pound. There was no escape from the incessant buzz between her ears. She went upstairs and lay across her bed, hugging her pillow.
There was a family she had never met, had never even heard of until this day. Blythe had had a sister, Jude had said.
I have an aunt.
Are there grandparents, then, too? Cousins?
Did Hayward have other children? There was a son, wasn’t there? A congressman or senator, something . . . Dina thought she recalled hearing something about him. Were there other offspring?
Do they know about me?
Blythe’s sister knows about me. . . .
From some place deep inside the barest remnant of a long-forgotten image emerged. Dina closed her eyes and was, for the briefest of moments, enveloped by scent. Gardenia, she recognized it now, though she was certain that at the time she did not know its name or the name of the woman who wore it. That she had been tall and blond and had kind eyes Dina remembered, even as she remembered the touch of the softest fabric against her cheek when the woman knelt to embrace her.
Her fairy godmother. That’s how Dina had come to think of the woman who always arrived laden with a mountain of beautifully wrapped presents. Always on birthdays, always on Christmas, sometimes just because. Dina tried to remember the woman’s voice, but it was too far lost in time. The visits had stopped the year she turned five. She’d never gotten a clear explanation of why, and though the woman had appeared in her dreams for several years thereafter, over time the memory had faded.
Had that been Blythe’s sister?
Dina went into her closet and reached for the half-forgotten wooden box that she kept on the shelf, the box in which she kept odd pieces from her childhood. She sat in the middle of the bed and opened it, searching through the treasured contents for that one item she sought.
The gold ring—a high school ring, Dina had realized as she grew older—the initials BDP engraved inside, the name of the school, “The Shipley School 1964,” in script across the front. The ring that her fairy godmother had tucked into her hand that last time she visited. The ring that Dina had instinctively kept from Jude for years. When she’d finally asked about it, Jude’s jaw had set squarely and she’d told Dina it had belonged to a cousin of hers. For reasons that Dina couldn’t have explained, she hadn’t believed her mother.
Dina slipped the ring on her finger.
Blythe’s high school ring.
Dina held it up to her face. Where, she wondered, was the Shipley School? Had Blythe been smart? Popular? Athletic? What had she cared about when she was a student there? How had she gone from that place to falling in love with a President and bearing his child?
Mom—Jude—would know. Jude knew it all. Had known it all.
Suddenly the room seemed too small to contain Dina’s anger. Her spirit agitated and her heart restless, she wandered outside into