“Then why didn’t you call me at the office?”
“I did, several times, and I always asked that you call me back. But you never did.”
He frowned. “When was this?”
“It went on for years. I called while I was in boarding school—I had to use the office phone back then. But when I was in college, I often called just because I was feeling lonely and wanted to talk to you. I missed Mom and Dad, and Gramma Allison. You were all I had left, and sometimes, I just needed to hear your voice.”
***
Her words pierced his heart. Richard had always assumed that Allison had been too busy with her friends to think about calling him. But it looked as if that wasn’t the case.
“I never received any messages that you called, and I certainly never got any that said you needed me to call you back. Who took your calls?”
But he already knew. The same person who had taken the messages Lolita had left, but had not passed them on to him.
“Eloise Markam. She’s been your administrative assistant for years.”
Evidently, too long. In fact, he had hired Eloise a couple of months before his son and daughter-in-law died, and Allison came to live with him. He stood and walked over to the window, then turned back to her. “I never received any messages that you’d calledme, Allison.”
“I figured as much when you mentioned that you had Landon Chestnut trackmedown because you thought I’d been kidnapped. I found that very odd because I’d called and left a message with Eloise, asking her to let you know I needed to talk to you. I was getting depressed and wanted to come home for a while. But when you didn’t return my call, I thought you didn’t want to be bothered with me, so I took off to visit places I’d never been. My friends went with me because they didn’t want me traveling alone.”
“I didn’t know,” Richard said.
“I just assumed, like the other times, you didn’t care.”
He left his place by the window and came to stand in front of her, leaning against his desk. “Why wouldn’t I care? You’re my granddaughter.”
“I’m also my mother’s daughter.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she took a deep breath to fortify herself. It was time. “I always thought the reason you sent me to boarding school was that you didn’t want me here with you, because you never liked my mom and blamed her for Dad’s death. I reminded you of her, so you didn’t want me around.”
“You thought that?”
“Yes. Aunt Margot said you told her that you blamed Mom for Dad’s death when she called to tell you about their accident.”
Richard inhaled deeply. He didn’t recall saying that, but hell, he could have at the time. Getting that call and being told that he’d lost his son had nearly killed him. But when he had readthe police report, which included interviews with the workers on board the yacht, he realized that his son and daughter-in-law were equally responsible for their own deaths.
He saw the tears welling up in Allison’s eyes, and he knew he had to try to get her to understand just what a grief-stricken mess he had been back then. “I appreciate you sharing all of this with me, Allison. And I regret that you assumed I didn’t care all these years.”
He paused. “Losing your grandmother was hard on me. And when I lost your father two years later, I didn’t know how I’d go on. I don’t recall telling your aunt that I blamed your mother, but if I did, it was during a time when my grief had become too much to bear.”
He stopped talking for a moment while recalling that time. “That’s not an excuse, but it’s the way I felt back then. In reality, I never blamed your mother, and I certainly didn’t hold anything against you for being her daughter.”
Drawing in a deep breath, he said, “The reason I sent you away to boarding school was that I was so filled with grief, and you were all that I had left. I loved you so much that the thought of losing you, too, was more than I could deal with at the time. And you were grieving for your own losses, and I was too weak to handle both mine and yours.”
He rubbed his hand down his face. “But there was never a time you weren’t loved or that I didn’t want you.”
“What about you thinking I was just like my parents, that I was a party girl who would never accept any responsibilities in life?”
“Is that something you’ve ever heard me say?”
“No. But I’ve heard others say it.”
He shook his head. “Granted, that time you left school and I wasn’t told, I thought it was reckless and irresponsible. Then, after reading Landon Chestnut’s investigation report of howyou and those other two girls were traveling from city to city, spending your time hitting one nightclub after another, it did give me that impression.”
Desiree nodded. “I can see how you would think that. It had been around the time of Aunt Margot’s birthday. The first one that I had to face after she was killed was hard on me. As I said, my first choice had been to come home, but when you didn’t return my call, I figured you preferred that I didn’t.”
