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“He begged me to stay. He told me Ella had been conceived during a moment of drunken madness.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I didn’t know what to believe, and I certainly didn’t want to know the details. He said he couldn’t live without me. He told me he loved me. I—It was the first time he’d ever said that to me.”
“So you stayed?”
“Yes. I know that was probably weak of me, and foolish, too. But you do foolish things when you’re in love, don’t you?” It seems so. I’ve just fired the woman I love… and I’m beginning to wonder why. “We spent even more time together after that,” Doreen continues. “And we were very happy… except…”
“Except what?”
“Except, later on, during those months after Ken Bevan was arrested. We weren’t happy then, and there’s no denying what happened during those few months changed everything.”
“I can remember Dad being obsessive about the whole thing.”
“The obsession itself had started way before Ken’s arrest. Theodore had realized something still wasn’t right with the company’s finances, even after Julianne’s investigation was completed, so he brought in people of his own, telling no one, except me. It took them a while, but eventually, they uncovered Ken’s activities, and your father called in the police. From then on, he was like a man possessed. He’d been proved right. He was triumphant about it, and he wanted revenge. That was the only time – apart from when he told me about Ella’s conception – that I doubted my love for him.”
“You thought he should forgive Ken Bevan?”
“No. The man had stolen millions of dollars. He deserved to be punished. It was everything else that was so… brutal.”
“Brutal? What on earth did he do?”
“He tried to have Julianne Bevan charged as an accessory. Livia would have been a baby at the time, but Theodore hounded that poor woman.”
“What happened to her… to them?”
“Fortunately, Julianne was able to prove her innocence somehow, and she wound up helping the police. Your father wasn’t happy about that, and kept trying to find ways of implicating her, even though she was completely innocent. He’d have gone a lot further, I think, if I hadn’t threatened to leave him. I told him, if he didn’t stop, he’d never see me again, and he calmed down a little. But he wasn’t the same man after that. It was only a short while later that your mom left. He never explained her departure to me, but I’ve always assumed your father’s behavior finally got too much for her.”
“And yet, you stayed with him?”
“Yes, and then a few weeks after your mom left, your father asked me to move in with him.”
“He did?” That’s a surprise.
“I said ‘no’… obviously.”
“Because he wasn’t offering marriage?”
“No. I didn’t expect him to marry me. I didn’t expect anything. Theodore wasn’t the kind of man you expected things from.” She’s not wrong there. “Your mom’s departure might have seemed like the golden opportunity for us. I think, if it hadn’t been for the events surrounding Ken Bevan’s arrest, it probably would have been. But I’d seen a different side to Theodore, and although I couldn’t help loving him, I didn’t want to expose my daughter to a man who could persecute another human being in the way he had.” She pauses for a moment. “I know you never got along with your father. You hold him responsible for what happened… with your mother.”
“Do you blame me?”
“No. Do you blame me?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Thank you.” I hear her sigh, and wonder if she needed my forgiveness as much as I need answers.
“Did Ken Bevan know about your affair with my father?”
“Yes, I think so. He used to make snide remarks sometimes, when he knew your father couldn’t hear.”
“I see. That makes sense.”
“What does that mean?”
“When he came into the office yesterday, there was a moment, just before he left when he looked at me, and then at Livia, and he said I hadn’t fallen too far from the tree. He must have guessed… about me and Livia.”
