The Secret Life of Ceecee Wilkes (33 page)

F
or over an hour, she didn’t move from her seat at the computer except to lock the doors and check the windows.

What had happened to her world? She was dazed by changes she could not yet grasp. In the space of a couple of hours, she’d lost the family she’d always known and the man she’d long planned to marry. She stared at the picture of Genevieve Russell, who looked so alive and happy. How could her mother have let this beautiful woman die the way she did? It was tantamount to murder. Why didn’t she get her help?

She felt sick as she waited for the doorbell to ring, when she would come face-to-face with the woman responsible for her real mother’s death. The woman who had raised her in suffocating protection and who had lied to her over and over again.

She heard the slamming of car doors in her driveway. In the living room, she unlocked the door and pulled it open. Turning her back on her parents, she walked over to the love seat and sat down, arms folded across her chest like armor, firmly in place.

Her mother limped into the room, her father’s hand on her back. Her eyes were puffy and red, her dark hair pulled back from her face in a scrunchie. She seemed to know better than to try to hug Corinne. Instead, she stood in the middle of the room, holding her arms at her sides with an air of defeat. “Cory,” she said, “I’m so sorry, honey.”

Corinne shut her eyes.

“Sit down, Eve.” Her father guided her mother to the sofa. He was being so protective of her. He didn’t sit next to her, though, choosing instead to take a seat near the fireplace.

“What exactly are you sorry for, Mother?” Corinne glared at her. “For lying to me all these years? Lying to me my whole life? Are you sorry for destroying the family I was born into? For killing my mother? Are you sorry for stealing me from my father and sister? Are you sorry for—”

“That’s enough, Cory,” her father said. “That doesn’t help.”

Her mother was crying, tears flowing freely. She leaned forward as if she wanted to get as close to Corinne as she could. “I’m sorry for hurting you in any way,” her mother said. “I loved you from the start. I’ve always loved you.”

“You loved me, so you stole me, you selfish bitch.” She choked on the word.

“Cory, stop it,” her father said.

“It wasn’t that simple,” her mother said. “But I’m not here to make excuses for my behavior. It was inexcusable. I’m just here to tell you how much I love you and how sorry I am for hurting you.”

Corinne couldn’t look at her. If she looked at her, she might see her paleness, the circles around her eyes, the swollen wrists. She didn’t want to feel any sympathy for her, so she rested her head on the back of the chair and stared at the ceiling instead.

“So explain,” she said. “You said you waited at that cabin while those guys kidnapped my mother. What was she like when she got there?” She braced herself for the answer. How horrible to have to learn about Genevieve from the woman responsible for her death!

Her mother hesitated. “She was more angry than afraid,” she said. “Maybe if she’d been the one to raise you, you wouldn’t have had the fears you do, because she was a very strong and feisty woman. And beautiful, Cory. The kind of beauty that could sweep you away. Like your beauty. You look so much like her.”

She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t give her mother the satisfaction of her tears. “More,” she said as she lowered her head to look at her. “Tell me more.”

Her mother told her everything about that terrible night in the cabin—how Genevieve directed her to prepare for the birth and how, as Corinne came to life, Genevieve faded away. She told her about wrapping her in a blanket and running away with her.

“I was so afraid,” her mother said. “I fell in love with you, but I knew I needed to get you to your father. I tried to do that. I was going to put you inside a police car in front of the governor’s mansion, but when I started to open the car door, an alarm went off. So I took off with you. I was terrified the police would come after—”

“It makes me sick.” Corinne looked her in the eye.

“What does?” Eve asked.

“You keep talking about what was happening to
you.
What
you
felt like. It was all about
you,
wasn’t it? All about you.”

“Actually, no,” her mother said. “I was very concerned about
you.
About what I’d done to you. I didn’t know what else to do other than keep you and love you and take care of you.”

“You told me my father was killed in a motorcycle accident.”

“I didn’t know what else to—”

“You didn’t know. You didn’t know. If you say that one more time, I’m going to scream.” She sat forward. “You did
too
know what you should do. You should have gone to the police and told them the truth so they could take me to my father. My real father.” She kept her eyes on her mother, not daring to look at Jack at that moment. He was an innocent bystander in all of this. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she was too angry to censor her words. “That’s what you should have done,” she said, “and even at the tender age of sixteen, you knew that, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” her mother whispered. “I knew that.”

“How could you let my mother die like that?”

Her father sat forward. “Cory, what do you want her to say?”

“How do you feel, Dad, knowing she’s lied to you all these years?” She asked the question of her father, yet she felt the betrayal in her own heart. Ken’s lies rang in her ears. Had anyone ever been honest with her?

“It feels like crap,” her father said. “I’m still struggling to understand all of this myself. But I love…your mother. We’ve both worked hard to give you and Dru a loving family. She’s not the girl she was back then, Cor—”

He suddenly turned his head at the sound of car doors slamming outside. Leaning back, he peered out the window, then closed his eyes. “Damn,” he said quietly.

“Who is it?” Corinne got to her feet and looked through the window into the darkness. A police car was in the driveway behind Dru’s car. Another stood in the street. Three uniformed officers were walking to her front door.

“The police are here.” She looked at her mother, who only nodded, unsurprised.

Corinne pulled open the door before the three men had a chance to ring the bell.

“Are you Corinne Elliott?” one of them asked.

She nodded.

“Is Eve Elliott here?”

“Yes.” She stood away from the door to let them enter.

They walked in, as her mother rose unsteadily to her feet, leaning on her father’s arm once again.

“Eve Elliott?” one of the officers queried.

“Yes,” her mother whispered.

“You’re under arrest for the kidnapping of Genevieve Russell and baby girl Russell, false identification, conspiracy, tampering with public records…”

Corinne listened as the officer read a laundry list of her mother’s many crimes, all the while thinking,
Who is baby girl Russell?
It took her a moment to realize he was talking about her. Her skin prickled. She was two people. Who would baby girl Russell have grown up to be? She felt the room blacking out from the edges and gripped the arm of the sofa to keep herself upright.

“Don’t handcuff her.” Her father grabbed one of the officer’s wrists as he started to put handcuffs on her mother, but he quickly let go. “Please,” he said. “Her wrists are painful.”

“It’s all right, Jack,” her mother said. She submitted easily, barely seeming to notice the cuffs on her wrists. Her eyes were on Corinne, who liked seeing her treated like the criminal she was. She wanted her mother to share some of the pain she felt.

“I’ll follow you in Dru’s car,” her father said to her mother. He was so solicitous of her. So understanding. He’d always been such a wimp.

She watched them head down the sidewalk toward the police car. From the rear, her mother’s faltering gait was pronounced. It was always worse when she was walking with someone else, as she was with the officers, trying her best to keep up with them. For just a moment, Corinne wanted to call out to the police,
Don’t make her walk so fast!
The muscles in her chest contracted as she watched the only mother she’d ever known limp down the front walk and away from her.

W
hen the calls started from the reporters the following day, and they gathered outside the house in a feeding frenzy, Corinne pulled the blinds in the bedroom and sat on the bed to watch the news. J. B. MacIntyre, Ken’s rival at WIGH, reported from the Wake County Courthouse that Timothy Gleason had been sentenced to life in prison. An hour later, she watched him report from in front of her house.

“Ironically,” he said, “the latest development in the Timothy Gleason case led authorities to the home of WIGH reporter Ken Carmichael.”

Corinne hated J.B.’s voice. He dramatized everything. He could turn a pimple into a life-threatening event.

“Eve Bailey Elliott, aka CeeCee Wilkes, was arrested last night at the home Carmichael shares with his fiancée, Corinne Elliott,” J.B. said. “Eve Elliott admitted that she kidnapped Russell’s newborn infant in 1977 and raised her as her own daughter.”

A picture of Corinne, taken from a WIGH award dinner she and Ken had attended and which Ken kept on his desk at work, appeared on the screen, followed by a picture of Genevieve Russell, the same one the media had been flashing for days. “Elliott had publicly announced her role in the kidnapping shortly before taking refuge at the Carmichael residence with her husband and daughter.”

Refuge? Corinne thought. Hardly.

“No comment yet from Irving Russell, nor from his other daughter, Vivian,” J.B. said. “And Corinne Elliott—aka, baby girl Russell—has so far refused to speak with us.”

Would Irving Russell call her? she wondered. She had more parents than ever before, and yet she felt as though she had none. Eve and Jack seemed like strangers to her. Here she was, barricaded in her bedroom, listening to van doors slide open and closed on the street, while reporters and camera crews chattered outside her front door. She felt trapped. She missed Ken. He was right: she needed him. He was a buffer between herself and the world.

She didn’t leave the house for two days. She didn’t have to call in to work. They called
her
to ask if she needed time off, and she supposed they were glad to give it to her. She was the object of gossip. She didn’t want to face people who would be wondering about her parentage when she felt so uncertain of it herself.

She was sitting at her computer in the den when the phone rang for what must have been the thousandth time in the past couple of days. She checked the caller ID display and felt overjoyed to see Ken’s number illuminated on the screen. She clicked the talk button.

“Please come home,” she said, instead of hello. “I’m sorry I blew up.”

He hesitated. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I can’t believe everything that was dumped on you the past few days and I just made things worse.”

“By telling me the truth.”

“That I should have told you years ago.”

“I don’t know what to do, Ken,” she said. “The reporters are hounding me.”

“Don’t answer the phone or the door and keep the blinds closed.”

“I am.”

“I’m coming home,” he said. “I don’t want you there alone.”

“Okay.” She was relieved. She would let him take care of her.

He paused. “Your mother hurt you even worse than I thought,” he said finally.

“I’m so angry at her,” Corinne said. “I can’t stand how angry I feel. I want to throw something through the window.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “She kept you from your real family. Has Russell tried to get in touch with you?”

“No. Unless he’s been one of the zillion calls I’ve ignored this afternoon.”

“You know what I did when I left the other day?” Ken asked.

“What?”

“I went to my lawyer and reactivated the divorce proceedings. And I called Felicia to let her know.”

She smiled. “Good,” she said.

He hesitated only a moment. “Corinne,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

Ken screened every phone call that came into the house. She didn’t want to talk to her father—to Jack. She’d started out calling him Jack as a child; now she reverted to it. She didn’t want to hear him plead with her to visit her mother in jail. She wasn’t even ready to picture her mother there. Was she behind bars? In a tiny, cold cell? She didn’t want to think about it.

The call Corinne was truly waiting for—with both dread and longing—came in an unexpected form.

As usual, Ken answered the phone, but this time he handed it over to her. “It’s Irving Russell’s attorney,” he said.

She took the phone from him, her hand suddenly damp with perspiration.

“This is Corinne Elliott,” she said.

“My name is Brian Charles.” He spoke with a quick, sharp force. “I represent Irving Russell. President Russell would like to know if you’d agree to a DNA test to determine if you’re his daughter or not.”

She felt an instant of betrayal, a feeling that was becoming all too familiar. Was Russell hoping she was not his? Maybe he didn’t want to deal with the messiness she’d bring into his life.

“Of course he’s very much hoping that you do prove to be his kidnapped daughter,” Brian Charles said when she didn’t respond. “But I’m sure you understand his need to be certain about this. It’s best for you to be certain as well.”

“Yes,” she said. “I understand. What do I have to do?”

“We can arrange for the test to be done through your family physician, if that’s agreeable to you.”

Was it? Could there be a problem with doing it through her doctor? Could they have gotten to her doctor in some way? Maybe paid him off to do…what? She felt like a child who no longer knew what was good for her and what was not.

She covered the receiver with her hand and spoke to Ken.

“They want me to take a DNA test with my regular doctor,” she said. “Is that okay?”

Ken nodded. “It’s a good idea,” he said. “You need to be sure. Who knows what the truth is when it comes to your mother?”

She lifted the receiver again. “Yes, that’s fine,” she said.

“All right. If you give me his number, I’ll get in touch with him and tell him to expect your call. We’ll handle any cost involved, of course.”

Ken drove her to the doctor that afternoon. She wore her sunglasses in the car as they passed the reporters lining their driveway. She suddenly understood why people wore dark glasses in situations like this. Her eyes were no longer bloodshot from crying, but she didn’t want to be seen. She didn’t want to risk eye contact with any of the hungry reporters. Ken was usually one of them, she realized. He’d get a scoop, then come home and boast about it. He’d boasted about this very case.

“I’m sorry you…” She couldn’t think of a way to give words to her thoughts. “You lost out on this story.”

He laughed. “Big-time,” he said. “I’ve become
part
of the story.” He smiled at her; he’d been so kind since coming home. “Don’t give it a thought, okay?” he said. “What’s going on with you is more important than whether I win the Rosedale or not.”

They were at a stoplight, cars tight on either side of them, and she felt panic setting in. Her heart beat fast and hard enough that she could feel it in her throat. She gulped air, trying to keep her breathing even.

“We’re almost there.” Ken glanced at her. He knew she was struggling. “It’s just a couple of blocks away.”

She was relieved when they started moving again. Ken drove into the parking lot of the medical building and groaned when he spotted a woman standing near the entrance.

“There’s a snitch in your doctor’s office,” he said grimly as he took the keys out of the ignition. “Don’t get out.”

He came around to her side of the car, his eye on the woman standing at the office door.

“Come on.” He opened the car door, taking her arm as she stepped out. “Stay close.”

The woman approached them. She was older than Corinne had first thought. Her blond hair was brassy, and thick makeup covered acne scars.

“Back off, Liz,” Ken said. Apparently she was a colleague. She ignored his direction.

“Corinne,” she said, walking toward her, notepad at the ready, “what are you here for? Is it for a DNA test?”

“Don’t answer her,” Ken said. He walked so quickly that her own legs, wooden and suddenly too long for her body, nearly tripped her. “We have no comment,” Ken said. He pushed open the door and guided Corinne into the foyer. “Don’t even think about it,” he said to the reporter as she started to follow them in. This time she listened, and Corinne was relieved when the door closed safely behind her.

No one mentioned why she was there. She didn’t even see the doctor, only a nurse who had the good sense to pretend taking a sample of cells from the inside of Corinne’s cheek was an everyday event. Corinne was grateful for her matter-of-fact demeanor.

“How long ’til we get the results?” Ken asked, when the nurse had finished.

“About a week,” she said.

And then what? Corinne wondered as the nurse wrote her name on the plastic container. Who would she be then?