Olivia put her checkbook away and watched Hudson finish with the crab claws. After draining them, he dumped them into a bowl and then untied his apron. “Follow me.”
“As you might imagine, I have many questions,” Olivia said, struggling to remain civil.
Hudson continued walking. “He started getting sick about three months back. It came on real quick. Got a bunch of scans on the mainland and found out about the cancer. Those tests ’bout bankrupted us. Kim asked him if there was anything he wanted, you know, before it was all over, and he wanted us to find this lady named Olivia Limoges. So we got on a computer and tracked you down.”
Following him through a hallway connecting the restaurant to the first floor of the house, Olivia tried to absorb what Hudson had said. “He asked about me?” She hated how much it mattered to her that her father had initiated the chain of events that had led her to Okracoke.
“Yeah. First we ever heard about you—that he had a daughter.”
“And how long have you known him?”
Hudson gave a wry chuckle. “My whole life, lady.”
Olivia didn’t answer. She was trying to rein in her anger, but failed. “So you found me and someone else decided to blackmail me into coming out here just in time for my father’s last days on earth?”
Hudson stopped and turned to face her. “I didn’t send you that letter. Kim and I were going back and forth over how to tell you about your daddy, but Betty did it for us, behind our backs.”
“Who the hell is Betty?” Olivia demanded.
“She’s his nurse. The woman we hired to take care of him when we’ve gotta work.” He frowned. “I don’t blame you for being mad, but she swears she did it because it’s his dying wish. She didn’t care how she had to make it happen, she just wanted you here.”
Olivia rolled her eyes. “Feed me another lie. She could have just called me. Why did she ask for cash?”
Hudson dropped his gaze to the ground. “For us. This whole place is going down like a ship with a cracked hull. Betty’s known Kim and me since we were in diapers. She delivered Caitlyn. She’s our closest family friend.” He reached out his hand to touch Olivia’s arm, but he let it hover in the air near her shoulder without making contact. “I’m sorry about how you ended up here, but you’re here, and that’s what matters now.”
Every muscle in Olivia’s body constricted when Hudson put his hand on the knob of the guest room at the very end of the hall. Olivia keenly wished there were no witnesses to this moment, but she knew she had no control over the situation. Pushing aside her dread and fear, she followed Hudson inside, unable to see around his broad back.
“How’s he doing?” Hudson asked an older woman seated in a chair against the left wall. She was crocheting a pastel blanket and watching a cooking program on television.
Olivia heard genuine concern behind Hudson’s question and she knew he had told her the truth. The woman in the chair was the blackmailer. Hudson was just a cook trying to keep his family afloat while an old man slowly died in one of his rooms.
“Same as this morning,” the woman answered. Putting her needles aside, she switched off the TV and scrutinized Olivia. “This his daughter?”
Hudson grunted in assent and stepped aside. “Olivia, this is Betty. She’s a nurse. She’s been helping out since he got real bad.”
“Who can’t spell apparently,” Olivia said and shot the woman a hostile glance.
That was all the attention she had to spare for the blackmailer at the moment for the figure in the bed became the center of Olivia’s universe. The very walls could have fallen away from the house and she wouldn’t have noticed. She hadn’t laid eyes on her father’s face in thirty years, but she knew that the gaunt and bearded visage on the pillow belonged to William Wade.
Her face was a blank mask but her heart silently cried, Daddy!
In a flash, Olivia Limoges was gone, replaced by skinny, tow-headed Livie Wade. She approached the bedside on the balls of her feet, as though the groan of a floorboard would break the spell and her father would disappear once and for all. But her adult eyes knew he was going nowhere. The painfully thin arms, the loose, jaundiced skin, and liquid, labored breaths made that clear. So did the IV bag dripping a steady supply of blissful morphine into his body.
Olivia knelt on the floor but did not touch her father. She cradled her hurt arm and stared at his hand. When she’d last seen it, it had been the hand of a man in his prime. Calloused and weathered, tough and powerful. This hand was all bones and swollen veins. The nails looked ragged and tissue-thin. It was easier to look at this than to gaze upon his sallow, wrinkled face.
Her father was an old man. Though Olivia knew his age and that he was very sick, she hadn’t been prepared to see him in such a reduced state. All the strength and forcefulness teeming beneath his skin was gone. He was a shell, a sinking ship, a pitiful thing.
“You can touch him, honey,” the nurse said gently. “That man had plenty of bite in him for most of his life, but he’s got none left now.”
Without glancing away from her father’s hand, Olivia said, “You knew him.”
“Shoot, I tended to him when he first came here. Half drowned, concussed, practically pissing whiskey.” Betty shook her head. “When he finally came ’round, he said he couldn’t remember what had happened and he was sure he didn’t want to remember. He sold his boat and started working as a shrimper and then ended up as the caretaker for this place. He met Meg not long after that, back when the grill was just a little hole-in-the-wall—a place to grab a cup of coffee and a sandwich.”
Now Olivia did look up. “Meg?”
“His late wife.”
Olivia turned to see if Hudson had anything to contribute to this string of revelations, but he was already gone. “A second wife,” she muttered.
Betty heard her and chuckled. “That was news to everybody. Meg had no idea. Nobody knew about your mama until a month or so ago. Didn’t know about you either. We thought the man was raving, but Willie wouldn’t let up and I took it upon myself to track you down. I figured you had enough money to share with the Salters, but I didn’t know if you’d part with it willingly. Those two have a precious child to raise and another one on the way and they’ve worked themselves to the bone trying to do right by the man you see lying in this bed.” She sent Olivia a defiant, sidelong glance. “I might have gone overboard with the block print and the weird grammar, but I just wanted to get your attention and I succeeded. I’d do it all over again too, because you’re here and that’s what Willie wanted.” She straightened a corner of bed sheet. “I only hope he wakes up one more time so he can see you in the flesh.”
Neither woman spoke for a moment. Olivia listened to the contradictory sounds of her father’s labored breath and the industrious, steady clicking of Betty’s needles.
“How long has it been since he was lucid?” she asked quietly, deciding that both Hudson and Betty were right. The letter and the doubt had put her through hell, but she was here. She hadn’t missed seeing her father, and if she was lucky, there’d still be time to find out the answers to the questions she’d waited her entire life to ask.
“Two days.” Betty sighed. “He had some broth this morning, but even then, with his eyes open, he wasn’t seeing anything. He’s drifting between worlds, confusing the past and the present, dreams and reality. Mumbles all sorts of fishing tales and whispers about some little dog and a storm.” Gathering up her crochet materials, she rose. “I’ll leave you alone. I’m sure you’ve got things to say and I truly think he’ll hear you. I’ve seen this kind of thing before.” She paused at the threshold. “I believe he’s been waiting for you so he can let go. Talk to him, honey. It’s not too late.”