"Please stay my sister." Dru"s voice was thick with tears.
"Forever," Corinne said. "You"re the only good thing about being raised an Elliott. Did Dad...did Jack know all this time?"
"She only told him today. He was as shocked as you are." Dru paused. "He actually left for a while, but he came back when Lorraine started interviewing her. He"s really upset and angry."
It was hard to picture Dad angry. "They practically canned Ken," she said. "They"re giving him a so-called break."
"Oh, no. Does that mean the award-"
"No award," Corinne said.
Dru paused. "Mom and Dad are on their way down to see you," she said. "They left as soon as the press conference was over."
"I don"t want to see them," Corinne said. "Call them and tell them to turn around and go home. Why didn"t the cops arrest her?"
"That"s why she got out of here so fast," Dru said. "She wants a chance to see you first, Cory. I let them take my car."
"I don"t want to see her," she repeated.
Dru was quiet again. "You need to talk to her," she said finally.
"I hate her." Corinne pounded her fist onto the floor. "I really, truly hate hate her." her."
"Please don"t," Dru pleaded. "She was a good mother. She-"
"To you, maybe," Corinne said. "You"re her flesh and blood."
"She"s coming here?" Ken asked as he walked back into the room, and Corinne nodded. He grabbed the phone from her hand. "Dru, you call her and tell her to stay home. She comes here, I"ll have the police here to greet her."
"No." Corinne got to her feet. She wasn"t sure what she wanted, but that wasn"t it. The police would catch up with her mother soon enough. She took the phone back from Ken. Corinne got to her feet. She wasn"t sure what she wanted, but that wasn"t it. The police would catch up with her mother soon enough. She took the phone back from Ken.
"Just tell her not to come here, Dru. Please," she said. "I"m afraid of what I might do if I see her."
Chapter Fifty-Five.
When she got off the phone, she went into the den, sat down at the computer and pulled up images of her biological family on the Internet. Ken stood behind her, kneading her shoulders as he studied the monitor over the top of her head.
"I don"t look much like...like President Russell, do I?" She couldn"t say the words my father. my father. She wondered if she"d ever be able to. The image of Irving Russell on the computer screen was a professional shot, above the caption, A Greeting From The President Of The University Of Virginia. He was handsome, yet she saw the evidence of a difficult life in his face. She reached out and touched the slight bags beneath his eyes, the crevices at the corners of his mouth as he smiled for the camera. She wondered if she"d ever be able to. The image of Irving Russell on the computer screen was a professional shot, above the caption, A Greeting From The President Of The University Of Virginia. He was handsome, yet she saw the evidence of a difficult life in his face. She reached out and touched the slight bags beneath his eyes, the crevices at the corners of his mouth as he smiled for the camera.
"A little around the eyes, maybe," Ken said. He bent over to kiss the side of her throat. "I"ll tell you one good thing that can come of this," he added.
"What?"
"You"re going to be rich. That family"s worth a fortune."
She craned her neck to look up at him. "Do you think I care about that?"
"I think you should," he said. "It"s nice not to have to worry about money."
"Money"s the last thing on my mind right now." She clicked to another picture, this one the familiar shot of Genevieve Russell used in the media. "I wish I could find more of her," she said. "This is the one you see everywhere."
"That"s definitely your mother," Ken said. "Same nose. Same gorgeous hair." Ken lifted her long red hair, then let it fall back to her shoulders.
Corinne found a picture of Vivian. "We"re like twins, except for the hair color," she said.
"You"re prettier," Ken said, as if it mattered.
Corinne suddenly had an image of Dru, her true sister, so bubbly and full of life. "Oh, Dru." She buried her head in her hands. "I"m so confused." She looked up at Ken. "I don"t know who I am," she said. "I mean, will these people accept me?" She nodded toward the image of Vivian on her computer screen. "No wonder Dru always thought Mom was so normal and I thought she was wacky. She treated us differently from the start."
"She overcompensated with you," Ken said. "It was like she was trying to make it up to you for what she"d done and she went overboard. Way overboard."
"I"m so..." She could barely give words to her emotions. The blood in her veins suddenly felt different. Her arms itched and her legs felt cold. "I don"t know which way is up." She swiveled her chair around to look at him. "Marry me," she said. "Please, Ken. Let"s get married and have this baby. Let"s create a real family. We"ll be three people who absolutely belong together. We"ll do everything right with our son or daughter." She put her hand on her stomach.
Ken nodded slowly. "Okay," he said.
She got to her feet, joy and relief coursing through her, and put her arms around his neck. "Can we do it soon?" she asked. "Before I start to show? I don"t care if it"s a little wedding. I don"t care if it"s just the two of us with the justice of the peace. I just want to be your wife."
"Okay," he said again. His voice was flat. "We"ll work it out."
It was not the reaction she"d hoped for. "What is there to work out?" she asked. "I know you don"t think the time is right, but we need to be a family. family."
He nodded. "I know, and I want that. But there"s something I haven"t told you." He let go of her and lowered himself to the chair near her desk. "I"ve been...cowardly," he said. "Too chicken to tell you."
"What?" She sat down again, and he leaned forward to roll her chair close to his.
He took her hands. "You and I have been together for a long time," he said.
"Almost six years," Corinne said.
"And you know I love you more than anything, don"t you?"
She nodded. She was certain of it. He told her all the time that he loved her.
"I"ve kept something from you," he said. "Only one thing, but it"s a...it"s a big thing."
She wasn"t certain she could handle another surprise today. "What?" she asked.
"My divorce from Felicia," he said. "It was never really final."
Corinne recoiled, letting go of his hands. "What do you mean by "never really"?"
"I mean...we"re not divorced. When we separated...that"s when she got sick and I couldn"t just...she begged me not to divorce her then, so..." He shrugged. "We had the property settlement drawn up and everything. I just never did the final paper-work."
Corinne felt anger rise up in her, boiling hot as lava. "Why didn"t you ever tell me this?" she asked.
"At the time I met you-"
"You said you were divorced."
"No, I didn"t," he said hurriedly. "I said I was separated and filing for divorce. That my marriage was over. You jumped to the conclusion that I was divorced and-"
"And you never bothered to set me straight."
"I felt divorced in my heart."
She stood up, furious. "You told me you felt married to me me in your heart." in your heart."
"I do," he said.
"Your heart has nothing to do with what"s legal and what"s not," she said.
"Corinne..." His eyes pleaded with her to understand. "Felicia knows our marriage is completely over. She knows I"m committed to you. She"s just one of those insecure women who needs to be able to say "my husband this and my husband that.""
"You"ve been sending her money all these years," Corinne said. "I thought it was alimony."
"It is, in a way. Just not court-ordered alimony. I send it to her because I care about her. You always said it was so great that she and I still got along. That we communicated."
"I wouldn"t have said that if I"d known she was still your wife!" Corinne said.
He stood up and tried to put his arms around her, but she brushed them away.
"I know it"s hard for you to understand," he said, "but the circle she"s in...the social circle...she would have felt humiliated if she had to tell them she was divorced."
"What about humiliating me? me?" Corinne asked. She felt like hitting him. She"d never wanted to hit anyone in her life.
"You"re stronger than she is," Ken said.
"Well, that"s a first," she said. "You"re always telling me I"m weak and how lucky I am to have big strong you you to lean on." to lean on."
Ken sat on the edge of the computer desk. "Look, I admit I"ve been wrong," he said. "And I"m going to make it right. I"ll divorce Felicia. I don"t know how long it will take for the divorce to go through, but the second it does, you and I can get married."
"I want you to leave," she said. The words sounded so foreign in her ears she could hardly believe she"d said them. Neither could Ken.
"What?" he asked, as if he"d misunderstood her.
"You heard me."
"You can"t kick me out," he said. "This is my house, too."
"I don"t care. You can"t stay here right now, because there"s a really good chance I"ll kill you if you do." She knew the fire behind the words showed in her face, because he backed away from her.
"I love you," he said. "Please marry me. I want to marry you."
"That"s just the kind of proposal I"ve yearned for all these years we"ve been together." She threw her pen at him. "Marry me, darling, as soon as I divorce my wife. You son of a b.i.t.c.h." She looked for something larger and more lethal to throw.
"You"re angry at your mother, not me," he said. "Don"t take it out on me."
"Oh, shut up," she said.
"You can"t function without me." Ken picked up her pen from the floor. "You can"t even go to the mall without me. You need me, Cor."
She walked out of the den, pressing her hands to her ears. "Get out of this house!" she yelled. It felt so good to yell! She wanted to scream.
"Don"t you want me to be here when your mother shows up?" He followed her into the living room.
"No!"
"You"ve forgotten all I"ve done for you," he said. "You wouldn"t be able to walk out of this house if it weren"t for me. You were afraid of your own shadow before I came along."
"Oh, it was all you, is that what you think?" she shouted. "I"m the one who had to do the walking out the door. I"m the one who drove on 540 today. I"m the one who"ll have to get on the elevator, who has to do the hard stuff. You You can"t even tell Felicia you want a divorce." can"t even tell Felicia you want a divorce."
She sat down on the sofa, suddenly too drained to stand any longer, and looked up at him. "Do you still love her?" she asked.
He ran his hands through his hair. "Not at all," he said. "It"s more like I hate her. She tied a noose around my neck and-"
"You are so pathetic," Corinne said with a groan. "Don"t blame her. You"re the one making the choices. Now get out of here."
He hesitated, and she thought he was going to continue arguing with her, but instead, he gave in. "All right," he said. "I"ll be on my cell if you need me. I know you"re furious right now and I don"t blame you. But don"t throw the baby out with the bathwater."
She gave him a long, hard look, and felt very brave. "I"m not throwing the baby out, no matter what," she said.
He turned to leave the room. She listened to him pack in the bedroom as she idly surfed the Internet, not really caring about anything on the screen. He was right: she couldn"t function without him. She was terrified to have him leave. The dead-bolt lock on the back door was broken, she remembered. And it had rained earlier, causing the sump pump to produce an occasional thud thud in the bas.e.m.e.nt. She sat frozen at the computer, not typing, barely breathing as she waited for him to go. in the bas.e.m.e.nt. She sat frozen at the computer, not typing, barely breathing as she waited for him to go.
Chapter Fifty-Six.
For 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 s.p.a.ce 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.