Black Ember Read Online Free Page B

he couldn’t attend in person. After that, they got together once or twice a year, usually when Randall was in New York, and when Georgia remarried five years ago—this time to a wealthy New York assemblyman with an eye on a senate run—Caryn promised herself that she’d never again allow herself to be lured into believing she might someday have a real dad.
     
    All of that changed last week when Georgia called from the assemblyman’s retreat in the Hamptons.
    “How’s Harry?” Caryn had asked politely. Her mother’s second husband, Harold Billings, could kindly be described as interesting, while the crueler wags had dubbed him Homely Harry. If he had a sense of humor, Caryn had missed it, but her mother seemed fond of him and he’d opened up entire new avenues for Georgia to enjoy the limelight. She’d even wondered out loud if she might not be perfectly suited to be the next First Lady of New York.
    “Fine, fine,” Georgia said. She sounded distracted, but maybe it was due to the hour: she’d called Caryn just as she was emerging from her morning yoga class. Caryn was walking to her office through Central Park, enjoying the morning sun filtering through the trees along the paths.
    “I’m looking forward to the gala,” Caryn said guiltily. “I’m sorry I’ve been putting off choosing a dress.”
    “That’s nice, dear, but that’s not why I’m calling. I’m afraid I have bad news. Your father is dying.”
    “Oh, no,” Caryn gasped, twenty years of memories of Randall surging in her heart. “I just spoke to him a month ago. He and Cleo were taking the kids to Bermuda. What happened?”
    “No, no, not Randall. Your real father. Buddy Travers.”
    The silence stretched on the phone line as Caryn absorbed the news. “Oh,” she finally said. “Well, thank God Randall is okay.”
 “Caryn Louise,” Georgia chided.
    “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean it like that,” Caryn said, wincing. “It’s just, Buddy has never been a part of my life. I’ve never even met him. You always said he wasn’t worth my time.”
    Georgia had actually said a lot more than that: when Caryn was old enough to notice that other children had two parents, Georgia had breezily replied that she was busy finding Caryn a much better daddy than all the other kids had, to make up for the fact that the first one wasn’t any good—just as the week before, she had returned a faulty toaster to the store and replaced it with a fancier model.
    Georgia’s explanation had seemed perfectly reasonable to Caryn. By the time she was old enough to question what exactly had been wrong with the man her mother had chosen to have a baby with, she had also learned that when Georgia didn’t want to talk about a subject, wild horses weren’t going to change her mind. The few details she managed to get out of her—Buddy Travers was a womanizing charmer who ended up being a no-account drifter and was probably either dead or in jail by now—hadn’t exactly encouraged her to go looking for him.
    “Well.” Georgia’s voice sounded funny. “The thing is…I would hate for you to lose the opportunity to get to know him.”
    “Get to know him? But Mom, he’s a cheat and a liar and a drunk. He never once tried to contact me. He doesn’t even care that I’m alive. You always said it was his loss, not mine.”
    This time, the silence stretched even longer, until finally Caryn said “Mom? Are you still there?”
    “Caryn, darling, there are maybe one or two little insignificant things I didn’t tell you about your father.”
    Caryn braced herself, ready to hear that he was a convicted killer or a heroin dealer or any of a thousand other worst-case scenarios she had imagined whenever her curiosity got the better of her.
    “He, um…well, he did actually send you several letters. In the past. The very distant past.”
    “He what ?” Caryn stopped so abruptly that a jogger nearly ran into her. She was standing on a little stone bridge