Sleeping Beauty (2004) by Margolin Phillip

Author:Margolin, Phillip [Phillip, Margolin,]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-01-11T04:52:22.650000+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Y our father agreed to Henry Van Meter' s terms, Jerry Philips explained to Ashley. His parents helped him raise you. Norman worked during the day and went to Portland State at night to get a degree. That' s where he met Terri. They fell in love and Norman told her about you. Getting a ready-made family wasn' t something Terri had bargained for, but she loved Norman and she fell in love with you.

How do you know all this stuff about my parents' private life? Ashley asked.

My father had notes of interviews with your father in his files, and Henry told me a lot. My dad' s point about you being his grandchild hit home. Henry was a bastard, but he was a bastard who wanted his line to continue. He assumed that Miles or Casey would have other children somewhere down the line, but you were his first grandchild, and he had an investigator from Brucher' s law firm keep track of you and Norman.

He spied on us?

Jerry shrugged. I don' t know if he thought of it that way. At some point he realized that neither of his children was going to give him another grandchild anytime soon, maybe ever. Then he became ill. Once he decided that you were the last of his line, he watched you more closely.

Ashley sat back. Her life had been an illusion orchestrated by her father, Henry Van Meter, and men she' d never met. How could her father and Terri have lied to her all these years?

Does Miles know about this?

Only Henry, Anton Brucher, my father, Norman, his parents, and Terri knew until Henry told me.

So Dean Van Meter never knew I was her daughter?

As far as I know, Casey never learned who adopted her child.

Then how did I get the scholarship to the Academy? After what you' ve told me, I don' t believe it was chance.

Henry arranged for the scholarship after your father was murdered. He also talked to someone at Brucher, Platt about putting you in his will shortly before your father was murdered, but he had his stroke and Casey was hurt and he never got around to it. He asked me about drafting a new will for him when he hired me to find you. Then he died.

Why would he care about me all of a sudden? He' d never done anything for me before.

He changed after the stroke almost killed him. He became very religious and he developed a social conscience. When he was younger, Henry had no sympathy for or interest in the poor. He believed in a class system run by men like his father who had started with nothing and became rich. The Academy started as an elite boys' school and he didn' t let in girls until Casey was old enough to attend. In recent years, he started giving scholarships to deserving minority students and children of the poor.

That was big of him, Ashley said bitterly. And now he'

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