"It just didn't work out. These things happen. It's better this way," Sherry said, and then covered her mouth with horror as she realized she was saying exactly what he'd written. It had just slipped out, like a knee-jerk reaction.
"Those thoughts were put in your head," Drina said quietly. "As was your response to questions about your Uncle Al."
"He wasn't really an uncle. He was just a family friend. He was really supportive of Mom, but then--"
"He just stopped visiting and stuff. By the time I started university he was just a fond memory," Drina said with her.
Sherry sat back, sure all the blood had drained out of her head. "Someone's controlling me?"
"No," Basil assured her. "At least not directly. Those are explanations that were put into your head. But for you to repeat them so faithfully, they must have been put in your head firmly and often . . . and reinforced over a long period of time." After a pause, he commented, "The fact that there's an automatic response to questions about her Uncle Al--"
"He's not really my uncle. He was very--" Catching herself repeating the phrase, Sherry cut herself off so abruptly she nearly bit her own tongue. Grim now, she muttered, "Sorry. You were saying?"
"I was merely going to suggest that it might point the finger at your--at this Al person," he finished.
"But he hasn't been in my life for fifteen or sixteen years," she pointed out with a frown.
"Are you sure?" Basil asked. "What did he look like?"
Sherry glanced to him with surprise and shrugged. "He was . . ."
"What color was his hair?" Drina asked when Sherry fell silent, a frown claiming her face.
"It was . . ." She frowned and then shook her head. "I don't . . ."
"How tall was he?"
"Was he fat or thin?"
"How did he dress?"
Sherry stared at them all blankly. The answers to their questions simply weren't coming. She couldn't remember. She couldn't visualize the man at all. She kept trying to draw up moments in her life when she knew for certain that he had been there; her brother's funeral, her birthdays, her graduation . . . But all she saw was a fuzzy outline of a man, as if someone had erased the image.
"It's all right," Basil said quietly, taking her hand gently in his. "Breathe."
Sherry concentrated on her breathing for a minute, but her head was spinning. Good old Uncle Al.
"This is awful," she breathed with horror.
"No. This is good," Basil assured her. "We are a step closer. Uncle Al was the immortal."
"But he hasn't been in my life for--"
"He very well may have been, Sherry," Basil said quietly, and then pointed out, "Why else would he erase your memories of what he looked like?"
"Are you suggesting he erased my memory of what he looked like as Uncle Al so that he could be in my life as someone else?" she asked with a frown. "Is that even possible?"
For a moment no one spoke, but Sherry couldn't help noticing that several glances were exchanged, and then Drina sighed and said, "He would have had to work it carefully. Withdraw from your life for a couple of months to allow the memory to fade a bit naturally, and then simply add to it with some mind control when he reappeared."
"And he probably would have changed his look when he did come back into your life," Basil added quietly. "Different hair color and cut, different style of dress, facial hair or no facial hair, as opposed to how he looked as Uncle--your uncle," he caught himself quickly, and then added, "Perhaps even a different context."
"Different context?" Sherry asked uncertainly.
"Someone connected to the university or work rather than home and family," Drina explained. "People often keep the three separated mentally. We automatically compartmentalize our lives into home, school, and work. We don't usually mix the three."
Sherry shook her head, confusion and bewilderment rife within her, and then finally asked with frustration, "But why? Why would an immortal go to all that trouble to spend time with me?"
There was silence for a moment as everyone exchanged glances, and then Basil sighed and took her hands in his. "There are only two possible reasons. One, you may be a possible life mate to him or her, they recognized this when you were quite young, and so have been a part of your life since, waiting for you to get older before approaching you."
Sherry blinked in surprise at the suggestion, and then asked with exasperation, "Well, for heaven's sake, how old is old enough with you people? I'm thirty-two, not jailbait."
"Yes, well, it's possible he or she was waiting for you to succeed at your endeavors so that you would have more confidence and be your own woman first," he said quietly. "With a mating between a mortal and an immortal who has seen centuries or even millennia, it is possible the mortal will look up to and defer to the immortal and never really come into their own."
"Well, that's just silly," Sherry said with annoyance.
"Is it?" Basil asked with a faint smile. "You may think so now, but you have lived a bit and had some successes. Imagine yourself when you were fresh out of high school. Imagine finding out there were immortals and that you were a possible life mate to one." He let her think for a minute and then said, "If they were older like myself, and wealthy, there would be no need for you to work. You might not have gone on to higher education and got your business degree. You might not even have pursued your dream to open a store. Or you might have, using money your mate gave you, which wouldn't have given you as much confidence as having saved and done it all on your own."
Sherry frowned, reluctantly admitting, if only to herself, that he was right. In fact, she would guess it would have gone further than that. Knowing her mate had lived so long, and seen and experienced so much, she probably would have developed a sort of hero worship for him, deferring to him in everything rather than trusting in her own intelligence and instincts. She supposed it truly could have hampered her developing into her own woman.
"Still," she said, "I achieved my dreams and started my store three years ago. Surely if there is someone, he would have approached me by now?"
"Yes," Lucian said, joining the conversation for the first time. "Which is why I suspect the immortal in your life is your father."
Sherry turned on him with amazement. "My parents split up after my brother died. My father then moved to BC. He hasn't been in my life since I was eight years old."
"I wasn't speaking of your mother's husband," Lucian said.
For a moment his words didn't make sense to her, and then Sherry sat back as if he'd hit her. She began to shake her head.
"I was sifting through your memories when you were talking to Drina about the fact that you have no one on your list that has been in your life more than ten or eleven years," Lucian said. "You ran over the list in your head as you talked and were recalling everyone from childhood on," he informed her.
Sherry wasn't surprised that he'd sifted through her thoughts, and she knew she had run quickly through the list of people in her life.
"From the memories that slid through your head, you have your mother--Lynne Harlow Carne's--eye shape and lips," Lucian said. "But everything else--your eye color, skin color, your nose, the shape of your face . . ." He shook his head. "Nothing like your mother, and nothing like the man you knew as your father, Richard Carne, either."
Sherry felt the breath slip out of her. What he said was true. He wasn't the first to comment on it. She had none of her father's traits. Her parents had both been fair and blue-eyed, where she was dark-haired and dark-eyed and her skin was more a buff beige than the ivory they'd both had. And while she had her mother's large doe eyes and full lips, her nose was almost Roman in its straightness and her face was oval instead of long and thin. She was also short and curvy in comparison to her tall, svelte parents. Her aunt Vi had even once commented on it and joked that she was a changeling.
Sherry shook her head, forcing those thoughts out. They were crazy. Madness. It couldn't be true. Heck, if her father was an immortal--
>
"I'm not immortal," she said abruptly, sure that disproved the theory.
"You wouldn't be," Basha said quietly. "As I've recently learned, the child takes on the mother's nature. If she is immortal, the child will be. If she is Edentate, the child will be. And if she is mortal--"
"The child will be," Sherry finished for her. "But if my mother was the life mate of an immortal, why wouldn't he have turned my mother and made her one too?"
"She wasn't his life mate," Lucian said with certainty.
"Or, maybe she was, but he'd already used his one turn and couldn't turn her," Basil said quickly, giving Lucian a look that made it obvious he thought he was being insensitive.
Lucian scowled in response. "You are not saving her feelings by suggesting there was a relationship that did not exist. You are merely dragging it out for her. She will come to these conclusions herself eventually." He turned to Sherry then and said, "While he may have cared for your mother in some small way, she was not his life mate. If she were, he would have been incapable of staying away from her."
"But if you're right and he's been in my life all these years, then he didn't stay away," Sherry pointed out. "Maybe he was her life mate and--"
"He stayed in your life, not your mother's," Lucian interrupted.
"She was there too," Sherry said quickly.
"She was also married to and sleeping with her mortal husband," Lucian said grimly. "A life mate could not stand by and suffer that."
Sherry scowled now and shook her head. "Well, this is all stupid speculation anyway. My parents were married a full year before I was born. My mother was not the type to be unfaithful. And she would have told me if my dad wasn't my father."
"Are you sure about that?" Lucian asked, obviously not agreeing with her.
"It would explain your father's absence in your life," Basil pointed out gently. "If he knew you weren't really his child . . ."
Sherry simply stared at him with dismay for a moment, and then lurched to her feet and stumbled past Stephanie's legs to hurry to the hall leading to the bedrooms. She was suddenly desperate to be alone.
Thirteen
"Let her go. She wants to be alone."
Basil tore his gaze from Sherry's retreating back to scowl down at his brother's restraining hand on his wrist. Her stricken face at the possibility that Richard Carne might not be her father had set him back a bit, and he'd been slow to follow. But now he wanted desperately to go to her and help her through this.
"Take your hand off me, or I shall remove it for you, brother," Basil said coldly.
Lucian considered him briefly and then shrugged and released him. The moment he did, Basil slipped around the coffee table and made his way to the bedroom he had shared with Sherry last night. His gaze scanned the empty room quickly as he entered. The sheets were tousled, their night clothes from the evening before strewn everywhere, but she was nowhere in sight. However, the door to the bathroom was closed.
Pushing the bedroom door closed, he crossed the room and then hesitated and pressed an ear to the door. All he could hear was her heartbeat and breathing.
"Sherry?" he called softly. "Are you okay?"
There was a brief silence and then, "Yes."
Basil reached for the handle and found the door was locked. Releasing it, he asked, "Can I come in?"
"No."
"Sherry--" he began worriedly.
"I'm fine, Basil. I just . . . I'm going to curl my hair and straighten my makeup. Go on back and help with the lists. I'll be out in a bit."
Basil shifted his feet, peered at the door and then back to his feet. She was hurting. He knew she was hurting. What they had suggested shocked her, rocked her world, in fact. He wanted to comfort her, but it seemed she didn't want comforting. She really wanted to be alone.
Turning away from the door, he glanced around the room again and then gathered up their clothes. Folding them neatly, he set them on the chair, then turned his attention to making the bed. The entire time he did so, he listened for sounds from the bathroom, determined that if he heard what even vaguely sounded like a sob or weeping, he would break in and comfort her whether she wanted it or not.
He didn't hear that, though. Instead, he heard the occasional metallic click and a clatter that he suspected came from her curling iron being used and then set on the counter while she gathered fresh strands of hair to wrap around it. She really was curling her hair, he realized, and shook his head. As he gave in and headed out of the room to leave her in peace, Basil acknowledged that he had no clue when it came to women.
A man would have beaten the hell out of someone or something after such news, but a woman? His woman? She didn't weep and wail or beat up anything, she curled her hair.
"I told you she wanted to be alone," Lucian said as Basil returned to join them.
"Shut up, brother," Basil muttered.
In the bathroom, Sherry unplugged the curling iron and left it on the counter to cool as she began to brush her hair. Her mind was an utter blank. She'd wanted to be alone to absorb the possibility that her father wasn't her father, and she'd known she wouldn't be able to do that with Basil there. He would have hugged her, offering comfort, but it would have turned into passion and--It had just seemed better to be alone. But even alone, her mind didn't seem to be absorbing it. It was like someone telling you that the sky was yellow when you have known and seen it as blue all your life. It just wasn't computing.
Sherry turned and opened the door to walk out into the bedroom. She'd heard Basil moving around in the room so wasn't terribly surprised to find it tidied up. Her gaze slid to the bed and she considered lying down, but Basil had just tidied the room. Besides, she wasn't tired. In fact, she was actually feeling quite restless . . . and her mind was racing. Her father was not her father. She didn't even know how to feel about that. Basil was right, it would explain why he had so easily withdrawn from her life, because while she'd been unresponsive to his few attempts to speak to her, he hadn't tried very hard to overcome that . . . which had always hurt her. But if it was true, why had she not been told? She could understand why it might have been kept from her as a child, but once she was older . . . and especially when her mother was on her deathbed. She would have expected her mother to at least tell her then.
Her mother had been weak and hospitalized after her first heart attack, but survived a week before a second one had taken her life. Sherry had spent every night of that week with her, the two of them talking, sharing memories and so on. During those talks there had been many opportunities for her mother to tell her that Richard Carne wasn't really her father. Why wouldn't she do that?
Because it wasn't true, Sherry decided. It couldn't be. Her mother would have told her.
But Basil was right, it would explain a lot, she thought in the next moment. Why she was such a changeling. Why she'd grown up pretty much without a father from the age of eight on.
But Sherry just couldn't believe that her mother wouldn't have told her.
Unless her mother had been afraid that she would be angry or think less of her on learning it.
This not knowing one way or the other could make her crazy, Sherry thought grimly. She needed to know the truth . . . But the only one with the answers she needed was the immortal they all thought had been such an integral part of her life for so long.
And who the devil was that? she wondered with frustration.
The others seemed to think it was her Uncle Al during her younger years, and it was true that he had spent a good deal of time in her life. She'd seen him daily after her parents had split. Sherry's mother had worked for social services, and while she'd dropped her off at school every morning, it was Uncle Al who collected her afterward while her mother was still at work. When she'd started ballet at nine, he was the one to take her to her classes after school. When she'd switched to gymnastics at twelve, again it was Uncle Al who had taken her. He even took her to dinner a couple times a week on nights when her mother worked late.
In fact, now that she thought about it, most of her time with Uncle Al had been spent without her mother there. Although there were occasions when he'd taken both her and her mother on outings, to the science center or the zoo on a Saturday or Sunday. Actually, he'd sort of stepped in and taken her father's place, at least in her life if not her mother's.
Funny how she'd forgotten that, Sherry thought now with a small frown.
But Uncle Al had faded from her life during her high school years, seeing her less and less often, until she'd hardly seen him at all the last two years before she went to university, and she hadn't seen him at all that last summer. Wrapped up in school, prepping for university while enjoying a blossoming social life, she hadn't really noticed his absence at the time . . . or perhaps she hadn't because he'd messed with her head, she thought grimly now.
Lucian seemed to think that Uncle Al was the immortal in her life and that he had changed his appearance and then reappeared while she was at the university.
The thought made her sift through the people she'd known there. She'd had a couple of good male friends through university and afterward. She'd also had a couple of professors who mentored her. But the only person she'd seen daily during that period and for several years afterward was Luther.
They'd met during her first year of university, had several classes together and ended up hanging out, and then went in with several other people to rent a five-bedroom house during second year. They'd remained roommates throughout the rest of her time at university. While their other roommates had changed, they both stayed in that house until they got their MBAs, and then continued to be roommates after graduating into the work world. Luther had been her best friend and confidant. She'd cried on his shoulder, listened to his advice, and shared her life with him. He'd been rather like an older brother. Luther had worked a couple years before starting university and was twenty-four when they met, five years older than her.
At least he'd claimed to be twenty-four, she thought now. And then after her mother's funeral, while Sherry had been busily settling her mother's accounts and then buying and stocking her dream store, Luther had got the offer of a job in Saudi Arabia that paid so much money it would have been mad for him to refuse it. He hadn't, of course, and disappeared from her life, just like Uncle Al.