Gates of Paradise (Blue Bloods 7)

“Allegra was so distraught. She kept saying it was all her fault, that she had tried to get him to see a doctor for months, that he’d been coughing up blood but had insisted nothing was wrong. Then Cordelia wrote us this letter not long after, and we always assumed Allegra had died of a broken heart.”

It was true in a way, Schuyler thought, remembering her mother lying motionless in a hospital bed.

“What was he like?” Schuyler asked.

“Ben?” Decca sighed. “I know mothers are biased, but Ben was one of the good ones, you know? He had it—whatever it was. He was so handsome, and everyone loved him, and he was always so kind—I think that’s what mattered more—not his good looks—but that he was a good soul. I don’t mean nice or polite, but someone who had a strong moral compass, someone with character. He was privileged, of course, but he wasn’t spoiled. He was such a generous person. Like I said, he loved your mother so much. She was everything to him. It was a shame that he never knew his daughters. He would have been such a good father. He adored children.”

Schuyler knelt down at the grave and ran her hand over the headstone. The granite was cool under her fingers and sparkled in the sunlight, glinting gray and pink. I wish I’d had a chance to know you. I wish that so much.

You’d have loved him, said a voice in her head. Allegra, inside her, grieving as well. She had not felt her mother’s spirit in a while; it was different from the watchful presence that came and went. Schuyler could feel the warm love she always felt when Allegra was with her. Your grandmother spoke true. He was a wonderful man. He was the most unselfish, generous person I knew. He was such a happy person, he made me so happy. We were happy together until the end. I thought he would get a chance to know you. When I first met him, I saw a vision of the three of us together, of him at my bedside at your birth. But it was not to be. He was taken away too early. A few weeks after he passed, I discovered I was pregnant with you. Cordelia did what she did to protect you. I hope you find it in your heart to forgive her one day.

That’s why she changed my name, Schuyler realized. To hide me from my father’s family. Because I was not supposed to exist. I am half human and half vampire. An Abomination. My father never even knew me, and my mother only cared for the survival of the vampires.

Schuyler realized she had been holding on to a dream—that her father might still be alive and her mother would return.

It would never happen, not now, not ever.

Not in this lifetime, maybe, Allegra said. But the best that is in you is from him. He was the most unselfish person I ever knew. When he learned who and what I was, he told me to forgive Charles, that it was important I return to him. He wanted that for me, for us. Sometimes love means letting go, he said. Remember that when you arrive at the crossroads. When time stands still. When the path is open to you. Remember who your father was.

Oliver knelt down beside her. “You okay?”

Schuyler wiped a few errant tears off her cheeks and nodded, then stood up.

“This means we were wrong about the whole Blood of the Father thing,” she said. “But there’s still one more thing I’d like to do before we go back. Will you help me?”

“Of course I will. What is it?”

“I know this isn’t really related to what we’re doing, and I understand that we don’t have a lot of time, but it turns out that before my father got back together with my mother, he had another girlfriend. And she had a baby. That means…”

“That you have a sister,” Oliver said. “How many secret sisters can one girl have?” he joked.

“Funny,” Schuyler said. “But I don’t know if you can imagine what it means to me to know that I have more family out there. I need to find her.”

They went back to the hotel and got on Oliver’s computer. “Tell me her name,” he said.

“Finn Chase, I think. Actually, I don’t know—I’m not sure if she was using her mother’s name, and I don’t know what that is.”

But Oliver was typing away. “Just Googled her. Got a Seraphina Chase on Facebook, goes by Finn.” He pulled up her profile page. “Could this be her?”

Schuyler peered at the picture and recognized the girl from the photographs. “That’s her.”

“Let’s see what she’s like. Binge-drinking photos? Embarrassing status updates?”

Finn must have been a trusting soul, because she didn’t have any privacy settings that would prevent them from looking at everything. There were lots of pictures—with her mom, her grandmother, her friends. In all of them she was smiling, happy. Unlike Oliver’s predictions, there weren’t any incriminating photographs, although there were a few obligatory shots of Finn holding a red Solo cup at parties.

“Hmm. Hopelessly wholesome, but that’s U of Chicago for you. Supposedly everyone studies too much there,” Oliver said. “A bunch of grinds.”

“You’d fit right in,” Schuyler teased.

“She looks a little bit like you,” he said.

Schuyler couldn’t see it at first—Finn was blond, to start. But then she looked closer and saw that they both shared the same blue eyes.

“She’s pretty,” Oliver said.

There was a time, Schuyler knew, when that statement would have elicited a pang of jealousy. She waited for it, but it never came.

“I want to meet her,” she said, staring at the photo stream. It was like looking at what her life might have been, a gallery of everything that she had lost. Finn had a mom who loved her, grandparents who doted on her, and friends who clearly adored her, from the numerous “likes” on her page to the messages they scrawled on her wall. It was hard not to feel a little envi