Ashley felt guilty because she had thought very little about Miles over the years.

“Congratulations on your book.”

“Have you read it?” Miles asked expectantly.

“No.”

Miles’s smile sagged for a moment.

“It would have been too painful,” Ashley said, hoping that this explanation would ease his disappointment.

“I understand. It was very hard for me to write Sleeping Beauty, but I felt that it had to be done.”

The waiter came for their orders.

“Were you always interested in writing?” Ashley asked as soon as the waiter left.

“I dabbled a bit in college, but I never actually tried to write a book before I started Sleeping Beauty.”

“Then what made you do it?”

“After Maxfield escaped, my father and I were inundated with calls from movie producers, television shows, and literary agents who wanted to cash in on our tragedy. I got rid of most of them, but Andrea Winsenberg and I hit it off. She gave me the idea of writing a book that would preserve Casey’s memory. She wanted one of the writers she represents to ghostwrite it for me.” Miles smiled. “Andrea thought I was nuts to try it myself.”

“It’s certainly been a huge success.”

“I’d trade the money and the fame for Casey’s recovery.”

“Is there any possibility that will happen?”

“No.” Miles looked grim. “Look, I don’t want to talk about Casey’s situation. I’d much rather hear about your adventures. But we do have to get this out of the way. I don’t know if you’re really Casey’s daughter…”

“But you knew that Casey became pregnant the summer my father dated her,” Ashley interrupted.

“Yes,” Miles answered cautiously.

“I know you and two men beat my father because you were angry that he made Casey pregnant.”

Miles eyes dropped to the tablecloth. “We all do things that we’re not proud of. I was very young when I attacked Norman. I’ve always regretted what I did.” He looked up at Ashley. “But I did it for Casey. I love her, Ashley. If you really want to help her, you’ll let her go.”

“You mean, I’ll bow out and let you take her off life support?”

“Yes. I understand why you’d want to keep Casey alive. My God, you thought you’d lost your mother. Now you have this bomb dropped on you. But keeping Casey alive is wrong. You’d know that if you saw her.”

Miles paused. He took a deep breath. “Casey and I are very close. I love her very much, but I’ve come to accept the fact that she died in the boathouse along with Terri.” He shook his head. “What you’ll see if you visit the nursing home isn’t Casey. It’s a corpse, a shell that was once a vibrant woman. Her spirit has left her, Ashley. Everything that made her human is gone.”

“Your father didn’t give up hope.”

“My father never let anything go. He was never around when Casey and I were growing up but he tried to control every aspect of our lives.”

“You sound bitter.”

“I am bitter. You have no idea what it was like for us.”

“Didn’t your mother…?”

“Our mother was a drunk. If she showed the slightest gumption Henry beat it out of her. She was lucky to die young.”

Ashley could not hide her shock. Miles noticed.

“You only knew Henry after he found God, the benevolent version. The man Casey and I knew was like the wrathful God of the Old Testament. He was never wrong and he always believed he could get what he wanted through sheer willpower. Henry fooled himself into believing that Casey would wake up from her coma like Sleeping Beauty. But the children’s fable and his dream are both fairy tales.”

Miles paused again. “It kills me to see her wasting away, Ashley. I want her to die with some dignity. I want Casey to be able to rest in peace.”

“I can see how painful this is for you, Miles, but I thought I lost my family. Then, a few days ago, Jerry Philips showed up and told me that my real mother is still alive. I can’t just condemn her to death. What about the new drug? Isn’t Casey in a clinical trial?”

“That drug is never going to work. Even if it wakes her up, there’s no guarantee that she’ll be in possession of her mental faculties. She’d probably be a vegetable.”

Miles took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to bring this up, but I feel I must. You won’t want to hear this but it’s the truth. Casey doesn’t deserve your loyalty. She never wanted you. Do you know how I found out she was pregnant?”

“No.”

“She wanted an abortion and she knew that one of my fraternity brothers had arranged one for his girlfriend. Then Henry found out. I think a servant may have said something. We had a family meeting. Casey was evasive until Henry threatened to disinherit her. That’s when she told us that Norman was the father.”

Miles took a drink of his wine. Then he looked across the table at Ashley.

“She wanted Henry’s money but she never wanted you. That’s the truth. You don’t owe her a thing.”

Ashley found it hard to speak. “How…how did she feel about my father?”

“She was slumming. When she got tired of him she dumped him without a second thought. Look, Ashley, I love my sister-we’re blood-but Casey has never been a nice person. She was always self-centered and self-destructive. She would have made a terrible mother. You know about her marriage to Coleman?”

Ashley nodded.

“That’s typical of the way she’s lived her life. After Father made her the dean of the Academy she was more careful, until that fiasco. She was always promiscuous and emotionally unstable. She used drugs. She even tried suicide once.”

“No.”

“She was irresponsible, Ashley. She bounced from project to project. She’d get wrapped up in something, pour herself into it, then drop it as soon as she got bored. That’s what she did with your father.”

“She seemed to do a good job at the school,” Ashley said, wanting to defend Casey but suddenly realizing that she was totally devoid of any facts to muster on her behalf. Casey may have given birth to her, but she knew almost nothing about the dean.

“This is typical. Father gave her the position at the school in a last-ditch attempt to help her make something of herself, and I have to admit that she did a great job at first. She was always very bright and she was well educated, but I really doubted that she’d be able to stick with it. But she did. She liked the challenge and the responsibility. The Academy was very important to Henry and she knew that he was placing a lot of trust in her. He didn’t do that often.

“Then she went to a convention in Las Vegas and married that piece of trash on a whim.” Miles looked down and shook his head in wonder. “Do you have any idea the harm that can be suffered by a school like the Academy if there’s even a whiff of scandal? Her marriage to that cheap crook had the potential to be a disaster.”

It must have occurred to Miles that he was getting angrier as he spoke, because he checked himself and took a deep breath.

“There’s nothing to be gained by keeping Casey alive,” Miles said. “She didn’t care about you, she didn’t care about anyone except herself and me. She did love me. Now I’ve got to pay back that love by ending her living death.”

Ashley shook her head. “I can’t give up on the possibility that she might come back. I’m sorry.”

Miles features softened. “Look, Ashley, you shouldn’t be burdened with the added worries you’d have if you had to care for Casey. These past few years must have been tough. I imagine you haven’t been able to work much, and you don’t even have a high school diploma, do you?”

“No.”

“You should be trying to get your life back together. You should be in school. I could help you. Maybe find you a job with Van Meter Industries while you get your GED. Then I could help you with college tuition. We are family. We shouldn’t be adversaries. We should be helping each other.”

Ashley wasn’t certain what to make of Miles’s offer. She hoped that it wasn’t an attempt to buy her off.