Chương 13
Margaret was waiting in the chapel near the eastern entrance.
She sat in the last pew with a cane between her knees and a red wool coat buttoned all the way to her throat.
She was smaller than Claire remembered.
Age had compressed her without softening her.
When Claire and Nathan entered, Margaret looked at them and said, “You brought him.”
Nathan glanced behind himself.
“I’m touched you remember me.”
“I remember you stealing cigarettes from my purse at your mother’s fiftieth birthday.”
“I was sixteen.”
“You were twenty-two.”
Nathan nodded.
“That does sound more like me.”
Margaret did not smile.
Her eyes settled on Claire’s purse.
“Did Marianne give you the key?”
Claire stopped walking.
“How did you know?”
“Because Evelyn made one mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“She believed Marianne would wait until after the funeral.”
Nathan sat in the pew across the aisle.
“Our mother has been dead nine days.”
Margaret’s fingers tightened around the cane.
“I know.”
Claire remained standing.
“Tell me where I was born.”
Margaret looked toward the small red sanctuary lamp near the altar.
“You read Evelyn’s note.”
“Tell me.”
“Not here.”
“You asked me to come here.”
“I asked you to come to St. Gabriel’s.”
Margaret stood with visible effort.
“I didn’t say the chapel was where we were going.”
She moved toward a side door.
Nathan rose.
Claire followed.
Beyond the chapel was a corridor that smelled faintly of floor wax and burnt coffee.
Margaret walked slowly, refusing Nathan’s offer of an arm with a look that made him withdraw it before she spoke.
At the elevator she pressed B.
Claire said, “What’s downstairs?”
“Records storage used to be.”
“Used to be?”
“Most of it was digitized.”
The elevator doors opened.
Margaret stepped inside.
Nathan glanced at Claire.
Claire held up the bag containing A-214.
“Does this open something down there?”
Margaret stared at the key.
For the first time since they arrived, composure left her face.
“That isn’t the key Evelyn told me to give you.”
Claire felt the elevator begin descending.
“Then what does it open?”
Margaret backed against the wall.
“I don’t know.”
Nathan said, “Marianne knew.”
The elevator stopped.
The doors opened onto a dim basement corridor.
Margaret did not step out.
At the far end, beneath a green EXIT sign, a woman stood beside a row of gray metal lockers.
Marianne Vale lifted one hand.
In it was a second silver key.
“Actually,” she said, “Evelyn knew too.”
Claire stopped so abruptly that Nathan nearly walked into her.
Margaret stayed inside the elevator.
Marianne turned the second key between two fingers, and the metal caught the weak fluorescent light.
“You shouldn’t have come alone,” Margaret said.
“I didn’t,” Marianne replied.
A door clicked somewhere beyond the lockers.
Claire looked down the corridor, but nobody appeared.
Nathan stepped closer to her.
“Who else is here?”
Marianne’s eyes remained on Claire.
“Your father.”
Claire felt something inside her go still.
“My father is dead.”
“No,” Margaret said quietly.
Claire turned toward her.
Margaret had one hand pressed against the elevator wall as if the building had shifted beneath her.
Nathan gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
“Okay, great, we’ve officially crossed into nonsense.”
Marianne lowered the key.
“Evelyn told you Robert was your father because Robert agreed to let her.”
Claire heard the name as though it belonged to another family.
Robert Mercer had taught her to ride a bicycle by running behind her on a suburban sidewalk until she realized he had let go.
He had burned hamburgers every Memorial Day and insisted they tasted better that way.
He had died six years earlier with Claire holding one hand and Evelyn holding the other.
“You don’t get to use his name,” Claire said.
Marianne’s expression changed.
“I liked Robert.”
“That makes it worse somehow.”
“Claire,” Margaret said.
“No.”
Claire pointed at Marianne.
“She comes to my house, asks about my daughter, and now she stands in a hospital basement telling me my father wasn’t my father.”
“I never said Robert wasn’t your father.”
“You just said exactly that.”
“I said he wasn’t your biological father.”
Nathan moved between them.
“Who is?”
The door beyond the lockers opened.
An elderly man stepped into the corridor.
He wore a brown jacket over a buttoned cardigan, and one hand rested against the doorframe.
Claire had never seen him before.
That should have helped.
It did not.
His eyes were Lucy’s.
Not approximately.
Not in the sentimental way families found resemblance after being told where to look.
They were Lucy’s gray-green eyes beneath heavier lids, with the same slight downward angle at the outer corners.
Claire’s hand found Nathan’s sleeve.
The man stopped.
“Hello, Claire.”
She hated him immediately for knowing her name.
“Don’t.”
He nodded once.
“My name is Thomas Vale.”
Nathan looked at Marianne.
“Vale.”
“She’s my daughter,” Thomas said.
Marianne’s face tightened.
Claire looked from one to the other.
The resemblance between them was less obvious than the resemblance between Thomas and Lucy, and that somehow made it more convincing.
“Why does my mother say I wasn’t born here?”
Thomas looked toward Margaret.
Margaret finally stepped out of the elevator.
“Because you weren’t.”
The answer came from her, not him.
Claire turned.
Margaret walked to locker 214.
“The hospital had a maternity residence across the street until 1987.”
“I know that building.”
“It’s condominiums now.”
“I know.”
“You were born there.”
Claire stared at the locker.
“That isn’t St. Gabriel’s.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Margaret’s mouth worked before any sound came.
“Because your mother wasn’t the patient.”
Marianne inserted her key into the upper lock.
Claire took A-214 from the plastic bag.
There was a second lock beneath it.
Two keys.
Two people required.
Evelyn had not trusted anyone with the whole door.
“Who was the patient?” Claire asked.
Nobody answered.
Nathan closed his eyes.
“Oh, Jesus.”
Claire looked at Thomas.
Then Marianne.
Then Margaret.
“Marianne’s mother?”
Thomas shook his head.
“Marianne’s sister.”
Marianne’s chin lifted slightly.
May you like
“My sister Anna.”
Claire leaned against the lockers.
