Part 5
She regretted speaking.
He looked back at her face. “Then I understand why Lillian called.”
“You understand more than I do.”
“Possibly less.”
“What happened twenty-five years ago?”
“I was not senior staff then. I managed transportation and security. Mrs. Vale told me to drive Lillian to the train station. Lillian refused. She walked to the road.”
“In the blue coat.”
“Yes.”
“Did Graham Vale see her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it is true.”
Tessa moved closer to Mara. “Is Mr. Vale expecting her?”
“No.”
“Will his fiancée be there?”
“Yes.”
“The woman in the clipping?”
“Celeste Harrow.”
“Did you send the clipping?” Mara asked.
Sloane’s brow changed slightly. “What clipping?”
Mara took the envelope from her bag but kept it closed. “This was delivered today.”
He read the front without touching it. “That handwriting is not familiar.”
“Someone knows about the brooch.”
“Or about your mother.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Mara gave a humorless breath.
Sloane accepted the rebuke. “You’re right.”
He took a card from his coat pocket and placed it on the porch railing. Bellweather’s crest was embossed above his name.
“If you decide to come, call the number on the back. The main entrance will be heavily controlled. I can meet you at the east service gate until six forty-five.”
“And if I don’t come?”
“I will tell Mr. Vale that Lillian called.”
“Will you tell him she died?”
“Yes.”
“Will that mean something to him?”
Sloane’s face became careful. “I believe it will.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
He stepped off the porch.
Tessa called after him. “You drove three hours just to say that?”
Sloane stopped beneath the rain. “I drove because twenty-five years ago a frightened woman walked away from Bellweather alone, and I have wondered ever since whether I should have followed her.”
He walked to a dark sedan parked along the curb.
Mara stood motionless until the car disappeared.
Then she went inside and locked the door.
For an hour, she did nothing useful.
She opened cabinets and closed them. She found an unopened box of tea behind canned tomatoes, boiled water, and forgot to pour it. She sat at the kitchen table with Sloane’s card beside the newspaper clipping and the brooch between them.
Tessa called the clinic, speaking in the hall. Mara heard fragments.
Family situation. No, not mine. I understand. Yes, tonight. I know.
When she returned, she leaned against the refrigerator.
“They said I can come in at midnight instead of nine.”
“You didn’t need to change your shift.”
“I’m not driving you.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were about to.”
“I was not.”
“You get a small line between your eyebrows when you’re about to ask for something and hate yourself for it.”
Mara touched her forehead.
Tessa smiled faintly. “There.”
“I can take the train.”
“It leaves at two twelve. You’d reach Philadelphia at five thirty if nothing is delayed.”
“I could get a ride from the station.”
“On a Friday in the rain, during rush hour.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
Tessa sat across from her. “Do you want me to tell you not to go?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t go.”
Mara looked down.
“Better?” Tessa asked.
“No.”
“Then go.”
“That isn’t better either.”
“I know.”
Mara unfolded the handkerchief again. Soot darkened one corner. Near the embroidery, Lillian had repaired a tiny tear with uneven white thread. The repair made the fabric feel less like an heirloom and more like something that had passed through her mother’s hands for years.
“Maybe she stole it,” Mara said.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe she worked there and took it.”
“She cleaned offices.”
“She could have cleaned estates.”
“Did she?”
“I don’t know what she did before I was born.”
Tessa’s gaze stayed on Mara’s face. “That’s the part, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“You’re not afraid the brooch belongs to them. You’re afraid your mother did.”
Mara folded the cloth too sharply. “People don’t belong to places.”
“No. But they can belong to lives they never told their children about.”
Mara stood. “I need a dress.”
The closest thing she owned to formal clothing was a pale-gray wool dress bought three years earlier for a supervisor’s funeral. It hung at the back of her bedroom closet beneath a plastic garment bag. The hem was slightly uneven because Mara had shortened it herself, and one cuff had a faint rust-colored stain she could not remove.
Tessa ironed it while Mara showered.
When Mara came out, steam trailing into the bedroom, Tessa held up the dress.
“This is funeral gray.”
“It was bought for a funeral.”
“The gala will assume you’re a warning.”
“I’m not attending the gala.”
“You keep saying that as though security will let you crawl through the pantry.”
Mara dressed. The wool scratched at her wrists. She combed her damp auburn hair but did not have time to dry it properly.
Tessa opened Lillian’s jewelry box and found nothing suitable except a pair of small silver studs.
“She wore these when we got school pictures,” Mara said.
“Take them.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I’m already carrying one piece of her jewelry into a mansion.”
“So?”
“So one is enough.”
Tessa did not argue. She put the earrings back.
Mara packed the brooch inside the ivory handkerchief, slid it into a small interior pocket of her canvas shoulder bag, and closed the zipper. She added Sloane’s card, the clipping, her wallet, a phone charger, and one of the untouched muffins.
At the front door, she turned toward the kitchen.
For a moment she expected Lillian to call after her about the stove, the weather, or the foolishness of going anywhere without tissues.
Nothing moved.
Mara switched off the light.
May you like
At the train station, Tessa parked beneath a sign that limited waiting to five minutes and remained for twenty.
The platform smelled of wet concrete and diesel. Travelers stood under the narrow shelter, checking phones and shifting bags from one shoulder to another. A little boy in a dinosaur raincoat jumped in every puddle his mother told him to avoid.
