Part 18
“It won’t be the same,” Lily replied.
No adult attempted to contradict her.
Anna arrived shortly after five.
She drove an old silver station wagon with one rear door a different color from the rest. When she stepped out, Claire understood why Ruth had asked about the scar.
Anna was near seventy, thin and slightly stooped, with white hair cut close around her ears. Beneath her left ear lay a pale crescent mark.
She carried a canvas document case against her chest.
Lily ran to her.
Anna dropped the case and knelt before the child. Their embrace was desperate but quiet. Lily buried her face against Anna’s shoulder while Anna checked her hair, arms, and cheeks as though needing proof that she remained whole.
Claire stood several feet away with Daniel.
He stared at Anna.
The resemblance to his mother was not obvious in the way movies made family secrets obvious. Anna’s nose was broader. Her face longer. Yet when she turned toward him, one eyebrow lifted slightly before the other.
Daniel did that whenever he did not believe a restaurant bill.
Anna saw his reaction.
“You must be Marianne’s boy.”
Daniel’s voice was restrained.
“I’m Daniel.”
She stood slowly.
“I met you once.”
He looked at her.
“When?”
“At your mother’s funeral. You wouldn’t speak to anyone.”
“I don’t remember you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
Claire watched Daniel absorb yet another fact that had existed in his life without his permission.
“Were you related to my mother?” he asked.
Anna looked toward Ruth.
“I believed so.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“No.”
“Did she believe it?”
“Some days.”
“What changed?”
“Fear. Pressure. Her husband.”
“My father?”
“He thought Evelyn wanted money or publicity.”
“My mother had neither.”
“Neither did Evelyn.”
Daniel looked at the document case on the pavement.
“What do you have?”
“Copies. Incomplete records. Letters Nora left with me.”
“Where is she?” Lily asked.
Anna’s face tightened.
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
“Did she run away?”
“No.”
“You don’t know.”
Anna looked at Claire briefly, perhaps recognizing the child’s borrowed phrase.
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t.”
Marian offered the use of a private conference room, but Claire refused. The lower flower room felt safer now than the polished spaces above. It had no guests, no family portraits, no expectation that people behave beautifully.
They returned there together.
Ruth was not invited.
She remained in the blue sitting room with Richard, though Claire suspected neither would speak.
Anna spread documents across a cleared worktable.
Hospital intake forms. Photocopies of handwritten ledgers. Two letters from Evelyn to Marianne, both returned unopened. A photograph of two infants lying side by side on a patterned blanket, each wearing a pale band around one wrist.
The image had been copied too many times. Faces blurred into light and shadow.
Between the infants lay the open locket.
Claire leaned closer.
The photograph compartments in the image appeared intact. Each contained a portrait of a young woman.
Their mother, perhaps, and someone else.
“Where is the original?” Daniel asked.
“Missing,” Anna said.
“Convenient.”
His voice was not cruel, but Anna lowered her eyes.
“Yes.”
Claire touched the edge of the copy.
“Which baby is Evelyn?”
“No one knows.”
“Then how did her family decide?”
“They wrote initials on the back.”
“Whose initials?”
“E and M.”
Daniel looked at Claire.
Evelyn and Marianne.
“Was Marianne her birth name?” he asked.
“According to this copy.”
Anna showed him the back of the photograph. Two faint letters had been circled in pencil.
“This could have been written yesterday,” Daniel said.
“It could.”
“You have no chain of custody.”
“No.”
“No original records.”
“No.”
“No DNA.”
“Your mother refused.”
“Why?”
“She did not want the result.”
Daniel turned away.
Claire understood that too well.
Anna removed another folder.
“This is a copy of a nursing log from the week they were born. Two female infants. Same mother. One transferred to family care. One discharged through a private placement.”
“Names?” Claire asked.
“Removed.”
“Dates?”
“The page is damaged.”
“Why is everything damaged?”
Anna gave a tired smile.
“Because people destroy what frightens them and then expect the remaining pieces to behave like truth.”
Lily sat on a folding chair while Paula stitched the rabbit’s back. She watched the needle move through the fabric.
“Did my mom break the papers?” she asked.
“No,” Anna said.
“Did Aunt Ruth?”
“Some of them.”
“Why?”
“Because grown-ups are often worse at being afraid than children.”
Lily considered this.
“Is my mom afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Of the bride?”
Claire looked at her.
Anna answered carefully.
“Of what the bride might learn.”
The distinction offered little comfort.
Daniel picked up one of Evelyn’s letters.
It was addressed to Marianne Rowan at a Pennsylvania post-office box. The envelope had been marked refused.
He read silently.
Claire did not look over his shoulder.
After a minute, he set it down.
“What does it say?” she asked.
“That Evelyn believed they were twins. She apologized for contacting my mother through her employer. She asked for one meeting without lawyers.”
“Anything about Nora?”
“No.”
Anna handed Claire another letter.
This one had been opened. Evelyn had written to Anna after Marianne’s death.
Claire read slowly.
Her mother described guilt without explaining its source. She wrote that Marianne had called three days before the aneurysm and left a message. Evelyn had not returned it because Claire was home from college and Richard had planned a family dinner. By the next morning, Marianne was dead.
Claire’s hands began to shake.
“She blamed herself for missing the call,” Anna said.
“What was in the message?”
“No one knows. Marianne’s husband deleted it.”
Daniel looked at Anna.
“My father?”
“He said it was private.”
“Did Nora hear it?”
“She claimed she did.”
“What did it say?”
“That Marianne had found something inside her mother’s box.”
“The box with the floral pattern,” Daniel said.
Anna nodded.
“What?”
“She did not say.”
Daniel turned toward Claire.
May you like
“The box was empty when my father gave it to me.”
“You still have it?”
