Chương 2
Victor removed his glasses.
Rain washed over the glass behind him in slanting sheets.
“Evelyn,” he said.
One word.
That was enough.
Daniel gave a quiet, incredulous laugh. “No.”
Victor’s eyes had gone to Maya.
She disliked the way he looked at her. Not because there was anything predatory in it. The opposite. He was looking too carefully, as though pieces of her face belonged to people he had known before she existed.
Maya straightened.
“Don’t.”
Victor blinked.
“Don’t look at me like you recognize me,” she said. “You don’t.”
Another contraction seized her.
This one defeated pride.
She folded slightly, one hand braced against the brass railing.
Victor moved first.
Maya snapped, “Stay there.”
He stopped.
Evelyn crouched beside her. “How far apart?”
Maya stared at her.
“What?”
“The contractions.”
“Since when are you my nurse?”
“I had two children.”
“One of whom just kicked my suitcase across a casino.”
Daniel’s mouth opened.
Evelyn did not even look at him.
“How far apart?”
Maya tried to remember. Claire had always accused her of becoming sarcastic when frightened. She had once said it with enough affection that Maya had mistaken it for a compliment.
“Six minutes. Maybe five.”
“How many weeks?”
“Thirty-seven tomorrow.”
The two uniformed officers exchanged a glance.
Victor put his glasses back on and became, visibly, the security director again.
“Call medical,” he told the nearer officer. “Tell the bridge we may need priority docking and EMS.”
Daniel stepped toward him. “You’re not making operational decisions right now.”
Victor looked at him.
His face had changed less than anyone else’s, but something had left it.
“What would you prefer I do?”
“I would prefer that you acknowledge the obvious conflict.”
“That can happen after the pregnant woman having contractions receives medical attention.”
Daniel lowered his voice. “You think that letter is about you?”
“I think your sister’s name just came out of a suitcase I’ve never seen before.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No,” Victor said. “It isn’t.”
Maya shut her eyes.
“Would both of you please stop discussing my paternity like I’m a mislabeled bottle of wine?”
A few guests looked away.
The woman in emerald satin did not. Her phone was held too high in her hand.
Daniel saw it.
His attention snapped toward the room.
“Phones down, please.”
That did exactly what Maya expected.
Three more people raised theirs.
Daniel’s face hardened.
“This is a private event.”
A man near the bar said, “You kicked a pregnant woman’s luggage across the floor, Daniel.”
“I removed an unidentified person from a restricted family area after she refused security instructions.”
Maya opened her eyes.
“I was standing by a window.”
“You crossed a marked rope.”
“Because your mother’s assistant told me to wait on this side of it.”
Evelyn looked at Daniel. “Did Nora know she was coming?”
“No.”
“Nora spoke to me,” Maya said.
Daniel glanced toward Victor. “Did she?”
Victor answered carefully. “Ms. Bennett was listed at the front desk as a guest requesting five minutes with Mrs. Whitmore. Nora approved access to the observation lounge but not the private salon.”
Maya almost smiled.
“So now I have a name.”
Daniel looked at him. “Why wasn’t I told?”
“Because people request meetings with your mother at every fundraiser.”
“And when one of them brings an antique Whitmore brooch?”
Maya followed his gaze.
The tissue bundle had opened near the overturned case.
A silver brooch lay on the floor.
Evelyn made a small sound.
Not grief.
Recognition.
She reached down and picked it up.
The piece was oval, tarnished around the edges, set with tiny seed pearls around a carved white center.
“I gave this to Claire on her seventeenth birthday.”
Daniel rubbed his cheek.
“She could have bought it online.”
Evelyn turned on him.
“No, she could not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because your father had the clasp altered after Claire complained it tore her dresses. He had a jeweler solder a second hook here.”
She showed him.
Daniel did not look.
“I said we need to verify this.”
“And I said don’t touch her.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
Daniel pointed at Maya.
“From exactly this.”
Maya’s anger arrived before the hurt.
She welcomed it.
“What is ‘this’?”
Daniel looked at her for the first time since the slap.
“A stranger walks into our family event six weeks after my sister dies, carrying personal property that belonged to her, claiming a relationship no one has ever heard about, and suddenly there’s a letter announcing that one of our employees is her father. You want me to treat that as normal?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I want you to treat me as a person.”
Daniel’s eyes flicked briefly toward her belly.
That was enough to make his expression falter.
Maya hated that too.
Pity was almost worse than suspicion.
“My mother spent thirty years teaching me not to expect anything from this family,” she said. “If I wanted money, I had easier ways to ask for it than boarding a boat in a thunderstorm while nine months pregnant.”
“Then why are you here?”
That question hurt because it was the one Maya had been asking herself since she left home that afternoon.
She looked at the torn-open case.
“Because she asked me to come.”
Evelyn stared at the envelope.
“When?”
“Before she died.”
“How long before?”
“Four days.”
Evelyn’s face changed.
Maya saw it and wished she had not.
“She could still talk?” Evelyn asked.
“Yes.”
“Was she in pain?”
Daniel said, “Mom.”
Maya answered anyway.
“Yes.”
Evelyn looked down.
The medical team arrived before anyone could say more: a nurse employed by the riverboat and a young EMT from the vessel’s emergency staff. They pushed through the guests with the awkward urgency of professionals entering a scene that had already become social spectacle.
The nurse introduced herself as Patrice and crouched in front of Maya.
“Any fluid?”
“No.”
“Bleeding?”
“No.”
“First pregnancy?”
“Yes.”
May you like
“How long have the contractions been regular?”
“They weren’t regular until maybe half an hour ago.”
