Chương 3
Patrice touched Maya’s wrist to check her pulse.
“We’re going to get you somewhere quieter.”
“I’m not leaving without my case.”
Daniel closed his eyes briefly.
Maya saw him do it.
“Not because I’m stealing the pearls,” she said. “Because those are the last things my mother touched.”
Daniel looked away.
Patrice said, “The suitcase can come.”
Victor stepped toward the officers.
“Bag every item separately, photograph it where it lies, and log who handles it.”
Daniel nodded despite himself.
“And I’m recusing Victor from custody of the property,” he said. “Officer Bell handles it.”
Victor’s mouth tightened.
“Agreed.”
Maya looked from one man to the other.
“You really are a fun family.”
Nobody laughed.
Then Evelyn did.
It was a tiny, broken sound, gone almost as soon as it appeared.
Maya hated herself for understanding it.
The storm made docking harder than anyone admitted.
The riverboat was already turning toward its nearest secured terminal when the captain sent word that wind gusts were pushing debris downriver and the normal approach lane had been temporarily restricted. Maya spent twenty-three minutes in a private medical room listening to Patrice count contractions while the floor vibrated beneath the narrow bed.
Evelyn sat in a chair near the door.
Daniel stood outside speaking into his phone.
Victor had disappeared.
The envelope remained unopened in Evelyn’s lap.
Maya kept looking at it.
“You can read it,” she said finally.
Evelyn’s fingers tightened.
“It says Evelyn only.”
“You’re Evelyn.”
“I know.”
“Then either open it or stop holding it like it’s going to explode.”
Evelyn gave her a look.
Claire had given Maya the exact same look a thousand times.
It was the first resemblance that frightened her.
Evelyn broke the seal.
The paper inside was several pages long.
She unfolded the first one.
Her eyes moved across the handwriting.
Maya watched her instead of the letter.
Evelyn made it halfway down the first page before her lips parted.
She continued.
At the bottom, she stopped.
Then she went back to the beginning and read it again.
“What does it say?” Maya asked.
Evelyn did not answer.
“Mrs. Whitmore.”
Nothing.
“Evelyn.”
The older woman looked up.
Maya had expected tears.
There were none.
That made it worse.
“She says Victor is your father.”
Maya stared at her.
“I figured that out.”
“She names him.”
“Okay.”
“She says he didn’t know.”
Maya looked at the ceiling.
For reasons she could not explain, that hurt more.
“Of course.”
Evelyn folded the page once, then seemed to realize she was creasing it and opened it again.
“She told him you weren’t his.”
Maya’s head turned.
“What?”
“She says she lied to him.”
Patrice looked up from the monitor.
Evelyn lowered her voice.
Maya did not.
“Why?”
Evelyn’s silence stretched.
Maya said, “Read the part where she explains that.”
“She says she was eighteen and afraid.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“She says she believed leaving was the only way to keep everyone from deciding her life for her.”
Evelyn’s thumb rubbed the paper.
“She says your grandfather threatened to have Victor fired. He threatened to cut Claire off completely if she continued seeing him.”
Maya stared at her.
“And you?”
Evelyn did not look up.
“What did you do?”
Patrice shifted as though considering whether to leave.
Evelyn answered.
“I told her she should go.”
The contraction arrived so hard Maya closed her eyes.
She breathed through it, counting backward from ten because counting forward always made time feel longer.
When it passed, Evelyn was still there.
“You told your pregnant eighteen-year-old daughter to leave?”
“I didn’t know she was pregnant.”
“Didn’t you?”
“No.”
“Did you ask?”
Evelyn’s face tightened.
“No.”
Maya almost said something cruel.
It was available.
She could feel the sentence waiting.
Then the nurse’s hand moved over her abdomen, and Maya heard her own mother’s voice from three weeks earlier.
You don’t have to punish people just because you can.
Claire had said it from a hospice bed after spending thirty years punishing people by disappearing from them.
Maya had laughed then.
Neither of them had enjoyed the joke.
She looked at Evelyn.
“What else?”
Evelyn returned to the letter.
“She says she went to New Orleans first. Then Houston. She met Thomas Bennett when you were two.”
“That I know.”
“She says Thomas knew you weren’t his.”
“He adopted me.”
“Yes.”
“He was my father.”
Evelyn looked up.
Maya held her gaze.
“Whatever this letter says, Thomas was my father.”
Evelyn nodded once.
“I understand.”
“No. You understand a sentence. That’s different.”
Patrice glanced at Maya’s face, then at the monitor.
“Contractions are still close. We need to get you off the boat as soon as we dock.”
Maya looked toward the small porthole. Nothing beyond it but rain.
“Great.”
Evelyn continued reading.
“She says she tried to contact me in 1999.”
Maya frowned.
“My mother told me she never did.”
“She says she wrote.”
“To you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get it?”
Evelyn’s mouth moved.
“No.”
Maya watched her too closely.
“That wasn’t a confident no.”
“I don’t remember receiving it.”
“Those are different answers.”
Evelyn folded the paper into her lap.
“You sound like her.”
“I’m starting to think everyone in this family hears Claire whenever a woman asks a direct question.”
Daniel appeared at the door.
“We’re five minutes out.”
He looked at the open letter.
“You read it.”
Evelyn said nothing.
“Does it name Victor?”
“Yes.”
Daniel’s face became still.
“And?”
“She says he didn’t know.”
Daniel laughed once without humor.
“Convenient.”
Maya sat up straighter.
“What would be inconvenient enough for you?”
He looked at her.
“Evidence.”
“Daniel,” Evelyn said.
“No. We are not doing this on emotion.”
“You kicked my suitcase.”
His eyes sharpened.
“That was a mistake.”
Maya waited.
Daniel seemed to realize what she was waiting for.
He added, “I should not have done it.”
Still not an apology.
May you like
Fine.
She knew men who treated apologies like submerged mines. Step wrong and apparently a limb came off.
