Chương 8
Someone found Maya’s graduate thesis.
Someone else claimed the thesis had been funded by the Vale Foundation, which was false.
Three strangers emailed asking whether she intended to sue for a share of the Vale fortune.
A man she had gone on two dates with in 2022 sent, Wild.
Maya blocked him.
Her employer was not really an employer. She worked independently for collectors, galleries, attorneys, and sometimes museums. That freedom had always seemed glamorous when she described it to people.
Now three clients postponed projects in one afternoon.
One said it was because they did not want “media distraction.”
Martin Beck did not postpone.
He called her.
“The Lorrain is wrong.”
Maya blinked.
“What?”
“The restoration report. You were right.”
For the first time all day, her brain returned to something ordinary.
“Where?”
“Lower left corner. UV photographs came in.”
Maya sat at her desk.
“Send them.”
Martin laughed.
“You’re serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because half the internet thinks you’re an heiress.”
“I have a rent payment in nine days.”
“That’s reassuringly normal.”
“Send the images.”
For forty minutes Maya forgot Richard Vale existed.
She studied paint layers.
She enlarged photographs.
She wrote notes.
When she finished, she realized her shoulders had unclenched.
Then she saw her mother’s photograph on the desk.
Elena at twenty-something.
Laughing on a balcony.
Maya picked it up.
The handwriting on the back slanted slightly downward.
For Richard — when our daughter is old enough to know.
Not if.
When.
Her mother had intended the truth to surface eventually.
Maya whispered, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The apartment offered nothing.
Two days later, Adrian drove her to Santa Barbara.
The trip had been his suggestion after Richard’s archivist located a box from Eleanor Vale’s personal papers stored at the family’s old coastal property.
Maya had refused to travel with Richard.
She had also refused Richard’s driver.
Adrian arrived in a seven-year-old Volvo.
Maya looked at it.
“What?”
“I expected something worse.”
“It was my mom’s.”
“Oh.”
“She had terrible taste in cars but excellent maintenance habits.”
Maya got in.
Traffic out of Los Angeles was slow.
For the first hour they barely spoke.
Adrian listened to public radio.
Maya answered emails.
At a rest stop near Ventura, Adrian bought almonds and then complained that the bag cost seven dollars.
Maya looked at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You think rich people don’t notice prices?”
“I think you own a share of an aviation company.”
“I can still be offended by almonds.”
She laughed.
The sound surprised both of them.
Back in the car, Adrian said, “Dad and Victoria separated.”
Maya looked out the window.
“I’m not sure that’s my business.”
“It’s partly because of you.”
“That doesn’t make it my business.”
“He asked her to leave the house.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because you’re going to find out online.”
Maya nodded.
“Fair.”
Adrian kept his eyes on the road.
“She says he’s using this as an excuse to punish her for something he was already angry about.”
“Was he?”
“They’ve been bad for a while.”
“How bad?”
“Rich-people bad.”
“What does that mean?”
“Separate bedrooms in a house large enough that nobody has to acknowledge it.”
Maya looked at him.
“That’s bleak.”
“It’s efficient.”
She smiled.
Then Adrian’s expression tightened.
“She was good to me when my mother died.”
Maya waited.
He kept driving.
“Not perfect. She could be controlling. She liked knowing where everyone was. She could turn concern into surveillance in about ten minutes. But when my mother was in hospice, Victoria handled things. Food. Nurses. My school. Dad was there, but he was…” Adrian searched for the word. “Fragmented.”
“You feel guilty being angry at her.”
“Yes.”
Maya watched the freeway divide around them.
“You can be grateful to someone and still think they did something awful.”
Adrian gave her a quick look.
“That sounds suspiciously emotionally mature.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
At the Santa Barbara house, an archivist named Helen met them in a climate-controlled room above the garage.
The property itself was almost offensively beautiful, all white stucco and ocean wind, but Maya saw little of it.
Helen had arranged four acid-free boxes on a table.
“I have not removed anything,” she said. “Mr. Vale instructed me to preserve original order.”
Maya looked at Adrian.
“He learned something.”
Adrian smiled faintly.
They worked for three hours.
Eleanor Vale had kept everything.
Invitations.
Receipts.
Notes to florists.
Old museum newsletters.
A complaint about a refrigerator repair in 2005.
Maya found herself liking her.
Then, beneath a stack of correspondence from 2001, she found Elena.
Dear Mrs. Vale,
Thank you for meeting me even though I know Richard does not know you did.
Maya stopped breathing.
Adrian leaned over.
“You found something?”
She nodded.
There were seven letters.
Eleanor and Elena had met three times.
Eleanor knew about the pregnancy.
She did not know Charles had hired an investigator until Elena showed her photographs taken outside her apartment.
Eleanor wrote that she had confronted her husband.
Charles denied threatening Elena.
Then, in a later letter, Eleanor apologized.
I have lived with Charles long enough to know the difference between what he calls protection and what other people experience as fear. I am ashamed that it took seeing it directed at you for me to name it honestly.
Maya read that sentence twice.
The final letter from Eleanor was dated February 2001.
The pendant belonged to my mother before me. Charles thinks objects matter because they can be inventoried. I would prefer this one to matter because someone chose where it went.
There was no mention of the photograph.
Elena must have placed that inside later.
Adrian sat across from Maya.
“My grandmother knew you were alive.”
“Yes.”
“She never told Dad.”
“Apparently not.”
“Why?”
Maya opened the next envelope.
Eleanor answered.
May you like
I told Richard enough to make him ask questions. He would not ask them. I am sorry to tell you this because I know you are hoping otherwise.
Maya’s throat tightened.
