Chương 4
Tears from Margaret would have made Claire angry, and she was tired of discovering new things to be angry about.
“What did she die from?” Margaret asked.
“Pancreatic cancer.”
“How long was she ill?”
“Long enough to know. Not long enough for us.”
Margaret absorbed that.
“Did she suffer?”
Claire looked at Lily.
“Not now.”
Margaret nodded.
Richard stood.
“I need to read it.”
“No.”
“Margaret.”
“No.”
He stared at her.
In a marriage of more than fifty years, perhaps there were tones that functioned like locked doors.
He sat again.
Margaret folded the pages carefully.
“She says you didn’t know about us until February.”
“That’s right.”
“She never told you.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“She thought you’d take me.”
Richard’s eyes lifted.
Margaret looked at him.
Claire continued because suddenly she wanted him to hear it.
“She said when I was a baby, somebody from her family found her. She didn’t give me a name. She said she was told that if she came back and started making accusations, people would question whether she was stable enough to raise a child.”
Richard put his glass down.
Margaret’s face became almost expressionless.
Claire said, “Was that you?”
Richard did not answer quickly enough.
Lily said, “Mom?”
Claire turned.
The child was frightened by her voice.
Claire lowered it.
“Sorry.”
Richard rubbed his forehead.
“I was trying to keep her from making a mistake.”
Margaret stood so abruptly that Anna’s letter slid from her lap.
Edward caught it before it reached the floor.
“A mistake?”
Richard rose too.
“She was angry. She had cut herself off from everyone she knew. She had a baby, no money, no degree, and a man who had disappeared before the child was born.”
Claire flinched.
She knew almost nothing about her father.
Anna had called him kind, young, and unequipped.
Never disappeared.
Richard went on.
“I offered help.”
“You threatened her,” Claire said.
“I told her reality.”
“You told a twenty-two-year-old single mother that your money could make people call her unstable.”
“I never threatened to take you.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Margaret looked as though she might strike him.
She didn’t.
Her restraint was somehow worse.
“You let me think she might be dead.”
Richard’s composure finally cracked.
“I thought she would come back when she calmed down.”
“For thirty-three years?”
“I made the wrong decision.”
“No,” Margaret said. “You made the same decision every day.”
Silence.
Claire felt that sentence enter the room and remain there.
Vanessa turned from the window.
“My father knew too.”
Richard’s head snapped toward her.
Margaret stared.
Vanessa’s shoulders had lost their practiced posture.
“He found the file after Grandfather’s heart surgery.”
Richard said, “Thomas had no right.”
Vanessa laughed bitterly.
“There it is.”
Claire watched her.
Vanessa took off her diamond bracelet and placed it on the windowsill, as if it had suddenly become too heavy.
“My father found payments to an investigator. A copy of Anna’s address. Notes from a lawyer. He asked Grandfather what it was.”
“When?” Margaret asked.
“2008.”
Margaret gripped the chair.
Sixteen more years.
Claire did the arithmetic without wanting to.
Vanessa said, “Dad told me in pieces. Not everything. He said Anna had been unstable, that she had made accusations, that she hated the family, that Grandfather had protected you from being dragged through it again.”
Margaret looked at Richard.
He did not deny it.
Vanessa continued, “When Dad died, I inherited his files. There were letters from Anna.”
Claire stood.
“What letters?”
Vanessa looked at her.
“Three.”
“You told me there were none.”
“I told you I had never met your mother.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Margaret said, “Where are they?”
Vanessa glanced toward Richard.
That was enough.
Richard said, “Vanessa.”
“They’re gone.”
Margaret did not seem to understand.
“Gone where?”
“I destroyed them.”
Lily’s fingers found Claire’s hand.
Vanessa looked directly at Margaret now.
“I burned them.”
The thunder outside had moved farther over the ocean.
The silence that followed was not dramatic.
It was tired.
Margaret sat down again.
Claire expected rage.
Instead she asked, “Why?”
Vanessa’s eyes filled, though no tears fell.
“Because I believed him.”
She nodded toward Richard.
“And because I believed my father. And because by the time I began wondering whether they had lied, I had already spent half my adult life defending this family.”
“That’s not why,” Claire said.
Vanessa looked at her.
“No?”
“You came to hospice after your father was dead. After you knew my mother existed. You asked for the locket.”
Vanessa’s jaw tightened.
Claire moved closer, stopping well beyond arm’s reach.
“What were you afraid it proved?”
Vanessa looked at Lily.
Claire stepped between them.
“Don’t.”
For once Vanessa listened.
She stared at Claire.
“My father’s trust documents created separate voting interests for his descendants and Anna’s, if Anna or her descendants ever reappeared.”
Edward Hale closed his eyes.
Richard muttered something under his breath.
Margaret said, “Thomas changed the trust?”
Edward answered carefully.
“Thomas created his own family trust. Richard did not control that instrument.”
Vanessa laughed without humor.
“You see? This is what happens. Within five minutes we’re talking about instruments.”
Claire said, “Money.”
“Control.”
“Same family accent.”
Vanessa’s face flushed.
“My father built half the foundation’s modern programs.”
“With whose money?”
“Everyone in this room has lived on family money, including the woman you’re turning into a saint because she died.”
Claire stood so quickly Lily’s hand slipped from hers.
“Do not talk about her.”
Vanessa’s chin lifted.
“What? Honestly? You think Anna wanted nothing? She contacted my father repeatedly.”
Claire froze.
Margaret said, “What?”
Vanessa looked around the room.
Now that she had begun, something reckless took over.
“She wanted access to family medical history when Claire was pregnant. She wanted photographs. She wanted to know whether her room still existed. She wanted to know if you were alive.”
Margaret’s face folded for half a second.
Vanessa continued.
“She also wanted money once.”
Claire stared.
“No.”
May you like
“You don’t know.”
“My mother never took money from any of you.”
