Chương 6
A real laugh.
It hurt her cheek.
Lily watched her.
“Are they our family?”
Claire leaned against the marble counter.
“I think some of them are.”
“Do we have to like them?”
“No.”
“Do we have to call them stuff?”
“What stuff?”
“Like Grandma.”
Claire understood.
Margaret.
She shook her head.
“You call people what makes sense to you. Nobody gets a title just because of DNA.”
Lily studied the locket.
“What is she?”
Claire looked toward the door.
“Technically? If Grandma Anna was her daughter, then Margaret is my grandmother.”
“And mine?”
“Great-grandmother.”
Lily’s eyes widened slightly.
“She doesn’t look that great.”
“Lily.”
“I mean old.”
“I know what you meant.”
“Is that rude?”
“A little.”
“Sorry.”
Claire smiled.
Then Lily asked, “Why did Grandma lie?”
The smile disappeared.
Claire crouched.
“She was scared.”
“Of them?”
“Some of them.”
“Of us knowing?”
Claire had no good answer.
“Yes. Maybe.”
Lily rolled the locket chain between her fingers.
“She told me never to show this.”
“When?”
“At hospice.”
Claire stilled.
“You never told me that.”
“She said it when you went to get coffee.”
“What exactly did she say?”
Lily frowned, trying to remember.
“She said, ‘This belonged to me before I learned that belonging can be dangerous.’”
Claire closed her eyes.
Of course Anna had said something impossible like that to a ten-year-old instead of simply explaining herself.
“And then?”
“She said if anybody named Whitmore asked for it, I should give it to you first.”
“Anybody?”
Lily nodded.
“She said especially a pretty blonde lady.”
Claire opened her eyes.
“Did she say Vanessa?”
“No.”
“Did Vanessa ever come into the room when you were there?”
Lily shook her head.
Claire’s skin prickled.
“Did you see her anywhere?”
Lily thought.
“Elevator.”
“When?”
“The day Grandma got really sleepy.”
Claire remembered.
April twenty-eighth.
She had been downstairs arguing with insurance over a medication bill Anna would never live long enough to owe.
Lily said, “The pretty lady was crying.”
That complicated everything again.
When Claire returned to the library, Vanessa was on the terrace side of the room speaking quietly to Edward despite Margaret’s order.
Claire interrupted.
“Lily saw you.”
Vanessa stopped.
“At hospice.”
Vanessa looked at the child.
Lily moved behind Claire again.
Claire said, “She saw you crying by the elevator.”
Vanessa’s face changed.
Richard frowned.
Margaret watched.
Vanessa sank into the nearest chair.
For a few seconds she looked thirty-eight instead of timeless.
“I didn’t know she had seen me.”
“Why were you crying?”
Vanessa rubbed both hands over her face, careful not to disturb her makeup and then seemingly annoyed with herself for caring.
“Anna called me Thomas.”
Margaret sat very still.
Vanessa looked at her.
“She was medicated. Half asleep. I walked in, and she looked at me and said, ‘You came back.’ I thought she meant me. Then she said my father’s name.”
“What did you do?” Claire asked.
“I told her he was dead.”
Claire’s stomach tightened.
Vanessa’s eyes went wet.
“She said she knew.”
No one spoke.
“She said, ‘I just wanted to see if you’d tell the truth faster than he did.’”
Claire could hear Anna saying it.
Dry.
Cruel.
Funny.
All at once.
Vanessa looked toward Lily.
“Then she asked whether I had children. I said no. She said maybe that was a mercy.”
Claire winced.
“That sounds like her too.”
Vanessa gave a small, broken laugh.
“I hated her.”
“At hospice?”
“I hated that she could look like she was dying and still make me feel twelve years old.”
Margaret said, “Why did you ask for the locket?”
Vanessa’s gaze lowered.
“Because one of Anna’s letters to Dad mentioned it. She said you had given it to her when she was sixteen. There was a photograph of her wearing it in an old society column. I knew if Claire came here with Anna’s letter and that locket, people would believe her before anyone had time to ask questions.”
Claire stared.
“You mean before you had time to control it.”
“Yes.”
The word came without defense.
Claire had expected denial.
Admission made her angrier in a new way.
“You contacted me pretending you wanted to help.”
“Yes.”
“You asked me to come tonight.”
“Yes.”
“You told security my name would be on the list.”
“Yes.”
“Then when Margaret saw me, you acted like I crashed the party.”
Vanessa swallowed.
“I was going to get you alone before you spoke to her.”
“To do what?”
“Ask you to leave.”
“And if I didn’t?”
Vanessa did not answer.
Claire touched her cheek.
“Right.”
“I wasn’t planning to hit you.”
“That’s incredibly comforting.”
“I lost my temper.”
“You called my daughter a bastard.”
Vanessa looked at Lily.
Shame finally reached her face.
“That was unforgivable.”
Claire waited.
Vanessa seemed to understand that the sentence did not purchase anything.
She looked away.
Margaret said, “Why invite her at all?”
Vanessa was quiet for a long time.
“Because if I refused, she said she would mail the letter directly.”
Claire remembered the email.
I will hand it to Margaret Whitmore or I will send it by registered mail. Those are the choices.
She had written it after Vanessa ignored her for eleven days.
Vanessa said, “I wanted to see what she had.”
“So you brought my granddaughter into this house under false pretenses.”
Margaret stopped.
Her eyes moved to Claire.
Granddaughter.
Claire’s body reacted before her mind did.
A tightening across the chest.
Margaret heard herself too.
“I’m sorry.”
Claire shook her head.
“Not yet.”
Margaret nodded.
“Not yet.”
Richard walked to the window.
He looked out at the dark Atlantic.
“I should have told you.”
Margaret did not look at him.
“Yes.”
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“You were protecting yourself from my reaction.”
He turned.
“That too.”
It was the first completely honest thing Claire had heard from him.
Margaret seemed to hate it.
May you like
The storm kept them at the estate until nearly midnight.
The road down from the cliff flooded at one low point, and police temporarily closed it.
