Chương 3
“I’m sure you need to ask me about fifty things.”
“Did Elaine ever mention a place called Bryn Hollow?”
Claire turned.
“No.”
Something like hope went out of him.
“Why?”
Robert looked toward the chandelier.
“When Eleanor was small, we lived there for two years. Army housing. She hated the plumbing and loved the apple tree behind the kitchen. She used to tell people she was going back there whenever she was angry with me.”
Claire waited.
He cleared his throat.
“It was stupid.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
For the first time that night, he looked directly at her without searching her face for someone else.
Claire said, “My mother hated apples.”
Robert’s mouth moved.
Not quite a smile.
“She always did.”
That was almost enough to break Claire.
She left before it could.
The next morning, the internet had named her before she finished brushing her teeth.
MYSTERY WOMAN STUNS ASHFORD GALA WITH SECRET FAMILY CLAIM.
The first photograph showed Claire in profile, holding the locket to her chest.
The second showed Robert reaching toward her.
A third had been taken years earlier from the employee page of the medical supply company where Claire worked in contract compliance.
By nine fifteen, her supervisor called.
“Please tell me you’re not coming in today.”
Claire sat on the edge of the hotel bed in one of Robert Ashford’s old event T-shirts because she had packed badly.
“Good morning to you too, Denise.”
“I have seventeen emails asking whether we employ an heiress.”
“I’m not an heiress.”
“Somebody sent a fruit basket.”
Claire closed her eyes.
Denise lowered her voice.
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Good. I mean, not good. I mean that’s a normal answer.”
Claire laughed despite herself.
Denise continued, “Take two days. Paid. HR’s handling calls. Do not talk to reporters in front of the building.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“And Claire?”
“Yeah?”
“If you become a billionaire, I expect you to remember who approved your dental insurance exception last February.”
“That was Sharon.”
“Then forget I called.”
After they hung up, Claire sat with the phone in her lap.
The room smelled faintly of hotel coffee and industrial detergent. Outside, somebody in the parking lot was arguing about a dead battery.
Ordinary noise.
It helped.
Then someone knocked.
Claire froze.
Another knock.
“Claire?”
Julian.
She opened the door three inches.
He had changed from white tie into charcoal trousers, a white shirt, and a navy blazer. Without the tuxedo he looked less like an heir and more like a tired man who had not slept.
“How did you find my hotel?”
“My grandfather sent a car after your ride.”
Claire stared at him.
Julian winced.
“That sounded worse out loud.”
“You followed me?”
“Security followed your car because there were reporters at the gate.”
“And nobody thought to mention that?”
“No.”
“Great family culture.”
He looked over his shoulder at the hallway.
“May I come in?”
“No.”
He nodded.
“Fair.”
“What do you want?”
“A DNA test.”
Claire had expected the request eventually.
Not before breakfast.
“You think I’m lying.”
“I think there are photographs of my aunt online from 1994 that anyone can find. I think you arrived at a gala with an object my grandfather recognized. I think he is vulnerable where Eleanor is concerned. And I think reasonable people verify extraordinary claims before restructuring their understanding of their family.”
His speech had the efficient rhythm of someone accustomed to presenting quarterly reports.
Claire leaned against the door.
“You rehearsed that.”
“In the elevator.”
“That makes it worse.”
“Probably.”
She studied him.
“You don’t believe him?”
Julian looked toward the patterned hotel carpet.
“I believe he believes you.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.”
The answer was clean.
Claire respected it more than she wanted to.
“Fine.”
His head lifted.
“Fine?”
“I want the test too.”
Julian hesitated.
That surprised her.
“You do?”
“My mother lied to me for twenty-nine years.”
His expression shifted.
“She may have had reasons.”
“So might yours. Doesn’t make it less of a lie.”
He looked at her for a moment.
“My mother died when I was sixteen.”
Claire immediately regretted the line.
She hated apologies offered too quickly, the social reflex of making pain tidy.
So she said only, “I didn’t know.”
“No.”
He put his hands in his pockets.
“There’s a lab my grandfather’s attorney recommended.”
“Not Martin Keene.”
“No.”
“Then maybe.”
Julian almost smiled.
“He has other attorneys.”
“I assumed rich people kept them in a drawer.”
“Different drawers.”
That made her laugh.
The laugh startled both of them.
They arranged the test through an accredited relationship laboratory that afternoon. Robert provided a sample as well. The technician explained that the result could establish whether Claire was biologically consistent with being Robert’s granddaughter, but it would not identify her mother without additional comparison.
Robert listened as if receiving tactical instructions.
Claire signed her own forms.
Julian watched.
Afterward, Robert asked whether she would have lunch.
Claire said no.
He asked whether she wanted to see photographs of Eleanor.
She said no again.
Then she went back to her hotel, took off the navy dress she had worn to the gala, and stood in the shower until the hot water cooled.
At three thirty, she called the detective assigned to the old case.
Detective Lena Ortiz had a calm voice and no apparent reverence for the Ashford name.
“I pulled the original death report,” Ortiz said. “There are problems.”
Claire sat down.
“What kind?”
“Eleanor Ashford was reported killed in a vehicle fire on March eighteenth, 1996. The car was found on a rural road outside Harrisburg. One body was recovered.”
“One.”
“Yes.”
“My mother was alive.”
“That appears increasingly possible.”
“How was the body identified?”
A pause.
“Dental records and personal property.”
“The locket.”
“It’s listed.”
Claire stared at the wall.
“Then what was buried?”
“That’s a question, not an answer.”
“Whose body was it?”
“We don’t know yet.”
May you like
Claire felt something cold move through her.
There had been another woman.
