Chương 9
What kind of father had Lucien been during Céleste’s first year? Did he change diapers? Did he sing? Had he wanted children?
Vivienne did not make him perfect.
“He adored you,” she said one afternoon. “He also handed you to other people whenever you smelled unpleasant.”
Mara looked up from a folder.
“He said he could not breathe through his mouth and function simultaneously.”
“That sounds weak.”
“It was weak.”
“Did Sofia tolerate that?”
“She once placed a dirty diaper inside his briefcase before a meeting.”
Mara laughed.
Vivienne’s smile came slowly, as if unused muscles were involved.
“He improved after that,” she said.
These conversations did not create trust. They created openings where trust might eventually go.
The DNA result arrived seventeen days after the clinic visit.
Mara opened the encrypted report alone in the archive restroom because she could not bear to see anyone watching her read it.
The laboratory found a relationship consistent with biological grandparent and grandchild.
Probability greater than 99.8 percent.
She sat on the closed toilet lid and read the number until it stopped looking like mathematics.
Her phone vibrated with a message from her attorney, who had received the report simultaneously.
Call me before you call anyone else.
Mara called Jo.
“I’m her,” she said.
Jo was quiet. “You’re Mara.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
Mara pressed her hand over her mouth. The restroom fan hummed above her. Someone outside tried the door and walked away.
“What am I supposed to feel?” she asked.
“There is no supposed to.”
“I don’t feel different.”
“Good.”
“I also feel completely different.”
“That sounds expensive.”
Mara laughed once.
Then she began crying in the silent, furious way she had cried after Emil’s funeral, with her shoulders rigid and tears falling faster than she could wipe them away.
Jo stayed on the phone and talked about nothing. A customer had left a glove at the café. The espresso machine was making a noise like a goat. Someone had written “oat milk” on the inventory sheet three times and still forgotten to order it.
When Mara could speak, she called her attorney.
Then Adrien.
He answered immediately.
“I have the report,” she said.
He was silent for two breaths. “What does it say?”
“You know what it says.”
“I have not received it.”
“You didn’t arrange a copy?”
“No.”
She believed him.
“It says she’s my grandmother.”
Adrien breathed out. In the background, a door closed.
“Where are you?”
“In the basement bathroom.”
“That seems inappropriate.”
“It has a lock.”
“Stay there.”
“I’m not fainting.”
“I know. My aunt may.”
Vivienne did not faint.
She came into the archive without her gloves, walked directly to Mara, and stopped an arm’s length away.
For a few seconds they only looked at each other.
Mara saw Lucien in none of Vivienne’s face. Then the countess tilted her head, and something in the angle felt familiar, though it may have been imagination.
“May I?” Vivienne asked.
Mara knew she meant an embrace.
She almost said no.
Then she nodded.
Vivienne held her carefully, without pulling her close at first. Mara smelled lavender, cold air, and the faint mineral scent of old jewelry. The countess’s hand rested between Mara’s shoulder blades. It trembled once.
Mara did not call her grandmother.
Vivienne did not call her Céleste.
When they separated, Adrien stood near the shelves looking away.
“Say something,” Mara told him.
He adjusted his cuff. “The report will create several legal obligations.”
Vivienne turned. “Adrien.”
“I am pleased,” he said. “I am also terrified.”
“That makes two of us,” Mara replied.
News of the result leaked before sunset.
This time the source was not a guest. A screenshot of the laboratory conclusion appeared on a celebrity news account, cropped to remove the laboratory name but leaving Mara’s case number visible.
Only six people had legitimate access: Mara, her attorney, the laboratory’s case manager, Vivienne, Adrien, and Bellavere’s outside counsel, who received a copy after Mara authorized it.
Mara’s attorney denied leaking it. Adrien began an internal investigation. The laboratory reported unauthorized access from an employee account and suspended two staff members.
The internet stopped calling Mara a fraud.
Instead, strangers began estimating her inheritance.
A financial site valued Bellavere at $180 million. Another placed the estate at $60 million and described the foundation’s debt as “substantial but opaque.” Commenters advised Mara to sue, sell, forgive, expose, marry, hide, or start a lifestyle channel.
Someone created merchandise featuring the blurred auction photograph.
Mara bought none of it.
Three days later, a brick came through Jo’s café window with a note wrapped around it.
THIEVES RAISE THIEVES.
No one was injured. The police took the note and security footage. The man who threw it wore a hood and kept his face turned away.
Jo cleaned broken glass from the pastry case while Mara apologized.
“Stop,” Jo said.
“This happened because of me.”
“It happened because a man with poor emotional regulation found a brick.”
“I can pay for the window.”
“With what?”
Mara looked down.
“Exactly,” Jo said. “Also, the owner has insurance and an unhealthy love of renovations. He is almost happy.”
He was not happy, but he did replace the window.
Bellavere increased security around Mara’s apartment. She objected until a photographer followed her into a grocery store and took pictures of her buying toilet paper.
Adrien arranged a furnished guesthouse on estate property. Mara refused.
Vivienne offered her a room in the main house. Mara refused more quickly.
In the end, she moved temporarily into Emil’s empty house because reporters could not park on the private gravel lane without blocking one another. Jo came with her for the first week and complained that the shower had the water pressure of “a polite apology.”
May you like
Mara continued working in the archive.
The investigation into the laboratory leak eventually identified a billing clerk who had sold the screenshot for $3,000. She was fired and charged under state privacy laws. The result satisfied no one. Mara had imagined betrayal from Bellavere because Bellavere was easier to distrust than a stranger with access and rent due.
