Part 11
Clara pressed her palm against the page.
“I asked Margaret to give you the first letter when you turned twenty-two because I hoped the age would protect you from the story. This was foolish. Age protects no one. It only gives us more words for what hurt.”
The final paragraph was shorter.
“I am going back to Morrow House. There is a hill behind the chapel where the herons nest in spring. If I die before you find me, do not make a religion of my absence. Play the lullaby badly. Laugh without permission. Be difficult when kindness is used against you. Margaret and I agreed on those things, even when we agreed on little else.”
Eleanor died on April 8, 2018.
Her ashes had been buried beneath a beech tree behind the Morrow House chapel.
Clara remained in the reading room until the sunlight moved from one side of the table to the other.
When she finally opened the door, Edmund stood by the window. He took one look at her face and understood enough not to ask.
“She died,” Clara said.
His hand tightened around the curtain.
“When?”
“Eight years ago.”
He lowered his head.
Harland stepped away to give them privacy.
Clara held out the last letter.
Edmund did not take it.
“She wrote it to you.”
“She mentions you.”
“That does not make it mine.”
Clara sat on the bench beneath the window.
“She thought you wouldn’t listen.”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I made it believable that I would not listen.”
Clara had no comfort for him. She was too tired of people turning guilt into the center of the room.
“Her grave is near here,” she said.
They drove to Morrow House in the late afternoon.
The property had been sold to a religious trust that maintained the chapel and garden. The main residence stood empty behind shuttered windows. Wild grass had swallowed the gravel paths.
A caretaker led them up the hill.
The beech tree overlooked a shallow valley. Beneath it was a flat stone engraved with the name Elena Rose Mercer and the line SHE TAUGHT US TO BEGIN AGAIN AFTER THE WRONG NOTE.
Clara stared at the unfamiliar name.
Edmund removed his coat and folded it over one arm. He stood several feet from the grave, waiting.
Clara knelt and touched the stone.
She had imagined meeting Eleanor since reading the first letter. The imagination had changed shape every hour. Sometimes Eleanor embraced her. Sometimes she apologized. Sometimes Clara walked away. None of those versions had prepared her for cold stone and a name chosen for hiding.
“I found the music box,” Clara whispered.
The wind moved through the high grass.
Nothing answered.
She began humming the lullaby.
The third note broke.
Edmund came closer but did not touch her.
After a while Clara sat beneath the tree. He lowered himself beside her with visible discomfort in his knees.
“She wrote that you returned her letters,” Clara said.
“I didn’t.”
“I believe you.”
He looked at the valley.
“Beatrice managed my correspondence after Catherine died. I stopped opening personal letters. I told myself work was more useful than grief.”
“She used what you gave her.”
“Yes.”
Clara pulled a blade of grass apart.
“Did you love my mother?”
“With insufficient courage.”
“That sounds rehearsed.”
“I have had several days to think of it.”
She looked at him.
He sighed. “Yes. I loved her. I also wanted her to become someone easier for me to understand. When she refused, I treated the refusal as betrayal.”
“That sounds more honest.”
“It is less comfortable.”
They sat until the caretaker warned that the chapel gates would close.
Before leaving, Edmund placed the silver key on Eleanor’s grave.
Clara picked it up.
He looked at her.
“She left it for me,” Clara said.
“Yes.”
The criminal investigation widened over the following weeks.
The documents beneath Beatrice’s floorboards showed that Martin Wren had diverted nearly four million pounds from foundation accounts through shell charities. Beatrice had continued several transfers after his death, partly to conceal the earlier fraud and partly to maintain properties she could no longer afford.
They also showed payments to Saint Agatha’s Clinic, a private investigator, and a railway employee who had altered a passenger record.
Beatrice was charged with fraud, conspiracy, obstruction, and offenses connected to Clara’s removal. Her lawyers argued that she had acted during a period of coercion and domestic abuse. They produced medical records documenting injuries caused by Martin.
Clara read the reports with a confusion that anger could not simplify.
A harmed woman had harmed another woman.
Fear explained choices without repairing them.
Edmund visited Beatrice in custody once.
He did not tell Clara what they discussed until she asked.
“She wanted to know whether Eleanor had forgiven her,” he said.
“What did you say?”
“That she had no right to ask the question through me.”
Clara considered this.
“Did she ask about me?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked whether you still touch your chest when you hear the lullaby.”
Clara stopped walking.
They were in the palace garden, though Clara had begun visiting only through a private entrance. Spring had moved toward summer. The blue curtains in the ballroom had been cleaned after the charity event and now hung without any sign of the night that had changed them.
“How would she know that?”
“She saw Eleanor do it.”
Clara looked toward the windows.
Beatrice had known the mother Clara never would. The knowledge did not make her innocent, but it prevented Clara from reducing her to a locked door.
“I want to see her,” Clara said.
Edmund objected.
Not loudly. That made the objection more difficult.
“She has manipulated every person who trusted her.”
“I’m not asking permission.”
“I know.”
“You sound like you think I am.”
He stopped beside the fountain.
“I am trying to protect you.”
May you like
Clara looked at him until he heard the words.
He rubbed one hand across his mouth.
