Part 9
“How soon can we access the records?” she asked.
“Harland is speaking to the archive.”
“Can they email them?”
“Medical confidentiality may apply.”
“She would be forty-six now. She might be alive.”
“Yes.”
The hope in his voice made Clara afraid of him. Not because it was unreasonable, but because she could feel how quickly two strangers might become dependent on the same possibility.
“Don’t tell the press,” she said.
“I won’t.”
“Not even to get cooperation.”
“I won’t.”
She leaned against the piano.
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
“No.”
“Would you have helped her?”
Silence traveled down the line.
“I want to say yes.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No,” he said. “I do not know whether I would have helped in the way she needed.”
Clara closed her eyes.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Not lying.”
The community center director, Mr. Shah, entered the room after she ended the call. He carried a plastic bag containing two sandwiches and a newspaper folded to hide Clara’s photograph.
“The trustees want you to take leave,” he said.
“Do they?”
“They used the phrase ‘until attention subsides.’”
“My students have exams.”
“I told them scandal does not improve scales, but neither does canceling lessons.”
“What did they say?”
“They scheduled another meeting.”
Clara sat at the piano and pressed middle C.
The note sounded ordinary.
“I can resign.”
“No.”
“The center cannot afford security.”
“No.”
“Parents are frightened.”
“Some are. Others are angry on your behalf. Mrs. Bennett suggested throwing eggs at the reporters.”
“She would.”
“She asked whether the center could reimburse her.”
Clara smiled faintly.
Mr. Shah placed the sandwiches on the piano.
“Take two days. Not because the trustees are nervous. Because you look as though you haven’t slept.”
“I haven’t.”
“Then for once in your life, obey someone offering sensible advice.”
She went home through the rear exit wearing Mr. Shah’s coat and a wool hat that made her look like a teenage burglar.
Edmund sent no car. She had told him not to.
That evening he arrived at the apartment alone.
Mrs. Dyer let him in after inspecting his identification and asking whether noblemen carried anything useful during emergencies.
“I have a telephone,” he said.
“So does everyone.”
Clara opened the door before Mrs. Dyer could search him.
Edmund carried the music box.
“I thought this should be with you,” he said.
She stepped aside.
The apartment looked worse than the previous night. Newspapers covered the table. Sophie had created columns labeled PROBABLY TRUE, DEFINITELY RUBBISH, and INSULTING BUT WELL WRITTEN.
Edmund read one headline.
“‘Ballroom Orphan Claims Noble Fortune,’” he said.
“They made me an orphan because it sounds better.”
“You are not claiming anything.”
“They also estimated your wealth.”
“They underestimated.”
Clara looked at him.
“That was a joke,” he said.
“It needs work.”
He placed the music box on the piano.
“I spoke to the foundation board today.”
Clara waited.
“I resigned as chairman.”
“Why?”
“Because money was stolen while I was responsible for it. Because I allowed Beatrice access without sufficient oversight. Because a review should not be managed by the man whose name is on the building.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I should have.”
“That sounds like something people say when guilt is easier than helplessness.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“Margaret used to say that,” Clara explained. “Usually when I blamed myself for her getting sick.”
“Was she ill for long?”
“Two years.”
“I’m sorry.”
Clara touched the edge of the music box.
“Did you bring the key?”
Edmund placed it beside her hand.
She inserted it and turned.
The lullaby began.
In the smaller room, without the orchestra and guests, the mechanism sounded fragile. One note buzzed slightly. The painted miniature seemed less like evidence than a private thing never intended for strangers.
Clara studied the infant.
“Do you think she painted me accurately?”
“Newborns resemble angry old men.”
She looked at Edmund.
“That was almost funny.”
“I am improving.”
He removed a photograph from his coat.
It showed Eleanor at twenty-two, sitting backward on a chair with her arms folded across its carved back. Her hair was short. She wore trousers and looked directly at the camera with an expression that challenged the photographer to object.
Clara took it.
“She doesn’t look aristocratic.”
“She was, which allowed her to pretend she wasn’t.”
“What was the lullaby?”
“My wife wrote it.”
Clara looked up.
“Eleanor’s mother?”
“Catherine. She played the piano badly but with conviction. The piece had no title until Eleanor was five and announced it was about a heron looking for its nest.”
“Did it find it?”
“In her version, eventually.”
The melody slowed as the spring unwound.
Edmund looked at Margaret’s photograph again.
“I would like to know about your life.”
Clara’s first response was resistance. She heard ownership hidden inside the request even though his words did not contain it.
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything you are willing to tell me.”
She considered.
“I hate pears.”
He stared.
Clara smiled despite herself. “I actually do.”
Edmund sat in the armchair.
“What else?”
She told him she had broken her wrist at nine falling from a garden wall, that Margaret had worked as a school secretary, and that they had lived in four towns because rent increased faster than Margaret’s salary. She told him she began playing piano because their upstairs neighbor practiced every afternoon and allowed her to sit beneath the instrument.
She did not tell him the worst things. Not yet.
He listened without interrupting except to ask names.
When he left, the music box remained on the piano.
The DNA results arrived the following morning.
Dr. Levin requested that Clara and Edmund come to the clinic. Clara refused to face the photographers again, so he drove to her apartment with Harland.
They sat around the small kitchen table.
Dr. Levin opened a folder.
“The probability that Lord Ashcombe is your biological maternal grandfather exceeds 99.9 percent.”
May you like
Clara looked at the sugar bowl.
Sophie began crying before she did.
