Chapter 6 - WHAT REBECCA INHERITED
Rebecca stared at her father.
“No.”
Charles did not look away.
“You were twenty-one when your mother got sick.”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with it.”
Her voice rose.
“What did you do?”
Charles sat down.
For the first time that night, he looked old.
“Your mother’s treatment was expensive.”
Rebecca laughed once.
“You had money.”
“Not the kind people thought.”
“You managed millions.”
“I managed other people’s millions.”
“And apparently stole some.”
The sentence cut him.
He accepted it.
“Yes.”
Nicholas stood near the library windows with his hands in his pockets.
He had become unnervingly quiet.
Charles continued.
“The Vale firm was collapsing.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“I never knew that.”
“That was the point.”
“Dad.”
“Your mother needed specialists in Switzerland. The house had three mortgages. Clients were leaving after Dominic died.”
He swallowed.
“I borrowed from an account I told myself had already been abandoned.”
“The relief foundation,” I said.
Charles looked at me.
“Yes.”
Rebecca backed away.
“How much?”
“One hundred eighty thousand at first.”
Her face crumpled.
“My mother’s treatment?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“I replaced some.”
“How much more?”
“Rebecca.”
“How much?”
“Nearly three million over six years.”
She covered her mouth.
The room went quiet.
The beautiful woman who had called me “a girl who irons sheets” now looked as though she wished she could disappear into the floor.
Nicholas finally spoke.
“Did Rebecca know?”
Charles shook his head immediately.
“No.”
Rebecca looked at Nicholas.
He believed Charles.
So did I.
At least about that.
Charles continued.
“When Anna found the transfers, she assumed Dominic had taken everything.”
“You corrected her,” Nicholas said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I was tired.”
Charles’s voice cracked.
“Twenty years of telling myself I was protecting people had become twenty years of looking at my own face in the mirror and knowing exactly what I was.”
Nicholas looked at Sophia’s recorder.
“Did Anna threaten you?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“Told her she should expose me.”
Rebecca stared.
“That isn’t what you told me.”
“No.”
“You told me she was unstable.”
Charles closed his eyes.
“I know.”
“You told me she was trying to destroy our family.”
“I know.”
Rebecca walked away from him.
He did not follow.
Nicholas asked the next question.
“Then why was Anna’s ledger hidden in Locker 317?”
Charles shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
That answer felt true.
Teresa frowned.
“Anna must have put it there.”
“No,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
“The coat had been stored for years.”
I touched the repaired lining.
“The thread around that notebook was older than nine years.”
Nicholas understood first.
“My mother hid the notebook.”
I nodded.
“Anna found it later.”
The notebook had begun with Sophia.
Anna had added to it.
Two women.
Same evidence.
Different generations.
Rebecca picked up Anna’s charm bracelet.
“Then why did Anna leave this there?”
Nobody knew.
I examined it.
The little charms moved against my palm.
Bridge.
Sewing machine.
Forget-me-not.
A tiny taxi.
A silver letter R.
I looked at Rebecca.
“Was this yours?”
She frowned.
“What?”
“The R.”
“No.”
Teresa leaned closer.
“Anna didn’t have an R charm.”
Nicholas looked at it.
“She did after Mom died?”
“No,” Teresa said firmly.
Rebecca touched it.
The charm opened.
Not decoration.
A locket.
Inside was a folded strip of paper.
Nicholas unfolded it.
An address.
42 WEST 18TH STREET.
And beneath it:
ASK FOR MRS. CARTER.
My stomach dropped.
“My mother?”
Teresa stared at me.
Nicholas looked almost as shocked.
Rebecca whispered, “Anna knew your mother?”
I thought of my childhood.
My mother bent over wedding gowns under yellow work lamps.
Boxes arriving from wealthy Manhattan families.
Women whose names meant nothing to me then.
“My mother repaired bridal textiles for private clients.”
I looked at Sophia’s veil.
“She may have repaired something for Anna.”
Nicholas glanced at the clock.
It was almost two in the morning.
He looked at me.
“We can wait.”
It was the first time all night anyone had offered me a choice.
I appreciated it.
“No.”
I took my coat.
“My mother wakes at five anyway.”
Forty minutes later, my mother opened the door of our Queens house wearing slippers, a robe, and an expression that told me Parkinson’s had done nothing to soften her temper.
“Emily?”
Then she saw Nicholas Marino.
Rebecca Vale.
Teresa.
And Sophia’s veil.
Her face changed.
“Where did you get that?”
I stepped inside.
“You know it.”
My mother stared at the blue flower in my hand.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Her eyes filled.
“I wondered when somebody would come for it.”
Nobody moved.
I felt suddenly five years old.
“Mom.”
She sat at the kitchen table.
Her left hand trembled against the wood.
“Anna Marino came here ten years ago.”
Nicholas closed his eyes briefly.
My mother continued.
“She brought that blue flower and a piece of old lace.”
“The veil?”
“Yes.”
“She asked if I could attach the flower without damaging the original.”
I looked at the repaired stitches.
“You did it.”
My mother smiled faintly.
“You always could recognize my work.”
Rebecca looked toward me.
Something like embarrassment passed across her face.
My mother continued.
“Anna told me her mother had wanted the flower to stay with the veil until the Marino family kept a promise.”
“What promise?”
Nicholas asked.
Mom looked at him.
“You already know.”
His face tightened.
“The families.”
“Yes.”
She reached into the drawer of an old sewing cabinet.
From the back, she removed a small paper envelope.
My name was written across it.
EMILY CARTER.
I stared at her.
“What is that?”
“Anna left it.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“She told me not to.”
Nicholas’s eyes sharpened.
“Until when?”
My mother looked at the veil.
“Until someone brought Sophia’s blue flower back into this house.”
My fingers shook as I opened the envelope.
Inside was no money.
No legal document.
Only a photograph.
Anna stood beside my mother in this very kitchen.
Behind them, pinned to a dress form, was the Marino veil.
On the back, Anna had written:
IF THEY EVER COME FOR THE VEIL, IT MEANS SOMEBODY IS READY TO TELL THE TRUTH.
Below that was one final line.
REBECCA KNOWS WHERE THE REST WENT.
Nicholas turned slowly toward his fiancée.
Rebecca stared at the handwriting.
Then whispered:
May you like
“She knew I saw the account.”
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