Chapter 6
Richard fell silent.
Vanessa swallowed.
“Richard has a box of your things.”
I stared at her.
“What things?”
“Letters. Photographs. Papers. I saw them in his study.”
My heart began beating faster.
“He told me they were documents connected to the divorce, but some had your mother’s name on them.”
The courthouse seemed to tilt.
“What did you say?”
“Clara.” Richard stepped out of the Mercedes.
One guard immediately moved between us.
Richard stopped.
For the first time that afternoon, he didn’t look triumphant.
He looked cornered.
“She’s confused,” he said. “Those papers were household records.”
Vanessa turned on him.
“They were tied with a blue ribbon.”
I stopped breathing.
A blue ribbon.
My mother used to tie ribbons around everything.
Birthday presents.
My hair.
Stacks of recipes.
I knew that.
Not from photographs.
From memory.
I stepped down one stair.
“Where did you get them?”
Richard’s expression hardened.
“I don’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Where did you get my mother’s things?”
“Clara, you’re exhausted.”
“Answer me.”
Alexander said my name softly.
“Hospital first.”
“No.”
I turned toward him.
“You knew something about me before you came here. She says Richard had my mother’s papers. And you’re telling me to wait?”
“Because you’re eight months pregnant and soaked through.”
“Stop using the baby to avoid my question.”
The words came out louder than I intended.
For a moment, embarrassment burned through me.
Nobody spoke.
Then Alexander gave the smallest nod.
“Fair.”
He removed his umbrella from the guard’s hand and held it over me himself.
Rain began collecting on the shoulders of his suit.
“Richard obtained a storage box eighteen months ago,” he said.
Richard’s face went still.
Alexander continued.
“It came from a private records facility outside Baltimore.”
I stared at him.
“How do you know that?”
“Because my office had been trying to locate it for almost twenty years.”
The emerald cut into my palm.
“What was in it?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“But you know something.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Alexander looked at the necklace in my hand.
Then at me.
“Your mother worked for my father.”
I felt as if the rain had suddenly become soundless.
“My mother was a public-school librarian.”
“After she left Vanguard.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“Her name was Eleanor Bennett.”
My maiden name.
Hearing him say it felt strangely intimate.
“She worked in Vanguard Global’s legal department for seven years. She became deputy counsel shortly before I joined the company.”