Poppy
“Yes,” Lillith says simply. “Those relatives still need answers. I never knew what happened to most of them who entered our sphere, then simply disappeared—those intrepid souls traveling the world in search of answers, of meaning, escaping the Vietnam War. Peace lovers experimenting with drugs, different religions, alternative ways of being. It was these very qualities that rendered them vulnerable to a master manipulator like Vincent. They were too open, too trusting. He saw himself as superior. He looked down on them as undisciplined, hedonistic—it’s how he ‘othered’ them. ”
She breathes in deeply. “And he used me—a visibly Western woman—to gain their trust, to lure them into his realm. But I started out as one of them. Just another victim. A young, insecure, and naive white girl from rural Quebec.”
She surges to her feet. “I stopped it. I ended it. I did what I could to survive—I’m a survivor.
” She repeats it, underscores it, because she needs to believe it with every fiber of her being or she can’t cope with what she did—she has nowhere else to compartmentalize it. “That’s what I am. A survivor.”
“So am I. All us humans are. Until we’re not.
Because then we’re dead. Until that point, we’re surviving, as best as we can with what we know and what we have.
I was seduced by that man—you heard Gideon describe our meeting at his talk.
Vincent targeted me the moment I arrived in Kashmir with my ex-fiancé.
Then after months and months and months of daily letters professing love and adoration, promises of a life with him, I sold everything in Quebec.
Despite my family’s warnings, I went to him.
I flew to Bangkok, wearing the little serpent necklace he’d sent to me with a note identical to the one in the gift box left in my suite. ”
The words from the note tumble through Poppy’s mind.
If you are wearing this when you arrive
I will know your answer.
Forever yours. Forever mine.
Locked together.
“Vincent began emotionally manipulating me from the moment he picked me up at that airport in Bangkok—first by immediately withholding affection. He was unwelcoming, cold. It was a fundamental shock after receiving his daily letters of love. When I grew desperate and said I wanted to go home, he suddenly showered me with love, gifts, physical affection. He played me like this—like a yo-yo. He isolated and trapped me. He kept me from renewing my Thai visa, and then it was too late. And my passport expired. I was in Thailand illegally. He ensured I had no money of my own. He monitored my mail. Whenever I hit rock bottom again, he deluged me with gifts and trips and jewelry and physical affection. He gave me a new name. Fabricated me a new past. Aline-Claire had no idea who she was anymore. Veronique glimpsed her, but couldn’t get back to her.
And then came my tipping point, Poppy. I learned I was pregnant.
It gave me the will, the fire, the ferocity to escape. For you.”
Poppy’s knees sag under her, and she slumps back onto the chair. Her heart thuds. Her eyes burn.
“Yet you dumped me in a phone booth.”
“I got to England. I got away physically. But mentally, I was terrified of him. Chained to him. Part of me is still controlled by him. He has a power over me, even after all these years, and that scares me. At the time I truly believed he’d find me, come for me—for us.
And he’d turn you into a monster. Like he made me one. ”
She sips her water. Her hand trembles. She’s very pale now. Skin clammy.
“I don’t know if I can express to you the depths of my terror, or the psychology of it.
But I left you outside that Catholic hospital because I knew they specialized in obstetrics and early births.
Where I knew there were good people. I watched from across the street until I saw you were in safe arms. At the time, I believed it was the only option.
That the best gift I could give my baby daughter was freedom—from myself and from Vincent.
A clean life. An unmarred legacy. A life he could never touch. ”
Poppy has no words. She can only stare.
“That’s my wish now, Poppy, as I prepare to leave this world.
To finally give you the whole truth of where you came from, and the freedom to do with it what you will.
You own it. You control it. If you choose to tell it to the world, that’s up to you.
If you choose to exploit the fact you are Lillith’s daughter, that’s up to you.
If you hold it close and keep it secret, that’s your privilege, too.
“Me—personally—I no longer plan to hide from the fact I was Aline-Claire. This is the end of my road. But the fact Aline-Claire had a daughter—that remains your secret. One that Vincent, your father, must never learn.”
“So that’s why you wanted to know if I loved my adoptive parents?” she whispers. “And whether they were good to me? It’s why you wanted to know about my childhood in Africa.”
She nods. “Selfish, yes. But I needed to know you were better off than if I’d tried to keep you—a mother living under false names, traveling on stolen passports. A mother who couldn’t even register your birth without leading authorities back to Pakistan, India, Thailand—to him.”
“He didn’t find you, though, did he? I could have been your baby. I—”
“Turns out he did find me. He got Sanjay to hunt me down. I’d broken into Vincent’s safe in our Bangkok apartment, and taken several passports he’d stolen from women he’d killed.
He’d taught me how to replace their photos with my own, forge stamps.
But he remembered their names, and Sanjay used them to track me.
Vincent might not have known I was pregnant, but all these years while he’s been incarcerated, he’s known I became Lillith McGregor.
And as soon as he was released, he made contact. That was last year.”
“Blackmail?”
She nods. “He was fresh out of prison and needed money. He saw me—and Angus—as a potentially endless resource. He was going to extort us all. Expose the truth if we didn’t pay. This happened around the time of my health diagnosis.”
“Angus knew?”
“He did know about my past, before I became Lillith and a famous photographer. He was a complex man, Poppy. Both hard and gentle. Fierce, stubborn as iron. But he had a soft spot for me. He pulled me out of my addictions all those years ago. Part of recovery was telling him about my history. I told him about Vincent. Angus is also the only person I ever told about you. He loved me, Poppy. God knows why. He didn’t want this revealed to the world any more than I did.
When Vincent called, I told Angus I needed to reach you before Vincent did—to tie up the loose ends.
Angus’s days were numbered, too. He agreed. And he told me to take Avi.”
Poppy glances at the bodyguard—still standing, feet apart. Unmoving as stone. She swallows.
“Avi’s ex-Mossad. Dark ops. Angus did him a big favor decades ago. Avi’s been working for us ever since—as an off-the-books investigator and fixer. He helped me keep eyes on you. He helped me set up for the cruise.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I told Vincent I’d meet him. I said I would need to be careful not to attract media attention, though.
A luxury cruise would be ideal—a place where people from around the globe are expected to cross paths.
It wouldn’t be strange for me to be seen striking up a conversation with the Dutch ‘antiquities dealer’ aboard the Black Orchid.
I said we’d come to a financial arrangement on the ship.
I told him that before the voyage ended, I would have the funds transferred. ”
“You’re going to give him money? Is that what you meant by sort out A.G.?”
She sidesteps the question. “Things never quite go to plan, do they? It turns out Dr. Marsh followed Vincent onto the Orchid.”
Poppy thinks of Dr. Marsh’s comments in Kusadasi.
Given the revelatory and sensitive nature of my recent discoveries, my publisher and agent and I have just signed a mutual nondisclosure agreement . . .
“And Vincent has now led him to you?”
“Yes,” she says quietly.
“So Dr. Marsh knows—he knows that you’re Aline-Claire?” Her heart races, her breath shallow.
“He does. I realized during his talk that he suspected something—especially when he spoke of Aline-Claire’s accident with the glass door shattering, and there I sat with my scars hidden beneath my sleeves, my cane, my limp—all from that glass.
He was trying to rattle us, flush us both out.
And he succeeded. I sent him a text after his talk.
Avi and I met with him before dawn the following day, in Avi’s room. ”
“When you didn’t show for our breakfast before the Chania tour?”
She nods.
“I couldn’t allow Gideon to derail my plans, Poppy, so I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Told him everything I knew—apart from the pregnancy, apart from you—and offered him an exclusive interview.
We did it right there and then. He recorded it for his book.
And we signed an NDA, an embargo, valid until the end of the cruise. ”
Poppy shakes her head, struggling to take it all in.
“How did you become a combat photographer, then? Or is that part also some kind of lie?”
“After I left you in the Tardis, I fled to South Africa on one of my fraudulent passports. It was a country isolated from the rest of the world in many ways—Apartheid, international sanctions, no television, banned media, limited information flowing in from the rest of the globe. It made it an easier place for me to hide, and to reinvent. I legally changed my name there. The rest . . . that’s real.
I became a renowned photographer. I started in Africa.
And I built a false origin story that was hard to either prove or disprove. I became Lillith.”
“The photo from Mozambique? The one with the man supposedly carrying you injured and bleeding, away from the site of the IED blast?”
“Someone else. Not a reporter, but a young Portuguese national living in Mozambique and working for a nonprofit. An unfortunate accident when the vehicle she was traveling in hit the device. She died. I came across the print in some old news files, and kept it.”
“What about those still missing?” Poppy demands. “Those presumed murdered by Vincent, but never proven? Or those whose bodies were found but never tied to him?”
“I asked Vincent about them.”
“Your discussion with him . . . up on the deck?”
“Part of our negotiation,” Lillith says, “over finances. I told him I could set him up for life, but before I’d do that, I needed to know about those still missing. I asked what happened.”
“He told you.”
“Yes.”
“You believe him?”
“I do. I know him well. Vincent is vain—he needs to be admired, praised, validated. It’s part of his pathology.
He’s proud of his cunning, his superiority.
Most of all, he craves respect. It ties back to his upbringing, his childhood as the bastard son of a wealthy Indian tailor who rejected him, and the tailor’s Vietnamese mistress who sold her body to survive.
Your father is a needy narcissist, Poppy.
You heard Dr. Marsh. So yes, I believe him.
I passed this information to Gideon Marsh.
It will appear in his book. Those families—what’s left of them—will get their truths. As I am giving you yours.”
Her eye mists with emotion. “It’s the least I can do as your mother.”
Give Poppy her due.
End it for Poppy.
Finish with A.G.
RIP.
“And him? What did you mean, finish with A.G.? And RIP? What now?”
But as Lillith is about to answer, a sharp rap sounds on the door.
They all tense.
Poppy’s gaze flares to the door.