28. Liv
Liv
Ilet the door of Bryant Park Grill swing shut behind me. Next to me, Theo shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, looking as preoccupied as I felt.
I’d been painfully aware of his proximity all day. When he’d wiped the whipped cream off my nose, I thought that small touch was going to make me combust.
I did my best to ignore the way standing this close to him affected me, but that just meant I thought harder about what we’d learned.
What had happened to the little girl who’d left a teddy bear in the snow outside Gramercy Park?
Was she sitting on her back porch in North Carolina, wrapped in a blanket, sipping Darjeeling?
Had she died shortly after she’d disappeared, even if the body that Charles had identified in the morgue wasn’t hers?
A kidnapper could’ve dumped her anywhere, even in the East River, where her body might never have been discovered.
If the latter were true, what had my family done? If my great-grandparents had kept Lily with them based on a lie—a lie they were still perpetuating—how could our family live with ourselves?
And what about the other little girl? I thought it was more than likely that the little girl who’d died of frostbite was Lily Dressler, but what if she wasn’t? If the Dresslers were right, and Grandma Ella was really Lily, then…if the real Ella wasn’t dead, where was she?
What if she hadn’t met a dramatic end, but had been adopted and raised elsewhere, with no idea that her original family was desperate to find her?
It had been sheer luck that Daniel and Esther Stenson had seen the article in the Chicago Tribune.
What were the chances that a second family would have done the same, especially if they didn’t live in a major city?
Then there was Theo’s wacky theory, that Charles Carter was a murderer.
It had seemed ridiculous when he first mentioned it, but what he’d said about Chloe…
He was right, I’d do anything to get her back.
Would I kill someone to save her? I hated to admit it, even to myself, but I thought the answer might be yes.
My phone rang, and I dug it out of my bag, then glanced down at it. “Crap, crap, and double crap,” I muttered. “It’s my mom.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t have to answer it, you know.”
“Yes, I do. She’ll just keep calling. And if I don’t pick up, she’ll probably stop by my house.” That was the last thing I needed. Steeling myself, I took the call. “Hello?”
“Hello, Olivia.” My mother had on what I thought of as her Jane Austen voice, prim, proper, and very nineteenth century. “What is all that noise?”
Crap, crap, and triple crap. If she realized I was in New York, tracking down the very thing she’d demanded I ignore, she’d probably harness Dad’s infamous security team and have me dragged back to North Carolina.
“I’m outside, on the street. It’s loud here.
I’m, um…” I glanced at Theo, then, in a flash of inspiration, added, “…on a date.” His dark eyebrows winged upward, but thank goodness, he didn’t say a word.
“Really.” My mother stretched the word into three syllables, each more skeptical than the last. “How kind of you to answer the phone when you’re otherwise engaged.”
“I’m not that engaged.” God, why did every word out of her mouth make me feel so guilty, as if she were insinuating I’d answered the phone in flagrante delicto? “But I’m surprised you called, given how we left things.”
“Yes, well, I regret that.” There was a hum of static in the background; she must be speaking to me over her Mercedes’s Bluetooth speakers. “I won’t keep you, Olivia. I simply called to get your assurance that you’re no longer pursuing the issue we discussed.”
Quadruple crap with a cherry on top. “I can’t give you that assurance, Mom.”
“Excuse me?” Her tone was wintry.
“I don’t want to lie to you.” I’d already skirted the truth enough. “You have your principles, well, I have mine. I would never do anything to hurt you, Dad, or Grandma Ella. But I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I’m sorry.”
My mother was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, the chill in her voice iced me over, even from hundreds of miles away.
“I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, Olivia. But if you continue down this path, you’ll alienate yourself from all of us.
Think about what you stand to lose, before you decide to betray your family. ”
“Are you threa—” I began incredulously, but it was pointless. I was talking to an empty line.
I didn’t want to cry in front of Theo. After all, it was his great-aunt who might’ve been stolen, not mine. He was the one whose family had been fractured, the one who was still paying the price of what had happened ninety-odd years before. But I couldn’t help it.
We both came from a legacy of loss and grief, and I wanted more than anything to put an end to it.
I was tired of feeling like there was nowhere I fit in, tired of wishing for the wrong things, of never being enough.
Most of all, I was tired of feeling like my own family didn’t approve of me, that the choices I knew in my bones were right were abhorrent to them.
The first tear broke free and spilled down my cheek, followed by another. I tried to turn away, so Theo wouldn’t notice, but it was too late. He’d already seen.