51. Liv
Liv
My poor grandmother.
I thought of Charles in my dream, begging, Forgive me. Of the red-tinged shadows, pooling on the rug, shrouding him…like blood.
He’d died in that room. And I had the eerie conviction that I’d dreamed about the night of his death.
That the words I’d watched him write in his journal might have been his last. The chiffon tunic dress Elizabeth had been wearing in my dream—it made sense, if they were supposed to attend a gala that night.
She’d been sitting downstairs, waiting, while upstairs, Charles prepared to end his life. A chill rippled over me at the thought.
He’d been consumed with guilt. Maybe, for no reason at all.
“Charles didn’t know that Ella wasn’t his biological daughter, not for sure,” I said, looking down at the journal.
“And neither do we.” I ticked off the next points on my fingers.
“We know the girl who died of frostbite wasn’t Lily.
We know Charles didn’t kill James, that James died before he could collect the ransom, and that Maisie didn’t raise Ella.
But it’s still possible that Ella wandered off when James was killed, found her way to the orphanage, and ended up in Chicago.
Charles could’ve been raising his own daughter the whole time, believing she was an imposter. ”
My grandmother gave a small, hiccupping sob, and Theo took her hand. “Ella,” he said, his voice gentle, “are you okay?”
I wanted to be angry at him, but I couldn’t. He’d been protecting me, just like Grandma Ella said. But he’d made it clear in New York that there couldn’t be anything between us other than the physical. And I hated the fact that I wanted more.
My grandmother focused on Theo, color coming back to her cheeks. “Somehow, I think I always knew. I stuffed it down and forgot it, like my mother told me to. In time, I came to believe he’d really died of a heart attack. But something about that never felt right.”
Theo shifted his weight, his jaw tight. “I feel sorry for your father. Yeah, he might have been complicit in keeping Lily from my family, but he knew what giving her back would’ve done to his wife.
” He dropped his head into his hands. “Charles made the wrong choice, but part of me feels bad for him. Does that make me messed up, or what?”
He raised his head, the frustration that emanated from him palpable. “I thought learning the truth would make me feel better, that everything would seem black and white. But Charles…he was a perpetrator, but a victim, too. And now I don’t know what to think.”
My grandmother sat up straight. “I do,” she said.
The room seemed to take a breath. And then it exhaled, sending a current of cool air rippling through the curtains despite the closed windows. I shivered, but my grandmother didn’t move an inch.
“I’m tired of other people making my decisions for me,” she said, her voice clear and strong. “I want to take that DNA test, regardless of how your parents or Jamison feel about it. If I have a sister out there, I want to meet her. I want to know for sure.”