Chapter Forty-Three
Joel Drummond, in his old-fashioned dark suit and neat silver-threaded beard, faced Audra calmly.
Audra felt like she had stepped from the last scene of a horror movie into an episode of Downton Abbey.
How on earth had he gotten here? Where had he come from?
Her head felt a little strange. Had she passed out? Was she dreaming?
Joel Drummond waited a moment as though to give her the opportunity to speak, then continued, “It has come to our attention that you believe yourself to be part of the Cameron family line by blood, and you intend to claim this house and its legacy as your own. Is that correct?”
Audra blinked. Was he for real? “Yes. Yes, I am, and I do. Geralt Talbot was my father, and since his little trophy wife is dead, everything he has will come to me. I’ll contest any part of the will that tries to shut me out, I’ll do DNA tests, whatever it takes.”
Joel nodded. “I see. I’m afraid that will not be necessary, however.”
Audra blinked and brought the gun up again. “Who are you, anyway? How did you get in here?”
The man did not react to the firearm but remained utterly calm.
“I told you. I’m Joel Drummond; I provide legal and financial representation for the Cameron family, and I head the North Islands Historical Society,” he said.
“Miss DuBois, upon conferring with other interested parties, we have concluded you are not a suitable heir for the Cameron home and estate. Your lack of regard for its historical importance, not to mention your clear disregard for human life”—he pointedly looked past her to the heavy front door, and the porch where Patricia had fallen in a puddle of blood—“make you ill-suited to represent us in the future.” He drew up his thin shoulders and faced her squarely.
“Even if that means our futures end here.”
Audra’s face had grown dark as he spoke. “Who the hell do you think you are, telling me what I’m suitable for or not? And as for disregard for human life, you supercilious bastard—” She pointed the gun at him and fired three shots, point-blank, into his face.
Even as she did so, she remembered how Patricia always chided her poor impulse control. Sorry, Patty, she mentally apologized. He pissed me off.
The bullet ricocheted off the stones of the fireplace behind him, and she ducked; when she stood, he was still there. And he had company.
“Oh, dearie,” the ancient black-clad woman suddenly present on the couch beside the fireplace said. “That won’t work on him. Though it’s incredibly rude of you to have tried.”
“Incredibly rude, indeed,” the second woman said, shaking her bonneted head.
“What the—?” Audra fired once more at Joel, and then at the two old women, shot after shot, until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Stupid little lady gun with its tiny magazine. She hurled it across the room and turned back to them.
She smiled again, a thick, ugly smile full of a lifetime of hate. “Now I get it,” she said. “You’re not half as scary as the last ghost; you should maybe take lessons from Effie. So you’d rather I burn down your home than let me have what I’m entitled to by birth?”
From the library doorway, Willow spoke. “You’re not entitled to anything here, Audra.” She crossed the room and stepped into the firelight to stand next to the thin man. “Hi, Joel,” she said quietly, a little smile on her face.
“Miss Stone,” he answered, his face placid.
Willow turned back to Audra. “I want to be clear about one thing. I could have run, I could be halfway back to Rina’s by now, but I’m not.
Not because I’m afraid of you but because I found something Sue needed me to find.
And because someone needs to set you straight on what’s going on here.
” Willow stared straight into Audra’s face and said, “This is not, and will never be, your house.”
Now Audra smiled. “Oh yes, I believe it will. The property, anyway. I don’t care what your crazy old dead people friends think about it; it’s not up to them, and you’ll be joining them shortly, anyway.
The house itself will tragically be lost in a fire, but I can build on the remains.
Or sell. I haven’t decided.” She looked around the shadowed library.
“The more time I spend in here, the creepier it gets.”
She sneered at Willow. “Besides, I don’t know who you think would get it if I don’t.
You think Rina Montalto is going to have her way now that everyone else is gone, give it to the Park Service or something?
Not gonna happen. It’s mine. Susan Davis wasn’t a Cameron to begin with, and you weren’t even related to her, as you keep saying. ”
“But Sue was a Cameron,” Willow said simply.
Joel’s eyebrows shot up; Dellie’s and Dot’s faces wore matching expressions of astonished delight.
Willow continued, “Sue was Peter Talbot’s daughter by his wife, Marisa, who walked away from the family and the island after he died.
But Sue came back and made her home here on Little North, where she was Effie’s best friend and caregiver for years.
Effie intended to tell Sue about her Cameron identity—but then Patricia killed Effie, so Sue had no idea of her blood connection to the family. ”
Audra looked surprised. “Wow. Who knew?”
“I didn’t,” Dot murmured to Dellie, shaking her head.
“I hoped,” Dellie said. “But no, we didn’t know.”
Willow glanced sideways at Joel. “I … wondered,” he said. “But I was not sure until now.”
Willow took a step closer to Audra. “Your problem is you neglected to do any actual research; all you cared about was what you convinced yourself you’re entitled to.
But Cameron House needs more than Cameron blood, and it definitely needs more than you.
You never bothered to learn anything about Sue Davis, did you?
For example, that once long ago she was married?
That she had her own child?” Willow saw Audra’s eyes widen.
“Or that her child died young? And if you didn’t know that… ”
Willow saw in her mind the images in those last three photographs from the hidden drawer in Sue’s elaborately carved desk: The first, Sue standing next to a young and very pregnant Robin, outside an ancient brick hospital; the second, Sue and Robin in the hospital, holding a newborn.
Robin looked tired, but she was smiling; it was the only smile Willow had seen on the young woman’s face in any of the photographs.
Willow continued, working hard to keep her voice from shaking. “If you didn’t know that, you wouldn’t know Sue’s daughter had a baby too.”
Robin was not in the third picture, taken somewhere else far away from Little North, perhaps Michigan. This one showed Sue, a Sue who looked like all the joy had been sucked out of her world, standing next to a man and woman, who were holding the baby.
The man and woman were Willow’s own parents.
The final two documents in the drawer were copies of two birth certificates—both for the same child, one before and one after adoption—and they merely confirmed what she had already guessed.
In the first, the baby, the daughter of Robin Davis, no father listed, was named Willow Cameron Davis.
After adoption, she had legally become Willow Stone—with no idea of her parentage, never asking herself who the kind professor she stayed with every summer really was, or how she had come to know Willow’s parents in the first place.
Because the kind professor was not only her godmother but her grandmother.
Joel’s face was a study in shocked surprise; the sisters by now were grinning at each other. Audra rolled her eyes. “What? Please, now you’re just fantasizing to stay alive.”
“I don’t need to make it up.” Willow gathered herself and took a slow step forward. “Sue Davis was my maternal grandmother by blood, which makes Peter Talbot my great-grandfather.”
The house was ready; she could feel it, feel the inhabitants gathering around her, a few more with every breath, filling the library. Audra took an unconscious step back, from Willow and from the gathering energy surrounding the young woman like a vortex.
In a soft voice, Willow said, “This is my home.”
And then, with more steel, “Get out of my house.”