“Yes, and Minerva panicked when she realized Zelda had copied the letter.”
“Everything makes so much sense now,” said Josie. “It almost seems logical. Told you your murderer was smart.”
“Not smart enough,” I said.
Birds rested on the rim of ornate feeder next to a fountain. A finch respectfully waited for a grackle to eat his fill. I felt normal. Aspen leaves gleaming brightly in the morning sun, blew across the courtyard. I turned my face up to the sun, basked in the simple warmth, the return of order.
“Zelda was desperate for money. She couldn’t afford a nursing home and Max was showing some of the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s. And she never got over the way Fiona treated Judy. Her journals said it all. Her hurt, her bewilderment. Her heartbreak over Fiona’s coldness to her precious new baby.”
“I don’t care how this all came about,” Josie said. She unconsciously reached to pet a Tosca who wasn’t there.
They had us in wheelchairs. Some kind of hospital rule. The sun went behind the clouds. Chilled, I fumbled to pull the lap robe further up my body. Josie reached for her cardigan. Still stiff, she struggled to pull it over her shoulders. She had asked for medical books containing information on Wilson’s Disease. One was face down across her lap.
“Did you read about the fingernails?” I asked. “It’s why Minerva wore that weird nail polish. To cover the little rainbows on the cuticles. I always said it wasn’t like her to wear nail polish. It seemed inconsistent with her style.”
“How are the Hadleys handling this?”
“Keith says none of them are doing well. Edgar won’t talk to anyone and Fiona won’t leave the house. Minerva burned Zelda’s copy of the letter Judy was going to give me, so the family secrets might have stayed hidden. But it was Brian who called a press conference. He said he was withdrawing from politics and exposed his whole history. Then he went into seclusion. He’s taking it hard.”
“I’m sure he is,” Josie said dryly. “There’s no formula for taking the news that you were adopted and your real mother was a multiple murderer. Your grandmother, too!”
“Minerva burned the Custer letter along with Zelda’s story. Don’t know why she would have done that. Custer didn’t do anything to her.”
“I still have the copy of Zelda’s story.”
“Yes. I want it for my archives.”
“Are you all right, Lottie? With having killed a person?”
“No. I always knew I wouldn’t be. Yes, I would do it again. In a heartbeat. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”
We sat silently for a few more minutes. “It’s getting cold,” she said. She reached inside the purse she had tucked into the edge of her cushion and pulled out a tiny leather-bound travel ashtray and snubbed out her cigarette.
“I’m looking forward to tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll fly straight back to Manhattan.”
“Tosca? What about Tosca?”
“The security men who were supposed to have picked you up took her back with them.”
I wheeled around and pushed the call light outside the door, and waited for the nurse.
“I have a loose end to tie up when I get home,” I said.
She looked up at the sadness in my voice.
Chapter Forty-Nine
I was going to lie, and it did not come easily to me. But it was the right thing to do. My mouth quivered as I walked down the hallway of the Sunny Rest nursing home toward Herman Swenson’s room.
Slumped in his wheelchair, restrained by white ties, the broken old man looked up when I walked through the door. He was angry. The aide had left him turned away from the TV set and there was a football game on. Nevertheless, I reached for the remote and clicked off the screen.
“I’ll turn it back on when I leave, Herman. There’s something I need to tell you, and I need your full concentration.”
He sensed something very important was coming, his eyes flickered rapidly.
I knelt beside his wheelchair and looked him fully in the face. My hand trembled as I stroked his cheek.
“Poor darling. This is going to be hard for you. So very hard.” My voice shook. “But it’s better than not knowing,” I whispered gently. “Your life has been ruined by secrets already.”
He breathed shallowly for a minute, as if he understood I was preparing him for something of great importance.
“Your baby. The one you never knew. It was a girl.”
I was stabbed by the grief, the knowing, in his eyes. “You were right about the baby clothes. Right all along. Someone did take her. That someone was Rebecca Champlin. It was Rebecca.” I was crying now. We both were.
“You figured this out, didn’t you? After it was too late to make anyone believe you. Too late. Too many changes to your body. You couldn’t even talk. Couldn’t make them understand.”
He closed his eyes.
“And here’s the best news of all. Despite being raised by Rebecca she was a wonderful person.” Surely God would forgive me. It was the right thing to say. “She was an excellent student. Valedictorian of her class. She was tall and strong and beautiful, and you know what was the most wonderful of all? You knew her. You knew her all along. Minerva Lovesey, the woman who reads to you.”
If he had had room to faint within his restraints he would have. “Now I have some tragic news. She was accidentally killed last week.”
His chest jumped with shock.
“She never knew you were her father, of course,” I lied. “She was just naturally drawn to you. Remember how she loved to read to you? All these years. Blood really is thicker than water.”
Oh, it was the right thing to say all right. His eyes, his eyes. Full of wonder. Pride. Pride there for the first time in over fifty years.
“I’m so glad I could tell you all this. Sam Abbott knows too. You’ve been cleared. It won’t change your life much now. Being here, I mean.”
As I heard myself saying these words, knowing the waste, the injustice, I rose and fled to the bathroom, grabbed a whole wad of toilet paper and sobbed helplessly.
Then I pulled myself together and walked back to his chair. “But people will know. Everyone will know you did not do that terrible thing. You didn’t do it. It was Rebecca.”
If old rheumy eyes can look triumphant, his did.
***
I was back at work. Brought back from Babylon by the powers that be and reinstated in my rightful place in the temple. The pipes clanked. It was bitterly cold outside, stifling in the vault.
Brian Hadley approached silently.
When I turned and saw him, I did not have time to prepare my face. No time to mask my deep grief for this good man who could have made a difference. We looked at one another solemnly. As I waited for him to speak, I was struck by how many of his abilities had come from Minerva. His confident bearing, his keen analytical mind. What a wonder his mother would have been under different circumstances.
“I’ve come to thank you, Lottie. Thank you for bringing everything out in the open, no matter how painful it is.”
“Brian, I’m so sorry. About everything.”
He nodded.
“You can try again. You’re young. The seat will be open again in another six years.”
“I’m finished, Lottie.”
“Our last two presidents were elected warts and all. People don’t expect perfection. Your disease can be treated.”
“Yes, and we have the tabloids and the press circling like a bunch of piranhas. They’ll watch for every sign of weakness.”
“I know, but…”
“No buts. That’s not the real reason I’m quitting. We both know it.”
There was a taste of copper in my mouth. The same sour metallic taste Brian had to live with day in, day out.
“I thought I was a Rubidoux, Lottie. Fiona’s and Edgar’s son. I’m not who I thought I was at all. I don’t know who I am, anymore.”
“Brian, please. There’s a lonely heart-broken old man over
there in Sunny Rest. Your grandfather, Brian. Your grandfather. He would just love to meet his only grandchild. He was, and still is a wonderful person. You came from wonderful people. Please believe me. Give him this.”
Brian nodded. Then he left.
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