The notes read that a Gregory Sax had been the man sent after Hannah. The first offer of fifty thousand pounds had been refused. Sax suggested seventy-five thousand pounds. My father had reminded him that the longer it took him to convince her to take it, the less money Sax would be paid. At the third contact with my father, one hundred thousand pounds had been requested. It was noted that she’d agree to take it, and a bank account numbers was given, but no name.
My father had deposited the money and noted that it’d taken me seven hours before I’d realized I’d lost contact with her. He’d sent another PI in to keep an eye on where she was. He’d wanted to make sure she hadn’t planned on returning or contacting me. It was two weeks later that she’d been found in the hospital under the name Mary Harper. By that time, I’d already contacted Scott Madison, and my father had stepped in to remove me from the states to keep me from further prosecution.
He also didn’t like that Gregory Sax had disappeared. His PI’s had never found him. It was like he’d dropped off the face of the planet. My father had the account number and checked the balance for the next several months. He suspected Sax had taken the money, but no withdrawals had ever been made.
He also had a copy of every checkup Hannah had ever had. The date of conception was circled on one, showing she was pregnant, and also the range of fluctuation. Because Penelope had been a big baby, they’d suspected Hannah might’ve been further along. My father had investigated several men, Brody being one of them, along with two others she’d been friends with in college. Marvin had been one of them, since he’d moved from Nevada to New York around the same time as we had. His close proximity to Hannah in several of the photos led my father to believe the child was most likely Marvin’s.
That was a shocker.
As soon as it was noted that the baby was a girl, there was a huge gap of disinterest in her parentage.
The next notes were made when Hannah woke from her coma, and when she moved in with Ophelia. He’d kept a PI on her to make sure she didn’t try to find me.
There was a picture of Hannah with Penelope shortly after she’d been born. It was tucked aside, and he’d ordered his PI to find a way to receive a DNA sample. The test results were conclusive, right there in black and white. My father had known all along Penelope was mine.
I set the file down and stepped back to keep from throwing it across the room. Hannah examined where I’d left the file open.
“I thought we were looking for clues on the fire?”
“I wanted to find out if he was behind your attack.”
“Well?”
I shook my head no. “I don’t think so. There was no ordered attack, just bribing. The man who’d been offering you the money disappeared and was never found, though. Apparently, the money is still sitting untouched in an account. He couldn’t use it to trace anyone. He knew Penelope was my daughter. He followed your pregnancy, and after you had her, he had a DNA test done. He knew the whole time!”
My mother stepped forward to look through the file herself. She looked heartbroken that her granddaughter had been hidden from her. “He kept tabs on the account. Once he realized she wasn’t using the money to support herself and Penelope, he looked for an anonymous way to help her. He even went so far as to stage her winning a contest and giving her a three-thousand-pound gift card to a children’s boutique yearly, until Penelope was six. William, your father isn’t a bad man. He was caring for your daughter in his own way. He was the one behind the scholarship for your daughter to attend her private school as well.”
“Oh, my god, the pediatrician said she’d submitted Penelope for the scholarship, because she was so advanced as a child. I wonder who else was in on it,” Hannah growled. She really didn’t seem happy with my father’s meddling or other people’s secrecy. “That scholarship included her uniforms, school supplies and meals. I knew it was too good to be true. I thought it was strange that it didn’t require her to keep a certain grade point average and covered her until she graduated high school.”
“See, William, he was helping her, caring for her,” my mother once again defended my father.
“It wasn’t his place!” I shouted. I didn’t care that my father had looked after my daughter. It was MY job, my right and privilege, and he’d denied me that. He’d taken that chance from me, taken my daughter from me.
“He’s not a heartless man. He may not have always done things right, but he’s always looked out for his family.” My mother didn’t get it. Keeping my daughter from me was far from caring for us.
“There’s nothing you can say that’ll change my mind about him!” I was sick of her excuses.
There was a knock on the study doors. “Mommy, Daddy?” Penelope sounded worried.
“We’re still busy, darling. Where’s Ms. Maggie?” my mother asked.
“Where’s my mommy and daddy?” she cried.
“We’re in here as well, Poppet, working on a few things,” I answered her.
“I’m in here as well,” Hannah called to her.
“Don’t leave me here!” Penelope was still upset.
“I promise we won’t ever leave you behind, alright, Poppet?” I tried to comfort her.
“See, sweet girl. I told you, your mummy and daddy are still here. Now, let’s go finish making dessert,” we heard Maggie coddling her.
“We’ll be out soon and come looking for you in the kitchen, so you’d better stay with Ms. Maggie, okay, Poppet?”
“Yes, Daddy, but be fast,” she complained, and I listened to Maggie usher her away.
“Maggie was never good at keeping you children occupied. You were always peeking in on us during functions and such. Camille was the worst. Maggie finally convinced me it’d just be easier to have Camille attend as well. At least she was able to teach her proper etiquette before she joined us. Maggie was useful in her own way.”
“We were kids! We wanted to see our parents.” I was so sick of her.
“We had our outings, William. Don’t act as if you were neglected. You were your father’s little sidekick for years. I had a fit, when he let you smoke a cigar when you were seven. From then on, I put my foot down. If he’d kept you around like he wanted, you would’ve most likely ended up an alcoholic addicted to nicotine. It was best for you both to be cared for by Maggie.”
“I’m sure parenting your own children wasn’t exactly considered proper,” William spat. “Best leave the messy stuff to the help.”
“We have a role to play, William, and I had to keep face for our family. Your father has made that difficult, though, since he’s made enemies by the dozen with his damned files, but no one ever crosses him or his family. We’re tolerated, we just aren’t well liked. When it came time for you to consider getting married, he was a wreck. He wanted so much for you and Camille, and he was afraid you’d both be shut out because of him. He arranged meetings with safe women for you every free moment he had. He wanted you to be happy.”
“I only wanted Hannah!”
“She was too great a risk, William. I explained that to her. She was a wildcard. There was no way he could keep her from hurting you.”
“It wasn’t his place to interfere!”
“It’s over!” Hannah broke us up. “We need to get back to work. Penelope is waiting for us, and we have an arsonist to find. We should use our phones to take pictures of what we have in here. We can blow them up and study them closer when we get home.” She passed me her large file and then grabbed her parents’ files and took pictures of them herself.
As I flipped through the pages myself, it became abundantly clear that my father wasn’t the one who’d burned down the shop. It’d been his means to care for my daughter, who he seemed to feel some sense of obligation to.
I just couldn’t understand why he’d insisted on keeping her from me. Once I took the last picture, I looked up at my mother and asked, “Does he have a file on me?”
She shrugged. “I doubt it. We can check when we return th
ese.”
“I’m done with my files, are we ready to put them back?” Hannah asked.
My mother quickly typed in the code for the hidden room, and I let them put away the Madison files, while I searched for mine. He did have one on me. I quickly snapped pictures of it. It was thick. My mother anxiously rushed me, so I didn’t have a chance to read anything he had on me. I wondered if he’d ever planned to blackmail me, too.
Once everything was put away, I was happy to see the study doors unlock. Hannah asked where the kitchen was, and I happily showed her to where several of my most pleasant memories had been made.
Penelope heard us enter the room and was off the stool and jumped into my arms. “Have you been having fun with Ms. Maggie?” I asked.
She nodded yes and cast a wary glance at my mother. We settled down for dinner, and my mother asked if we planned on enrolling Penelope in finishing school.
“What on earth is that?” Hannah asked.
“It’s a school that teaches little girls how to behave like proper ladies. A child of her station…”
“She isn’t a child of any station!” I snapped. I wondered if my parents would ever get the hint that I wasn’t going to raise my child in the peerage.
“I know how you feel about that, William, but you must leave the option open. What if she hits her teen years and wants to embrace her heritage? We’d be happy to have her come and stay with us while she explored her options.”
“She’s my daughter, not yours. She’s not going to live with you to explore anything.” My mother had crossed a line by even suggesting it.
“She’d have Ms. Maggie at her beck and call. You like Ms. Maggie, don’t you, sweetheart?” she asked Penelope, who just scooted closer to Hannah.
“Let’s just focus on dinner tonight and try and have a pleasant evening. Emmaline, if for some reason my daughter decides to get involved in the royal stuff, William and I will guide her through it. If you prove yourself to be a sincerely worthy grandmother, we’d gladly accept your help, but she’ll never, under any circumstance, move in with you. She’s our daughter, and it’s our responsibility to care for her,” Hannah bluntly put my mother in her place.
My mum took a deep breath and nodded her head. I didn’t like that Hannah had said she’d let Penelope have the option of exploring the world of being a Lady. I was pretty sure that was the only reason my mother kept her mouth shut. It was a whole lot more than she’d get out of me.
The rest of the evening was quiet. My mother asked after Penelope’s hobbies and was happy to hear about her piano lessons. “Your dad is a very talented player as well. He never liked to play in front of others, but he did wonderfully in our home. Do you like to perform for others?” my mum asked Penelope.
She shook her head no. I wasn’t surprised.
“She’s also an avid reader. She’s advance for her age,” Hannah offered.
“How exciting! We have a library here. You’re welcome to peruse it while you’re staying in London. Your Aunt Camille enjoyed books when she was younger, at least until she figured out how to shop. Have you gone to any of the boutiques yet?” she asked, looking at Hannah.
“No, we’d just gotten in when you called.”
“We must go! We can have Camille join us and make a day of it. What do you say?” she asked Hannah.
I was sure she’d say no, but she nodded yes. “That sounds like fun. Don’t you think so, Penelope? It’d be neat to be shown around a bit, if you’re willing?” I couldn’t believe she was humoring my mother at all, and then she asked to spend even more time with her…shocking, absolutely shocking. I’d have to ask her about that insane lapse of judgment, once we put our daughter to bed.
Chapter 26 - Unsettled
HANNAH
Dealing with William’s mother was more than a little unsettling. I did my best to keep a level head. The extravagance of the vault room proved how unstable his family was. I could see why William and Camille had immediately considered their father as a prime suspect for the fire.
My mind was still reeling over the extent of his father’s involvement in mine and Penelope’s lives. The way Emmaline was acting made me glad Henry had kept Penelope’s existence to himself. I had no doubt Emmaline would’ve been all over us. I completely understood William’s desire to keep our distance from his parents now.
If I’d learned anything from William when it came to dealing with them, it was to be stern and put my foot down. I had to draw a clear line that Emmaline wouldn’t be allowed to cross. I also knew she’d be very annoying, if I didn’t find a way to appease her just a little bit. William had looked like he was about to explode, when I suggested that if Penelope showed interest in her royal lineage, Emmaline would be involved. William had obviously not seen Disney’s Cinderella. “If” was a relative term that pretty much meant no.
I agreed to the outing for purely selfish reasons. I knew that while William would be very busy getting things settled at work, Penelope would’ve been climbing the walls of the flat. It was bigger than my old apartment, but we’d spent most of our time down in the store with more open space, not to mention the frequent visits to Carter and Ophelia’s homes, along with any shopping that needed to be done.
Like the last time I’d visited London, I didn’t feel completely comfortable wandering around by myself, especially with Penelope tagging along. I didn’t know how long we’d be in the country, but William was adamant about getting us a new home in the U.S. again. Besides, I didn’t want to risk Emmaline suing for grandparental rights. If I eluded that she could be a part of our lives, she’d hopefully be placated.
I tried to explain my reasoning to William, but he didn’t understand and was still livid. There was nothing in his mind that’d justify interacting with his mother. The only way I could settle him down was to bring up the files we’d printed off from the pictures on our phones.
I decided to save the file with my mother’s information for another time. I wanted to know more, but I didn’t at the same time. Like William had said, there was nothing she could say that’d make what she’d done alright. After all this time, she’d never once tried to contact me. I wondered if she’d even recognize me if I was standing right in front of her. I quickly brushed aside those silly thought. Meeting my selfish mother was the last thing I wanted to do.
“We should widen our suspect pool. My father had already been compiling a list of suspicious people who were friends with the people we knew.”
William cross-referenced using the facts we had. The arsonist had been a woman, and she’d had puffy hair. From what Henry had in his file, that only left three people. Once again, Henry had Marvin high on the list. I was completely shocked, when William informed us all that his father had been nearly positive Marvin was my daughter’s father. That was never going to happen, though the amount of photos he had with Marvin in the background was a little unnerving. I worried that Marvin was stalking me on some level. He seemed to have a less-than-healthy attachment to me and the store. One of our final suspects was associated with Marvin as well. Layla Mercer was a woman with puffy hair, certainly fitting the bill.
“Stuart said she has a crush on Marvin. Although I doubt she even knows you exist, so her coming after you wouldn’t make sense. Lily Sax and Karen Bennett would be more likely candidates. Karen’s daughter is on a waiting list for Penelope’s school. She didn’t think you were good enough to attend. She was reprimanded at one point for harassing another woman who was also on the wait list before her daughter. She was sentenced to anger management classes for attacking another person at her daughter’s cheer practice. She has a history of violent behavior that could’ve easily translated into arson.
“Lily doesn’t have a violent history, but things tend to fall apart after she’s touched them. There were too many incidences to be considered accidents. There was minor destruction of property on several occasions. As for Layla, the only reason she was considered was because of the potential for jealously
, and the fact that her brothers were fireman.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t put her high on my list, and the facts on the other two women are a bit unnerving. Karen Bennett sounds like she should be in a straightjacket. What would be Lily’s motivation?”
William flipped through the blown-up pictures of the files, scanning them all. “It doesn’t say what it’d be. Do you know Lily Sax?”
“The name isn’t familiar at all. We should turn this information over to the detectives. Maybe they can figure it out. What are your thoughts on Layla?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll send Stuart after her. Hopefully, he can do a little quiet digging.”
I noticed a note to see Marvin’s file next to her name. “William, I think your father has a file on Marvin.”
“I’m not too worried. I have my own on Marvin as well. He’s a little odd, but I don’t believe there are any untoward intentions for you on his part.”
“I don’t think so, either.” I looked at the file I had on my mother and then saw William eyeing his own file. “It’s a little crazy that your dad has a file on you.”
He shook his head no. “It’s just like him, actually. He always has his hands in everybody’s business. I never realized the extent until today.”
“Are you going to read it?”
“I don’t know if I could handle it. He’s already done so much. He’s interfered so gravely in my life, and I’m afraid that what I’ll read will make things so much worse.”
“Do you want me to look it over?” He glared at the file in his hand and passed it over to me.
I turned to the back page that was the start of the file. I smiled at the baby picture that was posted in it. “Look at you. Your first picture.”
“Well, he had to get a mug shot from somewhere,” he grumped.
In Love with a Stranger Page 20