She trailed off as Aunt Clove appeared at the landing above them. She had dark circles under her eyes, and she looked irritated as she came down the stairs in her dressing robe.
“Nell,” she said curtly. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“You wouldn’t take my calls. I understand you’re up against it with everything that’s happened, Clove, but for goodness’ sake. When you refused to communicate with me and no one would let me speak with Grace, I had to come out here myself to make sure my daughter was all right.”
“Your daughter is no longer welcome in this house thanks to the part she has played in all of this. Or did she not tell you?”
There was a beat of silence. “Excuse me?” Nell’s voice dropped.
“Ask her yourself about the role she played in deliberately concealing the nature of Oliver’s relationship with that actress—”
“Harriet, Mother,” Lillie said loyally.
“Which has now destroyed my son, his future, our family name. I never should have let her step foot in this house.”
“You think that Oliver’s choice to hide a relationship from you is somehow Grace’s responsibility and not his own?” Grace’s mother was incredulous. “That’s fine. Grace, go fetch your bags. We’re going now.”
“My bags aren’t here, Mother,” Grace said calmly. “Didn’t you hear what Aunt Clove said? I’m no longer welcome in this house.”
Nell’s voice dropped to an octave Grace had never heard before. Her crisp, upper-class enunciation drew out each word. “What do youmean, your bags aren’t here?”
Grace didn’t answer.
Nell turned to Clove, biting out each word. “Where has my daughter been, if not under your roof ?”
Aunt Clove stared coolly back at Grace’s mother without answering.
The tension stretched between them, building until Grace could bear it no more.
“I’ve been staying in a friend’s vacant apartment,” she said. “It belongs to his aunt.”
“Oh, good heavens,” Aunt Clove said, turning away, as if this were the most shameful thing she’d ever heard. As if she had nothing to do with the necessity of it.
Nell was shaking with rage.
“You turned out my daughter, your husband’s own flesh and blood, to fend for herself in a city flooded with hundreds of thousands of people. You refused to take my calls to admit this. My daughter, who I entrusted to your custody?” Nell’s voice was rising to hysterics. “Money cannot buy decency. Or integrity. Or even the barest scrap of sense. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Grace barely had time to relish in her mother’s takedown of Aunt Clove before she turned on Grace next, her face pale with rage but pricked with red.
“And you. You are coming home with me.”
Grace planted her feet in the plush carpet, feeling it sink beneath her.
Her grandfather’s imposing gaze settled on her from the oil portrait.
“I’m not leaving until Lillie and Oliver are all right,” she said softly. “Both of them.”
Nell laughed, as if she could not believe what she was hearing. “What did you have in mind, Grace? Being some sort of detective?”
She said it like it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. Grace’s face stung like she’d been slapped, but she wouldn’t let it show.
Especially in front of Aunt Clove.
With as much dignity as she could muster, she picked up her mother’s bag.
“Let’s talk over dinner,” she said, as though Aunt Clove were not there. “I have some information that might be of interest about Oliver’s case.”
“If you have something that could help Oliver, you should be sharing that with hislawyer,” Aunt Clove said.
