More blinking. Another vexed frown. “I do not have a niece.”
“Yes, you do.” Julianna inhaled slowly, attempting to maintain her courage. “Her name is Emily. She is my daughter. My daughter and Shelbourne’s.”
Hellie’s mouth dropped open. She said nothing.
Julianna plodded on, needing to fill the shocked silence with something. An avalanche of stilted, half-uttered explanations, as it happened. “I never told you, Hellie, but I… Your brother and I… We…”
“No.” Hellie was shaking her head now. “You and Shelbourne? I would have known. You are my oldest, dearest friend. We shareeverythingwith each other.”
“Everything but my relationship with your brother,” she managed weakly.
“Relationship? The two of you scarcely ever crossed paths aside from that summer at Farnsworth House.”
That they had avoided the notice of everyone around them remained a miracle aided by the eased rules of the country house in which they had met. After those kisses in the lake, nothing had kept them apart. But they had taken care, aside from that sun-drenched, glorious meeting. They had met covertly in corridors, darkened rooms, the Palladian temple, the forest, finding their way to each other however they must.
“We crossed paths enough,” Julianna told her shocked friend.
“But he said nothing of it to me.Yousaid nothing.”
The condemnation in her friend’s voice was clear—it was Julianna’s omission, rather than Shelbourne’s, which was the greatest cause of strife.
“I am sorry,” she said, hating the damages her lie had wrought.
The guilt had been with her, eating at her, for two years. But now that the truth had been revealed, she understood that her guilt had been insufficient. The reality of it was so much worse than she had imagined.
“You have a daughter,” Hellie said.
“Yes.”
“I have a niece.”
“You have a niece.”
They stared at each other for an indeterminate span of time, the only sound between them the steady ticking of the mantel clock.
“How could you keep her a secret from me?” Hellie demanded at last.
“It was difficult.” The admission was torn from her. “Every day since I discovered I was with child, I struggled to do what was best for Emily. Initially, I was terrified and trapped, so shocked by the realization I kept it from everyone, even my mother, until I could no longer maintain my secret.”
“Is it the reason you left London so abruptly, the reason you would never tell me?” her friend asked.
“No.” Julianna gazed down at her cup, taking another deep breath. “I did not know about Emily when I left for New York City.”
Truth, in a sea of lies.
“Then why did you go?” Hellie asked.
It was a question Julianna was not prepared to answer. She could ill afford to go back in time and recall the way she had felt. Reliving the betrayal and hurt was too much. She could not bear it.
“I left to spend time with my mother.”
“You are lying.” Her friend made the accusation without heat. Her tone was knowing.
What was she to say? That Shelbourne had broken her heart and left her a shell of herself, that everything she had believed had been shattered like fine porcelain hurled from a roof to the gravel below? No, she could say none of that.
“I do not want to speak of it now, Hellie,” she said. More truth. After two years of lies, veracity was freeing.
Though bittersweet. Nothing about this homecoming had unfolded as she had intended, according to plan.
