Silence expanded.
“Help me to end it.” Primrose’s softness came back. “Do not spend the next twenty years proving that a deck can be scrubbed white when the water is red.”
Kane just watched her.
“Wallace said you’re suffering,” I broke the taut air.
One bony shoulder rose under her cardigan. “I am. But not in the way you expect. I am tired of being a piece of furniture in my own life. I am tired of expectation and performance. You are young. You don’t yet know that women have bones that ache from holding a family’s shape.”
She turned to Kane, and something in her face gentled until I felt it in my chest.
“Your mother knows,” she stated. Not a question.
Kane went still.
Primrose pressed her advantage. “She is unwell.”
“Aye.”
“And you have been pulling a great cart uphill with your teeth. Her care is expensive. More than her payout for birthing you. All that on your shoulders is a burden few could manage.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
My stomach knotted and twisted. I’d guessed why he was pushing so hard, but to have the information spoken out loud was a gift.
She inclined her head a fraction, as if they had just concluded a bargain without speaking. “If you lend me your vote, I will see your mother’s care is paid while the lawyers unwind the accounts.” She lifted a hand when he opened his mouth. “Quietly. No photographs. No speeches. Invoices go to my private solicitor and are settled. I will not have you made a beggar for doing the right thing.”
The room narrowed around us. Relief on his behalf flared in me so fast it hurt.
Kane didn’t move. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. But no contract either. No evidence of my influencing your vote and going against the wishes of my husband. For your benefit more than mine.”
Wallace bustled back in, a tray in his arms. He deposited it on the desk then poured tea from a pot into a fragile china cup, added milk, and handed it to his mother on a saucer. She took it and sipped, watching us.
I accepted a cup of my own. Kane didn’t even acknowledge the offer. His breathing was too fast, the knuckles on his hand pronounced.
The ivy in the macramé cradle ticked the window in a draft.
The silence was killing me. I was certain Kane wouldn’t agree without serious consideration, even if I didn’t know the details why. The expectation had sunk him to silence, but there was more he’d wanted to ask. That he’d regret if he walked out now without saying.
I gripped my cup. “If it’s okay to ask, can you tell us anything about Able’s eldest daughter, Darcy?”
Wallace swore but hid it behind a cough, his floppy sleeve covering his mouth.
Primrose sniffed. “That girl went wild. She was selfish and a bad apple. I’m glad she’s not part of the efforts to hold on to a company that needs to go to the grave with its maker.”
None of that description sounded like Dixie. She was kind and sweet. She helped the other girls and was the loveliest human.
I tried again. “The solicitors are searching for her. Do you know where she is?”
Her pale, barely there eyebrows arched. “I haven’t seen that girl in over a decade. To me, she doesn’t exist anymore.”
“But you provided the picture?”
Her mouth worked, but then she sighed and reached for a drawer, extracting a silver frame.
“Mother,” Wallace spat.
