Mr. Lampitt—the attorney from the hospital. “I didn’t know,” I tell her. “Not about this, the rebuild. He told me my inheritance was dependent on it, so I refused it. I never dreamed he’d carry on anyway.”
She looks surprised, whistling over the top of her teacup. “You turned down all that money?”
“I turned down the horror of coming back here, of being forced to see everything I’d escaped resurrected before my eyes. It wasn’t a hard decision.”
She shakes her head, regards me with a note of admiration. “Still, you’re stronger than most.”
I shrug. Maybe. But look where it’s gotten me.
I didn’t know Mira well when I was growing up here. Back then, she was Nina’s eldest, a mother in her own right of two young boys. She helped Nina at the estate on occasion, when it was warranted. She was friendly but reserved, polite but not a fixture in our world. Mostly she was the place Nina retreated to when she wasn’t staying here, the family she should be caring for instead of ours. I remember feeling a vague curiosity about her, and a simmering envy on the rare occasions I saw Nina show her affection. But I was too young to see very far beyond these walls, drowning as I was in my own pain and neglect.
“How long did it take?” I ask, looking around me. “To put Humpty-Dumpty back together again?”
“Faster than you’d think,” she says, taking another sip. “But of course, they had all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.”
Yes, my grandfather would have been able to command a veritable army of contractors, even from the grave. And I can see no expense was spared.
“A few rooms dragged out, mostly because they took a while to source new fixtures identical to the originals. But the bulk of the construction was done in under two years,” she elaborates.
“They even managed to replicate the fireplace mantel. They must have found the same artisan to do it,” I speculate.
But Mira shakes her head. “No, not that. That mantel and that portrait were the only two things that survived the fire. Confounded the investigators. It stood here with the walls cratered around it like a memorial for weeks.”
A chill bristles down my spine. I set my teacup down. “What about you?” I ask her. “I wouldn’t expect to see you here after your mother…”
It’s her turn to shrug. “I wasn’t interested when Mr. Lampitt first approached me. But he said that keeping everything about the house as close to the way it was as possible was very important to your grandfather. After a while, I realized that besides you, I was the only one who knew exactly how my mother kept things here—how she folded the towels and stacked the dishes, how she set the tables and arranged the flowers. In a way, coming back felt like keeping a part of her alive. And frankly, he offered me too much money to say no. By then, Damien and I had split. I was mostly raising the boys on my own. I needed the income. And with no one living here, it would just be me, the boys, and a groundskeeper who stayed off-site. We could have the whole house to ourselves. It sounded magical at first, but…”
My eyebrows raise questioningly.
“It’s not a house,” she said at last. “It’s a mausoleum. I’ve adjusted, but the boys haven’t. They spend more and more time with their dad every year. If I had it to do over again, I don’t know if I’d say yes.”
I meet her warm brown eyes, my hands balling on the table. “Mira, I don’t know how to say this. I know it won’t change anything. I can’t bring your mother back. But I’m so sorry for what happened. I loved Nina. I—”
She stops me before I can go on. “Please, don’t apologize. What happened wasn’t your fault. You were a victim too. You died, for Christ’s sake! No, I won’t hear it. And my mother wouldn’t want you carrying the burden of her death. She was a good woman and a proud one. She knew what she was doing here, who she was serving. She did her best to protect you—all of us—but there was always a chance it would catch up with her.”
Her words sizzle against my nerves, full of meaning. There is a story there, behind what Mira is saying. One I haven’t heard but need to. “What do you mean, it would catch up with her?”
Mira looks thoughtful. She takes a sip of her tea, then she frowns. “My mother had unprecedented access to your family. She witnessed things in this house that no else did.”
“Like what?” I can’t help asking.
She shakes her head. “It’s no good to drag up the dead.”
I reach across the table and squeeze her hand. “Mira, please. There’s so much I don’t know. So much I never understood. It’s followed me all these years. It would be a relief to fit some of the pieces together. I know the picture isn’t pretty.”
She swallows. “The night your grandmother died, my mom had been lying awake, unable to sleep through the constant screaming. They were in her bedroom, Aurelia and Macallister. He’d been away on business and returned to find her with one of the gardeners, discussing plans for a gazebo. It was innocent enough, but unusually late for such a meeting. He flew into a rage. He was an exceedingly jealous man, especially regarding her. The gardener was fired on the spot. They fought for hours, both drinking and shrieking, hurling abuse at one another. The way I understand it, your grandmother was a spirited woman, not easily held down, and she’d grown increasingly depressed beinglocked up here, chained to his side. My mother didn’t know what to do. She thought about phoning the police when she heard glass breaking, but knew the old man would never forgive her for such an impropriety. She already had me by then. I was living in Bandon with my father who earned a modest living as a woodworker. She needed the job. Then she heard a sound she will never forget. A sickening crack followed by a thud. After that, the screaming stopped.”
My mouth widens as I listen. I don’t know what’s harder to believe: that I might finally learn what happened the night my grandmother died, or that Nina was hiding the truth all along.
“She waited a few moments and then she sneaked out of her room and made her way carefully down the stairs and through the hall in the dark. She had just entered Aurelia’s bedroom when she saw your grandfather through the window, carrying your grandmother’s body. She watched, rapt and helpless, as he made his way to the cliffs, bristling against the wind, and threw her over. That’s when my mother turned her head and saw the blood. It dripped along the fireplace mantel where your grandmother must have fallen when he hit her, striking her head.”
My stomach sours on the few sips of tea I’ve taken. “So, he—”
“Killed her, yes. And threw her body into the sea to make it look like a suicide. Then he paid off the police, anyone who might take too close a look.” Mira sighs. “My mother was sick and devastated by what she’d witnessed, but even more afraid. Your grandfather was a powerful, ruthless man. She knew what might happen to her, tome, if she dared speak a word of it. He came to her that night, sobbing like a child, and asked for help cleaning the blood. His despair was overwhelming. After that, he hardened even more. Whatever humanity he might have had went over that cliff with Aurelia’s body.”
I lean back in my chair in a state of shock, trying to absorb everything Mira has just told me. “People said she was disordered. That her mental health was gone.”
“She was,” Mira confirms. “Driven to it by her circumstances. Her mind was racked with torment and her sleep was racked with dreams. She felt too much and she wanted too much and it was all cooped up inside her, inside this house, like a pot boiling over. She was a force, my mother used to say. The only match to a man like Macallister, but she paid too heavy a price for it.
