“Because I’m pissed!”
“They’re—”
“Not at them!” I toss my arms in the air, the beam of my flashlight catching on the wisps of fog, and then beyond that, on gray limestone.
Her brow furrows. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. No, it’s not at you either.”
“Then who are you pissed at?”
“At Papa.”
She cinches my upper arm to hold me in place. “You have to forgive him. He was just trying to protect you. You’re his little girl.”
“I’m not mad at him because of what he said about Slate”—I mean, it still definitely rankles—“I’m mad because of what he did to him.”
She frowns. “Did to him? What did he do?”
“He stole money from him.”
Her fingers jerk away from my arm. “Stole?”
“In the trust fund file, Bastian noticed there were two wire transfers made out to Marianne Shafir to help cover her medical bills. Apparently, she had cancer.” My gaze strays to the gray façade of the Beaux-Arts building where her scroll hangs. I can just see the corner of framed vellum through one of the windows.
“Really? Geez. I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t either, so I asked Nolwenn about it.” My gaze is pulled farther, to Maman’s terracotta war god enclosed in the glass veranda that juts out of the art center like a translucent bug eye.
“And?”
“And Nolwenn asked where I’d picked up that heinous information. She said Marianne didn’t have cancer.” My nose prickles. “Papa lied, Alma.”
“Maybe she needed money for an embarrassing reason.”
“Like what?”
“A full-body lift? She was getting pretty saggy by the end.”
“Alma!”
“What? It’s true.”
“You think she did a hundred thousand euros worth of plastic surgery?”
She bites her lip, then releases it. “Probably not. She looked pretty saggy on her deathbed, too. But I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation.” Alma’s devotion to my father blinds her to any faults he might have. Papa could kill someone, and my friend would find him a valid excuse. “Actually, you know what?”
“No. What?”
“Maybe he lent her the money to have herself committed. Do you remember how loopy she acted at Camille’s funeral, when Geoffrey insisted his wife didn’t commit suicide and said she was murdered? Marianne started laughing hysterically. The police chief had to physically remove her from the cemetery.”
A bone-deep shudder shoots up my legs. “I remember that. I also remember Adrien holding his father.”
It had been the single-most devastating spectacle of my life—a son holding up his father, trying to soothe his despair. It was the only time where I’d felt something other than revulsion for Geoffrey Keene. Perhaps he’d loved my mother, but he’d also loved his wife.
Maybe it was possible to love two people the same.
Another tremor goes through me. “Come to think of it, would you trust a crazy person to have themselves committed? You’d probably send the money straight to the psychiatric hospital . . .”
