“So it’s also a joke that you’re sleeping with him?”
I swallow hard. “No,” I snap. “It’s not.” I straighten in my chair. “It’s private.”
“Well, Miss Vale, either you’re the only one lying, or everyone is,” he says, opening the file again.
“Your handwriting is oddly similar to Lilibeth’s. We have reason to suspect you planted it on purpose so you could free your lover.”
Before he can say another word, the door swings open.
“Detective,” a young man says, breathless, “we got a confession.”
He turns to me, his eyes narrowing. “Who confessed?”
“The housemaid,” the man says.
“Well,” he says, closing the file, “you may go, Miss Vale. Unless you have a different story to tell?”
My brows pull together, a quiet, “No,” slipping from my lips.
He gestures to the door and says nothing else.
I rise from the chair and walk toward it, ready to leave all of this behind, but my mind keeps snagging on Mrs. Danvers and what she did, trying to make it fit, trying to make it make sense.
I see her.
They lead her past me in handcuffs.
“Margaret,” I gasp. “Why?”
She turns her head and smiles. “Because we do everything for family, right?”
Family?
The word hits so hard it steals the air from my lungs.
As they take her away, I lower myself onto one of the plastic chairs in the hallway. I bury my face in my hands and shut my eyes.
An image comes behind my eyes.
Her face, just younger.
We were at a funeral. She was holding me in her arms, and Viviane stood beside us. I was only two when my real parents died. She was there. I see a man walk up to her and offer hiscondolences, telling her that if she ever needed anything, she could come to him for help.
I remember reaching up with my tiny hand and touching her face, staring into her eyes.
My mother’s eyes. They were the same.
I was only two, just a child. Maybe even then I knew she wasn’t my mother. Maybe some part of me felt she would become one. But I still remember the words tumbling off my tongue.
“Auntie Maggie.”
She is my aunt.
My eyes fly open, and I stare at the door in front of me as nausea twists through my stomach again. I sit there wondering how long she knew. How long everyone knew.
And how long they kept it from me.
Twenty-Three
