“Then please follow me,” Alice turned on her heel, her green-and-gold skirts swishing behind her. “I need to show you something.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Andrew thought hemight be having some sort of episode. As he followed his mother and Della into the front room, he again blinked several times and attempted to set his world to rights. The scene before him was so strange it could not possibly be real, hence the episode. His mother and Della were not in the same room. Della was not in London. He hadn’t extorted a doctor on her behalf today. None of that was happening.
“Perhaps I should have shown you earlier,” his mother said, sitting down behind the small desk she used for writing and cutting fabrics for her dresses. “And perhaps I should not even be showing you now...” Her voice trailed off.
Andrew stepped forward, as he’d been lingering in the doorway, waiting for himself to wake up from this strange dream.
“What is it?” he heard himself ask. Della stood at his side, warm and welcome, and he was so intensely grateful that it felt as if every piece of him wanted to reach out and close the distance between them.
“It’s your father,” his mother said. Her tone was grim, and this wasn’t the way she usually spoke of his father. She spoke of him fondly, usually with a touch of longing. She was rarely still visibly or audibly sad. Instead, she preferred to treasure his memory, as did Andrew.
From one of the desk drawers, she produced a stack of letters. They were held together by a piece of fraying twine.
“I told you I’d finally cleaned out his study. To make another guest room. I thought we might have guests once you got back out into the city, you know.” His mother nodded, and he nodded back. “I found these. They are your father’s, and I’d forgotten about them.”
She sounded ashamed of that. A despair he rarely heard entered her voice, and it haunted him.
“He’d told me, when he fell ill, to give these to you, but only under certain circumstances. You went abroad, and I thought you’d never need them. Never need to know.”
She looked up at him, at them both, with tears in her eyes. Now she appeared haunted herself. In her face, he saw the same guilt he’d felt after he left the doctor’s office today. It was spreading like wildfire, somehow.
“What is it, Mother?” Andrew found himself repeating. He hated this, being the last to know something. He couldn’t stand not having all of the information.
“Maybe I should...” Della mumbled, already twirling on her indelicate feet and making a move to flee.
He grabbed her arm. It was instinctive. He feared it would always be that way, him reaching out to stop her from leaving.
“No,” he said, threading his fingers through hers and tugging her gently back to his side. “Stay.”
She stayed. Thank God, she stayed.
“These,” his mother picked up the hefty stack of letters, “are for you. Your father wanted you to have them.”
Andrew felt the weight of the papers in his palm. Della squeezed his other hand. His heart skipped a beat, and he didn’t know if it was from fear or elation.
“But you said,” Andrew thought back to just a minute ago, “there were certain circumstances.”
Alice hung her head. Andrew sensed that she’d hoped he wouldn’t ask. She didn’t know him very well if she thought he wouldn’t.
“He told me to make sure you read them if you were to ever get involved with the Harrises.”
Della let out a gasp, and her hand fell from his.
“No,” he almost growled. He didn’t know why. It was all he could think when he felt Della pull away from him. Just no.
“No,” his mother repeated. She rounded the desk with her arms raised and picked up the very hands that had just slipped through Andrew’s fingers. “No, I didn’t mean you, dear.” They were silent for a moment, and Andrew felt the weight of those letters as if they were made of stone. “I know my husband didn’t, either.”
Andrew wondered what Della must be thinking. She appeared horrified, her face ashen and her posture tense. She must assume anything his father had to say about her family was some stunning reproach. Something that would make him despise her by association. As if such a thing were possible. These letters could say Della herself was a man-eating succubus, and Andrew would still willingly walk to his own doom at her hand.
“I’ll give the two of you some privacy.” His mother looked between them both, patting Andrew’s shoulder as she walked by him out of the room.
Then they were alone. In his mother’s front room. He was still having trouble processing all of this, but those letters felt like they were burning his hands. Andrew sat. His mother’s desk chair was short and small and not fit for a man full grown, but he felt as if he needed to be sitting for this.
“Are you sure I shouldn’t go?” Della asked. Her head was turned, looking at the vacant space his mother had left behind. “Shouldn’t I—”
“No.” It was a complete sentence. He knew he shouldn’t interrupt her. All anyone had done since they’d arrived was interrupt her, and it was terribly rude and a touch disrespectful, but damn it, she had tostop assuming everyone wanted her to leave.
