Page 12 of The Inheritance At Bourton

Rowan shrugged. “Maybe it was pride. Or fear. I don’t know. Whatever Madeline and Gerald said, and maybe even your grandmother, was enough.”

“My mom wasn’t prideful,” Leah said. “You’re looking at the evidence. Look at those places we lived. She didn’t care what she looked like. She certainly never cared that my hair was tangled and my clothes were too small and stained. That’s not pride.”

“I’m sorry,” Rowan said. “I have no explanation.”

“Bitterness,” Leah surmised. “I think she was punishing my father and herself and ultimately, me.”

She kept going. It was all she could do. Each envelope was another year, another life she’d lived without knowing anyone was watching.

Then she came across one from the last year.

“He knew about the flowers,” she whispered.

Rowan took the page gently from her hand and read it. “He knew you worked with them.”

Near the bottom of the box, clipped to a report, was her mother’s obituary.

It was short. She remembered writing it. She had to pay for each word, and every word cost money, so it said almost nothing. It just indicated her mother’s name, age, and that she was survived by a daughter. There was no service, no one could be invited and there was no money to hold one.

He had read the words she wrote about her mother’s death. He had known she was alone in the world and let her be an orphan.

“Here.” Rowan reached past her, into the very bottom of the box. “This is the last one.”

He held it out to her. A bundle, thick as a brick, held together with a rubber band. Envelopes. Dozens of them. All the same size. All addressed in her father’s handwriting.

Birthday cards.

Every year, each one had her name on the front and nothing more.

She sat there with everything spread out across the floor.

She had held it together through all of it.

The noise that erupted from her came from deep within her wounded soul. Ugly, gasping, whole-body crying followed. She cried for the girl who had to skip meals. She cried for the teenager in the motel doing homework while her mother drank straight from the bottle.

Rowan didn’t tell her it was all right. He didn’t offer empty reassurances or say that her father had loved her, nor did he utter any of the clichés that people often used to console someone in pain. He moved closer and put his arm around her shoulders and stayed. That was all. He stayed.

She didn’t know how long it went on. Long enough that her throat hurt. When there was finally nothing left in her, she was hollowed out, her face swollen and her nose running.

After a while, she leaned her head against his shoulder. He didn’t move an inch. His shoulder was solid and warm. His hand slid up and down her arm. She leaned into him and breathed.

The space heater clicked off. The room began its slow slide toward cold. Neither of them got up to turn the heater back on.

“He knew my whole life,” she said at last. Her voice was raw.

“Yes.”

She thought about her mother. She had spent most of her years being angry at her mother. Then she’d feel bad for blaming her mother for doing the best she could. But now she understood she hadn’t done her best. She’d done her worst.

She’d come here and learned about Madeline, Gerald, and Evelyn, and she’d started to forgive her. Now she didn’t know where to put any of it. Her mother had let Leah grow up believing her father was dead. Maybe it hadn’t been malice. Maybe it was pride, or shame, or the particular stubbornness of a woman who had been run out of a country and needed to believe she’d left for good. Maybe Sandra had thought she was protecting them both. It didn’t matter why.

Her life was what it was. All the pain and loneliness happened. It couldn’t be forgotten or fixed.

And through all of it, quiet as a heartbeat, her father had been here.

“I want to stay,” she said. She lifted her head off his shoulder and looked at him. “I want to fix this place. The garden. The house. All of it. I don’t care what Madeline’s solicitor says. I want to stay.”

He gestured to the reports and photographs scattered across the carpet and her lap. “This is proof, Leah.”