Page 100

Helene winced, as if she’d taken a physical blow. “She was like you. She wouldn’t stop pushing and pushing. I warned her too, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“So you killed her.”

“Me?” Helene audibly gasped at the accusation. “No, of course not. I would never hurt my sister. I loved Giselle.”

Livia hesitated. There was a throbbing sincerity in Helene’s voice that was unmistakable.

“But she did something to anger the family?” she pressed, taking another step forward.

As desperately as she wanted to know what happened to her mother, it was far more urgent she get to a phone.

“She was always doing something to anger the family.” Helene’s mood snapped from grieving sister to jealous shrew in the blink of an eye. “Not that it mattered. She was the princess. She never had to face the consequences. Not like me.”

“What consequences?”

“Loss.” Helene’s gaze strayed back to the pool. “So much loss. It’s suffocating.”

Another surge of anger raced through Livia. How dare this woman act as if she’d been the one to suffer? Giselle was dead, and Livia had been forced to grow up without her mother. With an effort, she squashed her resentment. It didn’t seem smart to piss off the woman holding the gun.

“Are you talking about the loss of your sister?” she instead asked in a voice that was almost steady.

“She was one, but not the greatest.”

Livia frowned, not sure what the older woman meant. “Do you mean your husband leaving?”

Helene blinked, as if caught off guard by the question. Then she released a sharp laugh. “God, no. The happiest day of my life was when Lance walked out of the door.” She pressed a hand against her stomach. “That coldhearted bastard cost me everything.”

Livia abruptly recalled Remy telling her that there’d been rumors of an abortion.

“Your baby?” she guessed.

“Lance and my father insisted I get rid of my child.” Helene’s face twisted with a sorrow that came from her very soul. “I refused, but in the end I lost her anyway. Along with Manu.”

Livia shook her head, trying to keep up with the words Helene was spitting out as if they were poison. And maybe they were. They’d obviously been festering inside the older woman for years.

She caught the main storyline. Helene was married to a man she hated, and he’d wanted her to have an abortion. And for some reason, Henri wanted her to have an abortion as well. Which didn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t they want …

Her dulled brain at last realized that “Manu” wasn’t a strange way to say she’d lost everything. It was a name.

“Manu?” Livia furrowed her brow, realizing that there was something familiar about it. “Of course,” she breathed, the pieces falling together. Well, at least a couple of pieces. “You mean Manny? The chauffeur?”

Helene’s features softened, as if just the mention of the man was enough to make her melt.

“Manu was his real name. He was the only person to truly love me.”

“So … ​you had an affair with the chauffeur and got pregnant. Then your husband and father insisted that you get an abortion?”

Helene tilted her chin in a gesture of defiance. “I’m not ashamed. I wanted my baby.”

“And that’s when your husband left,” Livia finished her thought.

“Good riddance. I thought that I could at last be happy.” Helene’s soft glow hardened to a bitterness that made her look years older. “But Lance left behind his malignant hatred for the child. I lost the babe a few days later.”

Livia swallowed a sigh. It was crazy. The woman had locked her in the garage and pushed her into the pool, and was now pointing a gun at her heart, but she couldn’t squash a tug of sympathy as she watched the woman fade back to the miserable, detached shadow who’d drifted through the Willows for the past three decades.

“What happened to Manny?” Livia asked.

“My father fired him, of course. And then he tried to run him out of town.”