Chapter 4 - THE RED COAT MY MOTHER BURNED
"You're lying," I told Vanessa.
She didn't argue.
Instead, she turned the photograph over and slid it toward me.
On the back, in my mother's handwriting, were four words.
Claire, age eight. Chicago.
Below them was a date.
June 14, 2009.
I stared at it.
"Where did you get this?"
Vanessa looked toward Ethan.
"Daniel kept it."
"And Daniel gave it to you?"
She swallowed.
"Not exactly."
Ethan stepped closer.
"Vanessa, why do you have a photograph of my ex-wife?"
"Because she's in the warehouse records."
My eyes went from one face to the other.
"What records?"
Neither answered.
I put the photograph down.
"Fine. I'll ask a simpler question. Why was an eight-year-old girl near a warehouse fire that supposedly killed a man?"
Ethan looked genuinely stunned.
He wasn't acting.
For once, the most powerful man in the room appeared to know the least.
Vanessa sat down carefully.
"My father handled accounts for Blackwood Shipping."
"Your father was an accountant?"
"He was more than that."
Ethan's expression darkened.
"Your father told me he worked in real estate."
"He worked wherever your father paid him to work."
There was a long silence.
I remembered Vanessa's elegant clothes, her expensive schools, and the financial collapse that had supposedly ruined her family.
Apparently, the Monroe fortune had always been connected to the Blackwoods.
"Explain the photograph," I said.
Vanessa pressed her hands together.
"Your mother worked at the warehouse."
That struck harder than I'd expected.
My mother, Linda Bennett, had spent most of her life cleaning hotel rooms, washing restaurant dishes, and taking temporary jobs.
She'd never told me about Blackwood Shipping.
But she had told me about a fire.
Only once.
I was eleven, and she'd seen me playing with matches.
She'd taken them from my hand so quickly that I'd started crying.
Then she'd said, "Fire doesn't always take what it burns. Sometimes it takes what you love years later."
I hadn't understood.
Now I wondered whether she'd been speaking from experience.
"Where is Daniel?" I asked Vanessa.
She looked away.
"I don't know."
"Is he alive?"
"I don't know that either."
Ethan's temper finally broke.
"You told me he died!"
"I told you what your father told everyone!"
He struck the desk with his palm.
Vanessa flinched.
I didn't.
"Ethan," I said quietly, "shouting won't make the truth appear."
He looked at me.
For a moment, something familiar passed between us.
Three years of marriage had taught me how to calm his anger.
I'd never considered that I might need that skill after collecting forty million dollars to leave him.
He took a breath.
"Claire, call your mother."
I almost laughed.
"My mother died two years ago."
Ethan went still.
He'd paid for her funeral.
Of course he knew.
But he'd spoken without thinking.
"I know," he said quietly. "I'm sorry."
It was a small apology.
From Ethan, it might as well have been a public announcement.
I picked up the photograph.
"My mother kept a trunk in her apartment. After she died, I had everything placed in storage."
"What kind of trunk?" Ethan asked.
"A green metal one."
Vanessa closed her eyes.
I noticed.
"You recognize it."
She nodded reluctantly.
"Your mother carried it out of the warehouse."
"On the night of the fire?"
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
"Because I saw her."
I looked at Vanessa's stomach.
"You would have been seventeen."
"Exactly."
"And you were there?"
Her eyes filled.
"We were all there."
Ethan's face changed.
"Vanessa."
She shook her head.
"Not now."
"Who started the fire?"
She covered her mouth.
I watched her carefully.
The woman who'd arrived at my marriage wearing white and announcing her victory was gone.
In her place sat someone frightened of a memory she'd spent seventeen years burying.
I was beginning to suspect her pregnancy wasn't the only thing she'd been hiding.
That afternoon, I drove to my mother's storage unit on the South Side.
Ethan insisted on coming.
I told him I didn't need security.
He said he wasn't there as security.
That almost made me laugh.
"Then why are you coming?"
"Because I owe your mother an answer."
I didn't know what he meant.
He refused to explain.
We drove in separate cars.
My green metal trunk sat beneath boxes of winter clothes, old cookbooks, and a broken table lamp I still couldn't bring myself to throw away.
I'd paid for the unit for two years.
The monthly charge was ridiculous.
But throwing away my mother's belongings had felt too much like losing her again.
Ethan helped move the boxes.
When he lifted the trunk, he stopped.
"Your mother kept this?"
"Yes."
He ran his fingers over a dent near the handle.
"My mother had one exactly like it."
"Green trunks are not rare, Ethan."
"This dent is."
He showed me two small scratches.
They formed the letter L.
Linda.
My mother's initial.
Inside were neatly folded clothes, old bills, and a cardboard box containing family photographs.
Beneath everything lay a dark blue wool coat.
I recognized it immediately.
My mother had worn it every winter until the lining finally gave way.
I lifted it out.
Something metallic slipped from an inner pocket.
A narrow gold bracelet.
It was the bracelet I'd seen in photographs of Ethan's mother.
He stared at it.
"Claire."
I turned it over.
Inside was engraved:
To Eleanor. Always. — R.B.
Richard Blackwood.
Ethan's father.
His hands trembled when he touched it.
"My mother wore this every day."
"Then why did my mother have it?"
He didn't answer.
I searched the coat.
There was a second pocket sewn into the lining.
Inside lay a small child's drawing.
Three stick figures stood beside a red building.
A woman.
A little girl.
A tall man.
Above the man's head, in uneven pencil letters, I'd written:
MR. DAN KEEPED US SAFE.
My heart thudded.
Daniel.
I remembered a young man lifting me into his arms as smoke filled the air.
I remembered my mother screaming.
And I remembered someone pushing a door open.
Ethan crouched beside me.
"Claire, what is it?"
I looked at the drawing.
"Daniel saved my life."
Ethan closed his eyes.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then I unfolded the paper completely.
There was writing on the back.
Not in a child's handwriting.
My mother's.
If Richard finds out what Eleanor gave me, he will take Claire too.
Ethan read it over my shoulder.
His face turned white.
"Claire," he whispered, "my father was still alive when your mother wrote that."
I looked at the bracelet.
Then at the coat.
And for the first time, I understood why my mother had spent the rest of her life moving from apartment to apartment.
She hadn't been running from poverty.
She'd been running from the Blackwood family.
But before I could speak, Ethan opened the small clasp on his mother's bracelet.
A folded strip of paper slid into his palm.
On it was a name neither of us expected.
Margaret Monroe.
May you like
And underneath:
She knows where the child was taken.
