Chapter 8 - THE LAST PAGE
For the first time since Nora met him, Adrian Vale looked afraid.
Not angry.
Not dangerous.
Afraid.
“What about me?”
Malcolm shook his head.
“Vincent only said Elena had found something she had no right to see.”
“Financial?”
“I don’t know.”
“Business?”
“I don’t know.”
Adrian’s patience snapped.
“You followed my sister into the rain. You threatened her for my father. You helped hide the truth for four years. Stop telling me what you don’t know.”
Malcolm accepted the anger.
Then said, “I know Elena told your father one thing.”
“What?”
“That if you ever learned what he had done, you would walk away from him forever.”
Nobody spoke.
Nora looked at the missing page.
The mystery had changed again.
Elena had not merely been trying to expose corruption.
She had been protecting Adrian from something personal.
Grant sat at the kitchen table.
“Marian had the book.”
Nora nodded.
“So maybe she had the page.”
They searched everything.
The cedar box.
The shoebox.
Old coats.
Photo albums.
Kitchen drawers.
Nothing.
At last Nora sat on the floor beside her bed.
“I gave away her clothes after she died.”
Adrian crouched near her.
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
“Don’t blame yourself.”
“I’m not.”
She looked at him.
“I’m realizing my mother carried all of this alone because everybody around her was too powerful to trust.”
That hurt him.
Good.
It was supposed to.
Adrian sat beside her on the floor.
“I built my life around loyalty.”
Nora looked at him.
“You built it around fear.”
He did not argue.
Downstairs, Grant found something inside Marian’s old photo album.
Not the missing page.
A photograph.
Marian stood beside Elena in the Vale kitchen.
Maya was perhaps four.
All three women were laughing while decorating cookies.
Around Elena’s neck hung a small gold locket.
Nora remembered seeing it before.
“She wore that constantly.”
Grant nodded.
“After Elena died, Adrian gave her jewelry to Maya.”
They drove back to Vale House.
Maya was awake.
She sat at the breakfast table coloring a horse purple.
Adrian crouched beside her.
“Do you still have your mother’s necklace?”
Maya nodded.
“The heart one?”
“Yes.”
“Can you show me?”
She studied his face.
“Are you sad?”
Adrian paused.
“A little.”
Maya put down the crayon.
“Okay.”
She returned several minutes later carrying a small jewelry box.
Inside lay the locket.
Adrian opened it.
One side held a photograph of Maya as a toddler.
The other side was empty.
Nora ran her finger around the edge.
“Was something in here?”
Maya shrugged.
“Paper.”
Every adult froze.
“What paper?” Adrian asked.
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“When I was little.”
“What happened to it?”
Maya thought.
“Grandma Marian took it.”
Nora stared.
“You called my mother Grandma Marian?”
Maya looked embarrassed.
“She said I could.”
Nora’s eyes filled.
“Of course you could.”
Maya continued coloring.
“She put the paper in the wood picture.”
Adrian became still.
“What wood picture?”
“The one downstairs.”
Nora and Adrian looked at each other.
The frame.
They almost ran to the service corridor.
It was empty.
The frame was gone.
For one awful second, Adrian thought someone had taken it.
Then Grant appeared.
“I moved it after last night.”
“Where?”
“Your study.”
They found it on the desk.
The photograph had been removed earlier when the child’s drawing fell out.
Nora lifted the cardboard backing.
Nothing.
Adrian examined the wooden edges.
Elena had made the frame herself at fourteen.
One side was thicker than the others.
Nora noticed a narrow gap beneath an old strip of felt.
She pulled the felt back.
A folded piece of paper slid free.
Adrian did not touch it.
Nora looked at him.
“You should.”
His hand shook when he unfolded the page.
It was from Vincent’s ledger.
But unlike the others, it contained no list of bribes.
It contained payments made over twenty years to one person.
Marian Bennett.
Nora’s stomach dropped.
“What?”
Adrian read the dates.
The first payment had been made when he was seventeen.
The final payment came one month before Elena died.
Nora backed away.
“No.”
Adrian looked at her.
“Nora—”
“My mother was being paid by your father.”
Grant examined the amounts.
“Not enough to be hush money.”
Nora laughed bitterly.
“You don’t know that.”
The bottom of the page contained a handwritten note.
Vincent’s handwriting.
Adrian read it aloud.
M. Bennett continues to refuse additional compensation. Monthly amount remains for A.V. as agreed with Rose.
Adrian stopped.
“A.V.”
Grant looked at him.
“That’s you.”
“No.”
Adrian shook his head.
“My father never paid anyone for me.”
Nora noticed something on the back of the page.
“Elena wrote here.”
Adrian turned it over.
Three lines.
Adrian deserves to know who actually kept him alive after Mother left.
Dad will never tell him because the truth gives Marian too much power.
Ask Marian about the winter of 2006.
Adrian looked at Nora.
Nora had heard that year from her mother only once.
A winter Marian refused to discuss.
Adrian was seventeen then.
His mother Rose Vale died that February.
Nora remembered something else.
“My mother had one thing from 2006.”
“What?”
“A rosary.”
“Where is it?”
Nora’s eyes moved slowly toward the wooden frame.
A faded string hung behind the photograph.
For eleven months she had believed it was only there to keep the back panel closed.
She pulled it free.
A small silver crucifix dropped into Adrian’s palm.
His face went white.
“My mother’s.”
Grant whispered, “Rose’s rosary.”
A tiny piece of paper had been wrapped around the chain.
Adrian opened it.
Rose Vale’s handwriting filled one side.
May you like
The note was only five words.
Marian, take Adrian and run.
