Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
Lydia stared at the photograph.
“My mother never knew your family.”
Cassian’s expression told her he no longer believed that.
Margaret moved toward them.
“Give me that.”
Cassian folded his fingers around the picture.
“No.”
“You have no idea what you’re looking at.”
“Then explain it.”
Margaret said nothing.
Cassian turned to Lydia.
“We’re going to see your mother.”
Margaret stepped between them.
“Helen is ill.”
“So you do know her.”
The mistake landed hard.
Margaret’s mouth closed.
Cassian studied her.
“How long?”
“It was another lifetime.”
“What happened at Pier 19?”
“I wasn’t there.”
Cassian lifted the photograph.
“You’re standing twenty feet from the building.”
Margaret’s eyes flashed.
“A photograph is not a memory.”
“No,” he said. “But sometimes it’s enough to wake one up.”
Twenty minutes later, Lydia sat in the back of a black SUV with Cassian beside her.
Margaret followed in another car.
Lydia had refused to leave her mother alone with questions this large hanging over them.
Cassian had not argued.
The borrowed wedding dress spread awkwardly across the seat.
She hated it.
Everything about it felt like Evelyn.
The expensive silk.
The tiny pearl buttons.
The perfume Margaret had sprayed along Lydia’s throat because “Evelyn always smells like gardenias.”
Cassian noticed her pulling at the sleeve.
“There’s a coat behind you.”
Lydia looked.
A black wool coat lay folded on the rear seat.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shivering.”
“I’m angry.”
“They look similar.”
Despite herself, Lydia nearly smiled.
She put on the coat.
It was too large, but warm.
Helen’s cottage sat at the edge of the old Aldridge property beside a row of maples already losing their leaves.
Lydia rushed inside.
“Mom?”
Helen was sitting at the kitchen table.
Fully dressed.
A suitcase rested beside her chair.
Lydia stopped.
“What are you doing?”
Helen looked past her.
She saw Cassian.
Then the silver watch in his hand.
The color drained from her face.
“Oh, God.”
Lydia’s heart sank.
“You know him.”
Helen did not answer.
Cassian placed the watch on the table.
“Mrs. Carter.”
Helen stared at it.
“I wondered when that would come back.”
Lydia slowly sat across from her mother.
“You told me you had never even been inside the Vale estate.”
“I lied.”
The words hurt more than Lydia expected.
“For how many years?”
Helen looked at her daughter.
“All of them.”
Cassian remained standing.
He did not interrupt.
Helen touched the watch with one thin finger.
“I worked for Cassian’s mother.”
Cassian’s jaw tightened.
“As what?”
“Seamstress. Housekeeper sometimes. Companion when she traveled.”
“Her name was Celeste.”
“I know.”
The softness in Helen’s voice made Cassian look away for a moment.
“She was kind to me.”
“Then what happened?”
Helen’s gaze moved toward the window.
“Your father and his brother were fighting over the shipping company. Not publicly. Families like yours rarely fight where ordinary people can hear.”
Cassian’s expression darkened.
“My uncle Dominic?”
Helen looked at him.
She did not answer.
That was answer enough.
Lydia leaned forward.
“Mom, what happened at Pier 19?”
Helen took a slow breath.
“Celeste discovered cargo moving through Vale docks that never appeared on official manifests. Weapons. Cash. Sometimes stolen art.”
Cassian’s face hardened.
“My father would never—”
“I didn’t say your father.”
Before Cassian could respond, a car door slammed outside.
Margaret entered seconds later.
She saw Helen’s suitcase.
“You were leaving.”
Helen gave her a tired look.
“I tried.”
Lydia turned sharply.
“Tried?”
Helen reached into her purse and removed a train ticket.
Albany.
6:10 that morning.
“I never got on.”
“Why were you going to Albany?”
“Evelyn told me to.”
The room went silent.
Margaret whispered, “Evelyn was here?”
“Last night.”
Lydia stood.
“You saw her?”
Helen nodded.
“She came after midnight.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“She begged me not to.”
“What did she want?”
Helen looked at the watch.
“She brought that.”
Cassian stepped closer.
“Where did she find it?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
Margaret moved toward Helen.
“What else did she say?”
Helen’s expression hardened.
“You’ve asked enough from this family.”
Margaret stopped.
Lydia had never heard her mother speak to Margaret that way.
Helen turned the train ticket over.
There were four words written on the back.
BLUE COAT.
NOT CASSIAN.
Cassian took it.
“What does this mean?”
Helen looked at him.
“You had a wife named Anna.”
Every muscle in Cassian’s body went still.
Lydia remembered Margaret’s story.
The sixth wife.
The woman who supposedly ran barefoot through snow to escape Cassian Vale.
Cassian spoke carefully.
“Anna Morelli.”
Helen nodded.
“She came here six months ago.”
Cassian gripped the ticket.
“What?”
“She was hurt.”
His voice dropped.
“Who hurt her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You had my wife in this cottage and didn’t tell me?”
“She told me you were the last person I could trust.”
Something raw crossed Cassian’s face.
For the first time, Lydia saw something beneath the control.
Pain.
Not anger.
Pain.
Helen continued.
“Anna had bruises across her ribs and a cut above her eye. She arrived without shoes because she had lost them climbing down an embankment.”
Cassian looked as if someone had struck him.
“She said she ran from my house.”
“No.”
Helen shook her head.
“She ran from someone who came into your house.”
Cassian turned away.
Margaret was watching him carefully.
Lydia noticed.
“What did Anna want from you?” Lydia asked.
“The same thing Evelyn wanted.”
“What?”
Helen looked toward the photograph.
“To know what happened at Pier 19.”
Cassian turned back.
“Where is Anna now?”
“I don’t know.”
Helen’s eyes moved toward Margaret.
“But I know who she was afraid of.”
Margaret’s face tightened.
Helen reached for her rosary.
The beads trembled between her fingers.
“She kept saying one sentence.”
Cassian waited.
Helen looked directly at Margaret.
“She said, ‘The woman with the black bracelet knows everything.’”
Everyone looked down.
Margaret’s left wrist was bare.
Lydia frowned.
Margaret always wore jewelry.
Always.
Then she remembered that morning.
Standing in the kitchen.
Wedding dress on the counter.
Margaret’s hand pressing the silk toward her.
Around her wrist had been a black onyx bracelet set in gold.
Lydia rose slowly.
“Where’s your bracelet?”
Margaret’s eyes met hers.
For once, she had no answer.
Cassian stepped forward.
“Margaret.”
She backed toward the door.
Helen spoke before anyone else could.
“Anna wasn’t hiding from Cassian.”
Lydia looked at her mother.
May you like
Helen’s tired eyes filled with fear.
“She was hiding from you.”
