HE IGNORED HIS BLEEDING PREGNANT WIFE FOR HIS MOTHER'S PARTY... UNTIL THE MAFIA BOSS HELD THE NEWBORN BABY AND DECLARED: "CHLOE IS MY DAUGHTER"

Chapter 07 - The Lakefront Apartment

Chloe had met Vance at a spring fundraiser in a church basement. She'd been standing beside a tray of lemon squares when a handsome stranger asked whether the cakes were homemade. She told him they were. He said he could taste the difference. Two weeks later he sent her flowers at school, wrapped in brown paper because he'd remembered she disliked cellophane.

Evelyn had been there that evening. Chloe remembered her now, introducing Vance with a touch on his elbow, calling Chloe "the lovely teacher I've been telling you about." At the time, Chloe had thought it kindness. The memory felt altered, as if someone had taken down the wallpaper and exposed the damp beneath.

"Are you saying your mother chose me for you?" she asked over the telephone.

Vance was silent long enough to make the answer plain.

"She wanted us to meet," he said. "I didn't know why. I swear I didn't know about Sterling back then. She told me months ago, when the company started failing."

"Did you ever love me?"

"Chloe—"

"It's a simple question."

"Of course I did. I do."

She looked at Noah, asleep against her knee. It was possible, she thought, for a person to love someone and still take from her until there was very little left. That possibility frightened her more than the idea of a marriage without love.

"Then you should have trusted me with the truth."

She ended the call. In her bedroom, the wedding photograph still lived in a dresser drawer Marisol had cleared for her. Chloe had not brought herself to throw it away. She was smiling in it. The smile was real; that was the difficult thing. Learning that somebody had manipulated their meeting did not erase the ordinary, happy things that followed. It only made her wonder what they had been built upon.

The next day she took Ruth and Dana to see Evelyn. Marisol insisted on coming too, despite Chloe's objections about her knee. Arthur offered to accompany them but Chloe refused. There were too many men in this story already, men who wanted to handle a conversation for her. This one she would handle herself.

Evelyn lived in a lakefront apartment, not a house. Its rooms were so spotless Chloe had always been afraid of setting down a wet glass. The maid showed them into a drawing room lined with family photographs. There was Vance at five in a sailor suit, Vance at graduation, Vance lifting a champagne glass on his wedding day. Not a single photograph of Chloe alone.

Evelyn appeared in pale gray trousers and a silk scarf. "I assume this isn't a social call."

"No," Chloe said. "I'd like you to tell me why you've been receiving money from a trust established for me."

Evelyn's smile did not survive the sentence. She sat, crossed her ankles and looked toward Dana's briefcase.

"Those payments were authorized," she said.

"By whom?"

"People who understood the circumstances."

"The circumstances being that I was alive and my father thought I was dead?"

"It wasn't as simple as that."

"Then make it simple enough for me."

Marisol took Chloe's hand. Evelyn looked at their joined fingers, and for a moment something like envy crossed her face.

She had begun at St. Agnes as a bookkeeper, she explained. In 1995 Conrad Vale approached the home's director about caring for a child whose identity had to remain confidential. He presented forged paperwork and promised money. Evelyn had recognized the surname on one of the documents and asked questions. Vale told her a dangerous family dispute was underway. She would be compensated for keeping the child out of reach.

"But Anita took me to Marisol," Chloe said. "I never lived there."

"Not for long. I saw you once. You had blue socks. The child disappeared before the placement was completed. Vale told us to say she'd been transferred."

"And the money?"

Evelyn rubbed her thumb over her wedding ring. "There were funds designated for care and secrecy. Vale directed the payments. At first the sums were small. When my husband's debts grew, I asked for an advance. Then another. After he died, I couldn't stop without admitting what I'd done."

It was an explanation, not an excuse. Chloe knew the difference.

"You later found me," she said. "How?"

"Your adoptive father's name appeared in a property notice. I remembered it from a letter Vale had once shown me. I hired someone to confirm you were the same girl."

"So you knew who I was when you introduced me to Vance."

Evelyn looked at the carpet. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I thought if you were close to me, I could keep the past quiet. And because you were kind. My son needed someone kind."

Marisol made a short, disbelieving sound. "You didn't need a daughter-in-law. You needed a lock on a door."

Evelyn raised her chin. "I never forced them to marry."

"No," Chloe said. "You just put your hands on the scale before either of us knew there was one."

Dana asked about Whitcomb Family Holdings and the money routed there from Vance's bank loan. Evelyn claimed she believed the transfers were temporary and that Vance had arranged them. Ruth slid a bank authorization across the table. Evelyn's own signature appeared on an instruction to move the funds again, into an account belonging to a consulting firm.

"Whose firm?" Chloe asked.

Evelyn held her silence.

Ruth answered. "Dominic Sterling controls it through intermediaries."

Evelyn closed her eyes. "He's not a man you can embarrass and walk away from."

"You had thirty-one years to stop helping him," Marisol said.

Evelyn looked suddenly old. "You think I haven't been afraid?"

"I think you've used fear to make other people pay for your comfort."

For the first time, Evelyn began to cry. Chloe watched without satisfaction. She had imagined that seeing the woman humbled would restore something taken from her. Instead she felt tired. An apology could not give her back the afternoon she had spent picking lilies off the kitchen floor after Evelyn called her inadequate. It could not make Vance answer a telephone differently.

As they rose to leave, Evelyn touched Chloe's sleeve.

"I never meant for you to get hurt."

Chloe looked at the older woman's hand, with its diamond ring and carefully shaped nails.

"You had a great many opportunities to notice that I was hurting."

Outside, the wind off Lake Michigan was strong enough to steal their breath. Ruth took a call before they reached the car. When she came back, her expression was more guarded than before.

"My investigator found the original instruction authorizing the infant death report," she said. "It's in the archived files of Vale's firm."

"Whose name is on it?" Chloe asked.