The Art of Inheriting Secrets Page 32

  I wanted to believe in his vision of the world, in his hope, but my soul felt as if it were made of lead, some dull, dead thing I was hauling around. I looked into his beautiful eyes, seeing the world in them, the heavens, and I still couldn’t find my way to say anything at all. I could only think of my mother. What she’d done.

  What had she done?

  He closed his eyes. Pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Rest. I’m going to see my father. I will call you later.”

  When he left, I dressed in a warm sweater and green wellies with my jeans, my hair pulled out of my face into a ponytail, and walked out to the rose garden. Police tape guarded the site, but I could see my guess was correct—the orange flower was the one that had collapsed under the landslide, along with the damask roses. A young man stood by the landslide, looking stoic in the continuing drizzle. “Good afternoon,” I said. “I’m Lady Shaw.”

  He touched his hat.

  “This is where the bodies were buried?” I asked the policeman standing by.

  “Aye. They’ve removed the bones to the coroner’s.”

  The multicolored rose had tumbled sideways, and its roots stuck up in the air. “Can we move that so that the rose doesn’t die? It was important to my mother.”

  “I dunno. You have to ask the inspector. I don’t think you’re allowed to touch it.”

  “Hmm,” I said and reached for it, pulling it lower into the mud that surrounded it. “There, that’ll keep it from dying.” I slapped my muddy hands together. “When will they make an identification?”

  “I believe relatives have identified some of the girl’s belongings. It’ll take a bit to identify dental records and such.”

  “All right.” My hands were cold in the drizzle, and I shook them off. “Carry on.”

  As I walked back to the flat, I thought of the roses in my mother’s paintings. The eyes peering out so malevolently from her sketchbook. The little animals in all the paintings. The cabin of safety.

  Urgently, I opened my laptop and called up the digital images Madeline had sent me of my mother’s work. Nearly all of her paintings were here, and I went through them in the order they’d been painted.

  And the story was all there. Innocent creatures in a malevolent forest. A wolf panting in the shadows, teeth long. Roses growing through, over, around everything. The giant orange-and-pink rose often glowing in the distance.

  Something was still missing after I searched them all. It was a simple story, but I didn’t have the end. I needed to see the children’s book I’d given Helen.

  The rain had gone again, leaving behind heavy clouds, and I walked through the forest to the village and to Helen’s place. She opened the door and cried out, “Olivia! I saw the fire. Are you all right? Is the house all right? Are you—”

  “It’s a mess right now. I don’t know.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I need to look at the book my mother illustrated. If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course. Come in. Can I get you a cup of tea?”

  “Please. And . . . I’m sorry; do you have any biscuits or anything? I’ve just realized I haven’t eaten since yesterday sometime.”

  “Oh, my dear, my dear.” She hugged me, sat me at the table in a room cheery with plants and paintings. Before I even really settled, she produced a plate of nut breads and scones and a pot of creamy butter. “Don’t wait. I’ll just go find the book, but you must eat.”

  I slathered the bread with butter and devoured it so fast that I got the hiccups, which made me laugh even in my current mood. Waiting for them to subside, I leaned against the wall and took a long, slow, deep breath. My phone buzzed with a text, and I glanced at it. Samir said, My father wants to speak with you as soon as he can.

  I’m at Helen’s. Will come by soon.

  Helen returned with a tray and the book under her arm. “I’ll pour,” she said. “You can have a look.”

  I opened the book and leafed through it slowly, looking at every frame, in all the details, for anything I might have missed. In the border was a second story, something she was known to do, and I followed that intently. A little rabbit, down in a hole, covered with a tiny checkered blanket, while aboveground, a monster stomped by, bellowing, while a girl hid behind a tree. The rabbit in a forest, shivering as the wolf grabbed the girl and held her high in the air. More of that, fear and stalking, and the last scene, a dead monster by a pool and a girl with an ax in her hand nearby. The rabbit shivered at her foot.

  Helen placed a mug of tea before me. “Is it true they found the girl’s body?”

  I nodded, touching the girl with the ax. “And probably my uncle’s body too.”

  “Oh, dear. I hadn’t heard that part.”

  “Why did she come back here? What does she want me to understand? Why didn’t she just let this whole thing go?”

  “I can’t answer those questions. They’re yours to understand.” She patted my hand. “Drink your tea, and have a scone. That will help.”

  In spite of my frustration, I smiled. “I’m going to leave England just to avoid becoming as big as a house.”

  “Really? I was thinking you looked well, as if you’ve trimmed up a bit.”

  I raised my eyebrows and sank my teeth into the perfectly crumbly, exquisitely slathered scone. “It won’t last.”

  I left the book with Helen, knowing I could get another if I needed it, and walked to the apartment above Coriander. The sky was lightening, and I looked back to see if I could glimpse Rosemere, to see if I could discern the damage at this distance, but the angle was wrong.

  The kitchen was quiet—and I knocked at the bottom of the stairs. “Hello?”

  Samir appeared. “Come up. He’s quite anxious to talk to you.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “I can’t tell.” He looked at me closely. “How are you?”

  I shrugged. “No idea.” I paused. “I’m almost certain that my mother must have killed her brother.”

  His expression did not change. He only nodded, touching the small of my back as I passed into the apartment.

  Harshad sat at the table near the kitchen, a cup of tea before him. A window was open slightly to the breeze, which rustled a light curtain. The air smelled of ginger. “Olivia,” he said. The sorrow that lived on his brow had fallen to circles below his eyes, turned down the corners of his mouth. He looked ten years older. “I’m glad you could come. Please, sit down. Would you like tea? My wife makes a lovely chai.”

  “Yes, please,” I said and glanced toward the kitchen. “Hello, Mrs. Malakar.”

  “Hello.” She did not look at me, only busied herself with the cup and pot.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Malakar?”

  “Well, it is no surprise, is it?” He sighed. “We have always known she was dead.”

  “Knowing and having actual proof are very different.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Mrs. Malakar gave me a cup of milky tea, and I sipped it. Peppery, gingery, sweet. Not quite the same as Samir’s and I shot him a glance. “Bracing,” I said.

  He winked.

  “Olivia,” Harshad said, touching my arm across the wrist, as each of his children had done at moments of crisis. “Your mother did not come to see me when she was here this summer, though I knew she was here.”

  My body leaned forward.

  “She came to me before she left here, when she was young. When we were young.” His hands rested heavily in his lap, and his shoulders were bent with a heavy burden.

  I spoke quietly. “You don’t have to say, if you don’t want to.”

  “I do.” He looked at his hands, wiped one palm against the other. “We always knew there was something wrong with Roger. He did terrible things for no reason—caught a bird and locked it in a shed so that it died.”

  I flinched.

  “Yes.” His face showed the pain such a thing roused in him. “Things like that.”

  “Did he abuse my mother?”

  “He was cruel to her
in a hundred ways. A thousand, but I don’t know about . . . the other. I hope that was not true. She was a very unhappy girl as it was.”

  “She was very afraid of him. It’s all over her paintings.”

  “If he hurt her, that makes sense,” Mrs. Malakar said, sitting down next to her husband.

  My throat grew tight, and I had to look away to stop the visions of my artistic, eccentric, kind mother being hurt in any way. I swallowed and met his gaze, prompting, “She came to you?”

  Harshad took a breath, looked at his wife, who gave him a slight nod. He nodded. “She found Roger trying to burn poor Sanvi’s dead body, and she killed him. Stabbed him with gardening shears.” His eyes filled with tears. “Many times.” He shifted, cleared his throat. “She came to me for help. There was no one else she could ask.”

  A place in my throat tightened, choking any words I might have thought to utter. The scene played itself in my mind. The fire, the man who’d gone over the edge, my mother’s long-suffering fury suddenly snapping. I covered my mouth, afraid of what I would say.

  “You’ve known Sanvi was dead, all this time?” Samir asked, his voice shocked.

  “It was not a choice I made lightly.” The grief of his long-ago loss weighed on his shoulders. “I loved my sister, and I wanted to kill him myself.”

  Again, he wiped one hand against the other, Lady Macbeth. “But Caroline had already done it for that crime and all the others she suffered. If I had told the police where Sanvi was, they would have found Roger, and Caroline would have gone to prison. That didn’t seem right to me.”

  I hated to ask the question, but I suddenly knew it was true. “She was pregnant, wasn’t she? With me.”

  “Yes.”

  Behind me, Samir stepped close and settled his hands on my shoulders. I asked, “Was Roger my father?”

  “No. But I don’t know who it was. She never told me that.”

  I briefly closed my eyes, both relieved and weary. If Roger was not my father, who was? Could I find him?

  But I also realized that if my mother had been pregnant with me before she’d left England, I was a full year or more older than I thought I was. Already forty.

  I carefully did not look at Mrs. Malakar.

  Gently, Samir said, “Finish the story, Dad. She needs to hear it all.”

  “We buried the bodies in the garden and moved roses to cover them. I came back and told my mother, and she agreed that Caroline should not be punished. We never told my father. He would have wanted anyone, everyone punished for Sanvi’s death. He didn’t . . . know all of it.”

  “All of what?” I asked, but it was hard to speak.

  “My mother and your grandmother. Their love affair.”

  I glanced up at Samir. “You knew, all this time? We found some photos—they’re very explicit.”

  “When I was a child, I saw them kissing. I was only six or seven, maybe, but I knew that women didn’t kiss that way.” He shook his head. “All of their lives, they hid.” As if he came back from a very, very faraway place, he raised his head. “It was Roger’s discovery of their . . . affair . . . that caused so much pain. He blackmailed your grandmother into marriage, and my mother was furious and married too. And then your mother and I were born, and—” He spread his hands. “They were so lonely, the two of them, without each other.”

  It seemed I’d been weeping for months, and there could be no more tears in me, but this brought a fresh onslaught, an ocean’s worth of emotion, rendering me speechless. The tears flowed down my face, and Mr. Malakar nodded, pushing a box of tissues my way.

  “I know,” he said.

  “Dad, I’ve been so worried you would be upset if you knew,” Samir said.

  “Your generation did not invent the world, son.”

  Emotions continued to pour through my eyes, through my nose, and I bent my head at last, hiding. “Give me a minute. I’ll be better soon.”

  My poor mother, lost and locked and caught in the middle of so many currents. She’d even left behind her lover, for my sake. “My mother,” I said and wept the more.

  “Leave us alone,” Mrs. Malakar said.

  I was aware of them leaving, but I couldn’t raise my head, couldn’t stop crying. It was as if all the happiness in the world had been sucked out, and I heard a wail escape my lips. Mrs. Malakar’s hand fell on my back.

  “I miss her so much.”

  “She’s always with you. A mother never leaves.”

  I kept my head down, unable to stop my hiccupping, ridiculous outpouring. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know . . . why . . . I just can’t . . . stop.”

  “It was time to weep,” she said calmly. Her hand moved in a slow, easy circle between my shoulder blades.

  So I let it be time. I cried for my grandmother and Nandini; for Sanvi, stolen and lost so young; and for my mother, who had carried this burden with her for all of her life and never breathed a word of it.

  At last, I lifted my head. “She went to America, and she was happy,” I said. “She left it all and became someone else.”

  She gave me a cup towel, and I mopped my face. “It was brave. I didn’t know this story. I only sensed there was something between my husband and your mother. I thought they might have been lovers.” She shook her head, brushed hair from my wet face. “Women have ever had to pay for the crimes of men.”

  “I’m even older than I thought I was,” I said.

  She folded her hands in her lap. Nodded. “You will need to tell him, but I don’t think it will matter. He’s as arrogant as a lord.” She touched the bracelet on my wrist, Nandini’s bracelet. “Perhaps, in the light of things, it isn’t so important.”

  I nodded. “Thank you for everything,” I said, dragging in a long breath. “There’s something I need to do.”

  Samir and Harshad were waiting downstairs in the closed restaurant. “I’m so sorry about your sister and your mother,” I said.

  “Thank you. I am sorry about your mother.”

  I nodded, then realized the kitchen was entirely quiet. “Where is Pavi?”

  “She closed the restaurant. I don’t know where she went.”

  “Will you ask her to call me when she returns?” When he nodded, I turned to his son. “Samir, will you drive me home? I have some things I need to do.”

  His expression was sober, and all the words of the morning filled the space between us. “Of course.”

  In the car, he said, “We need to get you driving. If you stay, that is.”

  I was buzzing with emotion and exhaustion. I could only nod and lean my head back. “I need things to just stop for a couple days. I’m so tired.”

  “If you’re tired,” he said in a reasonable tone, “perhaps the best answer is to sleep.”

  “Mmm.” I was half-asleep before we left the parking lot. When we reached the flat, he helped me inside. “Don’t do anything hard,” he said. “Just go to sleep.”

  I nodded and staggered off into the new bedroom.

  Enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It was morning when I awakened, dry mouthed and slightly dizzy with lack of eating, but as I hurried to the bathroom, I realized my head was clear. The fuzziness was just gone. I showered and washed my hair vigorously, then made myself a massive breakfast of eggs and bacon and toast and coffee made in a brand-new french press, with whole cream and real sugar. Just the way I liked it.

  For all my righteous indignation, I couldn’t help looking over the offer from Alexander again, and it was truly substantial. It would be like winning the lottery. I’d never have to work again. I could buy a big house on the sea and take up painting and travel whenever I wished.

  It wouldn’t be the worst life of all time.

  On the other hand was the house. The estate. The lands and people. My mother had gone through a lot of trouble to get me out of here and then to get me back, and I still didn’t fully understand why. Why bring me back? Why not just let the old wreck fall into ruin?


  It might have taken one more step in that direction with the fire. Before I could do anything else, I had to reckon with Rosemere, with whatever had happened last night, two weeks ago, decades, centuries ago. The only way to do that was to gather up the courage Samir had so accurately named missing and face the actual rooms. By myself.

  Entry was blocked from the kitchen, though I peered at it through the window. Smoke stains made it difficult to see anything, but certainly there was damage to the ceilings and walls.

  Rounding the house, I touched the stones that made the house glow, crunched over pine needles and leaves, releasing a fragrance of spice and decay. The windows of the first floor were above my head, and I looked up to see if they were fire damaged, but from this angle they appeared whole.

  Until I came to the front. The main floor was fine, but the second floor windows gaped across the front, and the third floor windows were buckled too. I frowned. Had the room that burned before been the epicenter of the fire this time too? It had seemed, last night, to have been in the kitchen.

  In the quiet, I shivered, thinking of that room.

  A cat dashed out of the cover of shrubs and meowed. “Meow Meow,” I cried. “Are you okay?”

  He looked fine, if a little grimier than usual, and when I bent down to pick him up, he let me, nestling his head on my shoulder and purring under my ear. “I’m so sorry. That must have been terrible. Were you very afraid?”

  “Meow,” he said, hoarsely. I stroked his fur, long and staticky.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I said, carrying him with me. His body felt like a shield, something protective, so when he leapt down as I approached the front door, I was disappointed. “Do you want to come with me?” I asked, opening the door.

  He sat down, curled his tail around his feet.

  The rain had stopped, I realized, and I looked back toward the village. It shimmered with distance, the thatched roofs cozy against a slate sky. Did I owe the village my allegiance? Did they really need the estate at all in the modern world?

  The door stuck a bit, but when I pushed, it gave way, and I tumbled into the main hallway. The magnificent Elizabethan stairway. The wood had smears of soot, but it didn’t appear to be damaged, and I didn’t realize how I’d been holding my breath over that. The window, too, appeared to be undamaged.