Chapter 5
Avelise’s mother arrived the next morning.
Maribel Dunwick was fifty-three now.
Same calm eyes as her daughter.
She saw the sapphire necklace and closed her eyes.
“Oh, Evangeline.”
Not surprise.
Disappointment.
Interesting.
“You expected this?”
“No.”
Then:
“I expected something like it eventually.”
I stared.
Maribel had worked beside both sisters for eleven years.
She knew them differently than I did.
Lenora had been warmth.
Impatient kindness.
Messy drawers.
Terrible at choosing shoes.
Evangeline had been control.
Not malicious.
Orderly.
Protective.
The sister who packed medicine.
Remembered appointments.
Fixed mistakes before anyone saw.
When Lenora got sick, Evangeline took over more and more.
By the end, she managed visits.
Meals.
Medication times.
Even which stories people were allowed to tell around Lenora because she did not want her upset.
Lenora tolerated it.
Sometimes loved it.
Sometimes hated it.
“Did Lenora ever talk about what should happen after she died?”
Maribel looked at me carefully.
“Yes.”
That hurt.
Apparently another conversation I missed.
“What?”
“She told Evangeline to stop running her life after she was gone.”
Silence.
Evangeline looked away.
Serilda stared at her.
I asked Maribel to continue.
Three weeks before Lenora died, she made both women promise something.
No shrine.
No frozen rooms.
No woman compared to her.
No staff expected to preserve her habits.
“She said?”
Maribel smiled sadly.
“Godfrey married me because I was alive. Don’t punish him for surviving me.”
My chest tightened.
I looked at Evangeline.
“You knew.”
She started crying.
“Yes.”
“You knew exactly what she wanted.”
“Yes.”
“Then why?”
Her answer came almost angrily.
“Because she was dying when she said it.”
I stared.
“She was scared.”
“No.”
Maribel’s voice was quiet.
“She was clear.”
Evangeline turned.
“You always took her side.”
“She was the dying woman.”
That ended the argument.
Then Maribel looked at me.
“She also told me something else.”
“What?”
“If you ever turned the portrait gallery into a mausoleum, I was supposed to call you an idiot.”
For the first time in twenty-four hours, I laughed.
Short.
Painful.
Lenora.
Absolutely Lenora.
May you like
I looked around the gallery.
Maybe I had done exactly that.
