Chapter 4
We listened to Nora’s recording in my library that evening.
Elowen sat across from me.
Her aunt had taken the rest of the family home.
I asked twice whether she wanted privacy.
She said no.
“This concerns you too.”
Fair.
Nora’s voice sounded weaker than I remembered.
Still sharp.
“Elowen, if you’re hearing this, Maura has either married Mr. Ravenshaw or tried to stop you getting here.”
I looked at Elowen.
Nora knew.
The recording continued.
Three months earlier, Maura visited Nora under the pretense of asking about old Ravenshaw wedding traditions.
Reasonable.
Nora had organized my sister’s wedding.
Two cousins.
My father’s second marriage.
She knew every forgotten ritual.
Maura asked about the black favors.
Nora told her they were dead.
Maura asked why.
Nora explained.
Then Gareth visited alone two days later.
Asked where old blank coins could be made.
Nora refused.
That should have ended it.
Instead she later found a black favor inside a wedding-gift inventory box at the hotel where Maura’s family stored presents.
How did Nora get there?
Maura invited her.
Wanted the old woman to approve table presentation.
Pride.
People like witnesses when they think witnesses admire them.
Nora saw three coins.
Recognized the marks stamped on their reverse sides.
Families.
Rourke.
Vale.
Corbett.
Three names I had deliberately kept outside my private meetings for years.
Nora confronted Maura.
The recorder played Maura’s voice faintly in the background.
“Once he accepts them at the wedding, he won’t humiliate his wife by sending everyone away.”
I felt nothing at first.
Then cold.
Nora replied:
“That is not acceptance. That is trapping him in manners.”
Exactly.
Then Gareth’s voice:
“It’s tradition.”
Nora answered:
“Tradition requires him to know what he’s doing.”
Good woman.
The recording ended with Nora breathing heavily.
Then:
“If I don’t make it to the wedding, give Orson the names. Give Elowen the truth. Do not let that girl lose her job because I noticed what rich people were hiding.”
Elowen covered her mouth.
I looked away.
Nora had been dying.
May you like
And still worried her daughter would be punished for carrying the truth.
She had known Maura very well.
