Chapter 3
Milo had seen the woman twice.
Always from the car.
Always at Evelyn’s grave.
“She stands far.”
“How far?”
He pointed across the conservatory.
Child measurement.
Maybe thirty yards.
“What does she look like?”
“Old.”
Useful.
“Grandma old?”
He considered.
“No.”
Apparently younger than my mother would have been.
“Did she talk to you?”
“No.”
“To Verena?”
Milo hesitated.
Then nodded.
There.
“When?”
“Last time.”
I looked at Verena.
“Who?”
She sat down.
For the first time since this began, she looked frightened for herself rather than angry at me.
“Rowena Vale.”
Name meant nothing.
Harlan reacted.
Small.
I noticed.
“You know it?”
He did.
Evelyn’s maiden family had once employed a woman named Rowena Vale as companion to Evelyn’s mother.
Not relative.
Household staff.
She disappeared from their lives around the time Evelyn and I married.
Why?
Nobody knew.
Or nobody told me.
“What does she have to do with the ashes?”
Verena whispered:
“She contacted me.”
“When?”
“Four months ago.”
Long before I proposed.
Good.
“What did she want?”
“To know whether you still visited the grave.”
That was strange.
“How would she know you?”
“She knew me from photographs.”
More strange.
Rowena had followed public foundation coverage.
Seen Verena beside me.
Reached out through a private address.
And told her something designed perfectly to infect an insecure fiancée.
Evelyn had once asked never to be buried where I could visit her.
I stared.
“That’s a lie.”
“I thought so.”
“Then?”
Rowena produced a handwritten note.
Evelyn’s handwriting.
According to Verena.
No original shown.
Only photograph.
It said:
If Alden survives me, do not let him make a shrine of where I’m put. He loves with too much permanence.
That sounded like Evelyn.
Which bothered me.
Not the wording exactly.
The idea.
She hated being made into ceremony.
I had already learned that during our marriage.
Verena believed Rowena had some forgotten instruction from Evelyn.
Then jealousy did the rest.
Instead of bringing the note to me—
she made contact.
Asked questions.
Eventually Rowena suggested moving the ashes somewhere “private.”
“Why would you agree?”
Verena’s answer was brutal.
“Because I wanted there to be one place in your life I didn’t have to share with a dead woman.”
There.
Honest.
Ugly.
Human.
May you like
But Rowena had taken advantage of it.
The question now was why.
