Chapter 12: Twelve Years

At seven the next morning, the conservatory was full of orchids and silence.

Eleanor sat in a wicker chair with her cane in her lap.

Across from her sat the family lawyer in a gray suit, and the chair of her board, a silver-haired woman I had met once.

I had asked for them both by name.

Nathan stood by the glass door with his arms folded and his face like stone.

Rhona was outside in the hall, and she had refused to leave.

I laid the cream page on the little table between us.

"Read it out," I said.

Eleanor did not touch it.

"I know what it says."

"Then say it for the board."

She looked at the lawyer, and at the chair of her board, and at me.

"Keep Camille," she said. "Watch the other one."

The lawyer's pen stopped.

"You wrote that twelve years ago," I said.

"Yes."

"You told me you found out last month."

"I did not."

She said it plainly, and her hands did not shake.

"Camille was sixteen. She needed a blood transfusion after a riding accident."

"The hospital told me her blood type could not come from our family."

"You ran the records yourself."

"I did. It took me a week. I found the night nurse and the bracelets. I found you."

The silver-haired woman put her hand to her throat.

"And you kept her," I said. "Camille."

"She was my granddaughter in every way that I had lived. She slept in my house. She called me Grandmother for sixteen years."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Bad-ass Heiress Returns After Divorce from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.