Chapter 7: For Show

Rhys drove us out of the dock district with both hands on the wheel and did not say a word for ten minutes.

I sat with the ledger page flat on my knee.

It was ruled in blue lines, and in a hard slanting hand it listed dates and sums, back and back, for twenty-two years.

The first line read: Suncoast delivery, balance on receipt. L.C.

That was Lavinia's hand.

I had seen it on a hundred cards in the Mercer house.

"Say it," Rhys said at last.

"Say what?"

"Whose daughter you are."

He kept his eyes on the road.

"Adela Lorrimer's," I said. "Gareth Wincott's, too. She was carrying me at the wedding. I was born in the mines."

The wipers went back and forth.

"Gareth doesn't know," he said.

"No one knows. I found out two weeks ago."

"And you still carried a tray of champagne past her at the gala."

"I wanted to see her face."

"What did you see?"

"A woman who has never once been afraid of being caught."

He pulled the car off the road without warning, under a dead streetlamp by the water, and shut off the engine.

The rain came down on the roof.

"I lived beside her for twenty-two years," he said, quietly. "I ate her soup. I never saw it."

"You were seven when she came."

"I was old enough to see something."

I did not know what to say, so I looked at my hands.

The bandage had gone gray in the rain.

"You're soaked," he said.

"So are you."

"Your face."

"What about it?"

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