Back to the 80s novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Spare

Russell came down the stairs buttoning his shirt, with Ricky and Posy close behind him in pajamas.

He stopped at the bottom, took in the two women in his front hall, and put himself between them and the children.

"You've got two minutes," he said to Margaret. "Then you're off my property."

"I'll say it where she can hear it," Margaret said.

She turned her gray eyes on me.

"The nun called me last night."

"She says she gave you something that belongs to me."

I took the bracelet out of the robe pocket and held it up.

Vivian took off her sunglasses.

Her eyes were red.

"Mother, what is that?"

"Hush."

"What does it say?"

Margaret didn't answer.

She looked at the bracelet, and then at me.

The cold went out of her face, and what was under it was old and tired.

"Vivian was Baby Girl B," she said. "Six twenty-five."

The hall was dead silent.

Posy whispered, "What's a baby girl?"

Russell put a hand over her ears and said nothing.

"We had two daughters," Margaret said. "Twins."

"Your grandfather left the bank to your father on one condition. A single heir, a single line, no splitting the stock."

"Your father said we'd keep one."

"We kept the bigger one, the pink one. Vivian."

"And I took the other to the nuns myself that night."

Vivian made a sound.

"You what?"

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