Chapter 25: The Left-Hand Drawer

"Stay in the car," Willa said to Jasper.

He looked at the old man at the gate, and then at her.

"I'll be at the end of the lane."

"You can see me from there."

"That's why I'll be there."

He got out, shut the door softly, and walked back up the gravel with his hands in his coat pockets.

Willa went to the gate.

Ambrose did not take his hand off the post.

In the last of the light he looked like a very old man who had stood too long.

"I can hear what you're going to say," he said. "Say it."

"You've never come to this house."

"Not once. Not in twenty-five years."

"Why now?"

"Because you refused me in front of two hundred people, and nobody has done that since your grandmother."

Willa said nothing.

"She was my wife," Ambrose said.

"You were told she was only a woman who lived in Prarc. I let you be told."

"I knew she was your wife."

"Did you?"

"I'm not stupid. She wore the ring till she died. Nobody in that house would say it."

His jaw moved.

"When you were born, I had one granddaughter already," he said.

"I wanted a boy to carry the name."

He looked at the blue door.

"Your father brought you into the hall in a shawl. I looked at you and said the house had no use for a second girl."

The wind moved the gate on its hinge.

"I said it in front of your mother."

"I told your father to send you to a nurse in the east wing and keep you out of sight."

"And Grandma?"

"Your grandmother stood in the doorway with her coat on."

"She said she would not leave a baby with a nurse. She took you out of that house that night."

Willa gripped the top bar of the gate.

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