The Mirror (The Lost Bride Trilogy #2)

“I’m sure you did.”

“Stayed, didn’t I?” Her mood darkened again as she grabbed Wild Strawberry for petals. “I stayed in Poole’s fucking Bay saddled with a stinky crying baby. I did my duty, not like goddamn fucking Charlie.”

Snarling, she drew a stick figure with Black, and put it in a hangman’s noose.

“Hanged himself. Pooles do that. Selfish bastard ruined everything for me. He didn’t do his duty, did he? Went where the fuck he wanted, did what the fuck he wanted, getting some gold-digging street whore pregnant. The manor killed him, so he got what he deserved.”

The fury exploded out of her as she stared at Sonya.

“You’ve got his eyes. Poole-green eyes. You’ll die there, too. Mine are blue, like Mother’s. Stay away from the manor. Everyone dies there.”

As quickly as it had erupted, the anger died. She sent Sonya a vague smile.

“This has been a lovely visit. I hope to have a showing of my art in a few months at an important gallery in New York. I’ll see you receive an invitation.”

“Thank you.” Sonya rose.

“The maid will see you out. Please ask her to have Mother come in when she gets here, and bring tea. Mother’s so busy, I wouldn’t want to keep her waiting.”

Outside, Cleo put an arm around Sonya’s shoulders. “That was sad and horrible.”

“It’s a sad and horrible disease, and after what seems like a very sad and horrible life. I’m sorry for her.”

She stopped at the car, just leaned against it, because she wanted the air for a few minutes.

“My take—and tell me if yours is different. She lived under her mother’s rule, and rules, where Charlie didn’t. He got away. But I think she was planning to do the same.”

“To New York.”

“She was a bit older than Charlie, so she’d probably come intosome of her trust fund. It sounds like she had plans to use that, move to New York, get an apartment, focus on her art.”

Cleo nodded. “And then.”

“Yeah, and then. Browbeaten into choosing one of the twins, taking it as her own, a product of some bogus engagement.”

“The resentment.” Cleo looked back at the building. “It’s still festering. All these years.”

“Because she was too weak to refuse to live that lie, to refuse to go along, to stop her brother’s sons from being separated.”

Again, Sonya took the compact from her purse. “A woman nearly eighty still afraid to touch her mother’s things.”

“And yet, waiting with some anticipation for her mother to come. Why don’t I drive back?”

“Would you?” Sonya handed over the key fob. “She remembers,” she said as she got into the passenger seat. “Just as they told me. Remembers things from back then better, I think, than she remembers things from yesterday.”

“That spurt of rage? And that was rage—like Owen told us about. That’s bottled up in there.”

“That horrible drawing.”

“She drew her rage,” Cleo decided. “What would it do to someone, living a lie like that, resenting every minute of it? Doing what she saw as her duty and giving up a dream?”

“And never having a life of her own. Never, that I’ve heard of, having real friendships, a relationship. Living under her mother’s roof and rules, even after for the rules, after her mother’s death.”

“You know more than you did before we came.”

“I can see it, but I’ll never understand it. Can you imagine Patricia standing with Gretta over those babies and telling her to pick one? Like they were puppies in a kennel, or worse, shoes on a shelf.”

“All in all, Son, your dad was lucky. He had parents who loved him instead of a woman who did what she felt forced to do. Her duty.”