Evelyn laughed.
It was not amusement. It was the involuntary sound of a mind refusing information it could not place.
"No."
Celia did not flinch.
"I saw her."
"My mother died in 2008."
"Then I saw a dead woman."
"There was a body."
"Did you identify it?"
Evelyn opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
She had been twenty-one. Mara eighteen. Gideon had handled everything after the boating accident because their father was sedated and nearly incoherent. The body had been badly burned in an engine fire. Evelyn remembered a closed casket and Gideon's hand around her shoulder.
She had never seen her mother's face.
"What did she look like?" Evelyn asked.
Celia described Helena Hart perfectly.
Dark blond hair cut at the jaw. A narrow scar along the right thumb. A slight limp caused by a riding accident in college.
"What did Mara do?"
"She cried. Then she screamed."
"What did my mother say?"
Celia hesitated.
"I only heard part of it. She said, 'I did this to keep you alive.' Mara told her she had made the wrong daughter pay for her fear."
Evelyn felt cold down to the bone.
"Wrong daughter?"
Celia shook her head. "I don't know."
Naomi asked, "Did Helena come back?"
"Not that I saw. But after that night, Mara stopped trying to convince staff she was an heiress. She became quiet. Cooperative. Almost invisible. Three weeks later she started planning her escape."
"How did she get out?"
Celia looked at Lily.
"With help."
"Yours?"
"Mine and another nurse's."
"Name?"
"Theo Grant."
Adrian straightened.
"Theodore Grant?"
Celia nodded.
Evelyn recognized the name too.
Theo Grant was now head of security for Hart & Vale.
Gideon's most trusted security officer.
The man who stood ten feet behind Gideon at every board meeting.
"Theo helped Mara escape?" Evelyn said.
"He worked at St. Agnes before private security. He smuggled Lily out in a laundry cart. Mara climbed through a service tunnel beneath the west building."
"Why would Gideon later hire him?"
"Maybe Gideon doesn't know what he did."
Or maybe, Evelyn thought, Theo had never been working for Gideon at all.
Celia gave them an address in Newark where Theo's sister supposedly lived. Before they left, she caught Evelyn's sleeve.
"Your sister survived because she stopped trusting simple answers. Don't make the same mistake."
Outside, rain had begun.
Adrian opened the car door for Lily, but Lily did not get in.
"I know the lady," she said.
"What lady?" Evelyn asked.
"Your mom."
Every adult froze.
"You've seen her?"
Lily nodded.
"At our apartment once. Mom made me stay in my room. They argued."
"When?"
"Before Christmas."
Less than a year ago.
Evelyn's vision blurred.
"What did she call herself?"
Lily thought.
"Helen."
Adrian swore under his breath.
"What did Helen say?" Naomi asked.
"I only heard one thing."
Lily looked at Evelyn.
"She said, 'If Evelyn remembers the bridge, we're all dead.'"
The bridge.
Evelyn's hand went automatically to the scar hidden beneath her watch.
A thin white line on the inside of her wrist.
She had always been told she got it in a bicycle accident as a teenager.
But suddenly she could smell rain.
Metal.
River water.
She saw headlights reflecting off a bridge railing.
Mara shouting her name.
Her mother saying, "Don't let her see him."
Then nothing.
Evelyn staggered.
Adrian caught her.
"Evie."
"I was there."
"Where?"
"The night Mara's car went into the ravine."
His face changed.
"That's impossible. You were in New York."
"That's what Gideon told me."
She pressed both hands to her temples as another fragment broke loose.
A dark road.
Mara bleeding from the forehead.
A man standing beside the bridge.
Not Gideon.
Not Adrian.
Their father.
Malcolm Hart had been dead for eleven months by then.
Evelyn whispered, "I saw Dad."
