“But you did.”
His eyes hardened.
“I did what I had to do.”
The words chilled me more than any denial could have.
One of the guards opened the door as two uniformed officers entered the jewelry shop. Dylan turned toward them, then back to me.
“Claire,” he said quietly, desperately now, “whatever they tell you, ask yourself one thing. Why would your mother rather live poor, scared, and alone than come back to them?”
Edmund’s expression did not change, but something behind his eyes tightened.
Dylan saw it too.
He smiled faintly.
Then the officers took him by the arms.
As they led him out, Dylan twisted his head over his shoulder and called back, “Ask Edmund where your father is buried.”
The bell above the door rang once.
Then he was gone.
The silence he left behind was worse than his presence.
I turned to Edmund slowly.
“My father?”
Edmund shut the folder.
“We should not discuss that here.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “Of course not.”
“Claire—”
“No. You don’t get to say my name like you know me. Twenty minutes ago, I was trying to sell my dead mother’s necklace so I wouldn’t be evicted. Now my ex-husband may have married me for an inheritance, my mother had another name, and apparently my father is part of this too.”
The jeweler lowered his eyes.
Edmund looked older then. Not powerful. Not polished. Just tired.
“You deserve the truth,” he said.
“I deserved it years ago.”
“Yes,” he answered softly. “You did.”
That was the first thing anyone had said all day that sounded honest.
Edmund took me from the shop through a back entrance into a black car waiting in the alley. I should have refused. I should have run. But I had nowhere to go except a rented room with a red notice taped to the door and a life Dylan had already invaded.
So I sat in the back seat clutching my mother’s necklace while Portland blurred past the tinted windows.
Edmund did not speak until we crossed the bridge.