The Magnolia Palace(61)

“Quit it, sis.”

The tension in the room made Lillian want to stand and upturn the entire table. Mr. Frick’s maudlin drivel seemed solely aimed at driving his children against each other, as if he were King Lear.

“You’re a bully, Childs. You always have been.” Miss Helen turned to Lillian. “You know what he used to do when I was a child? He’d hide under my bed and grab my feet when I went to climb in. Or he’d make me stare into a mirror and tell me I was ugly until I cried.”

“Both of you, the teasing needs to stop,” said Mrs. Frick. Lillian looked over, shocked that she’d made a stand instead of fading into the wallpaper.

“Now, now, there’s nothing wrong with a little teasing, Adelaide,” answered Mr. Frick. “What else do these children have to make them resilient, having lived in grandeur with thirty servants their whole lives?”

“Twenty-seven,” corrected Mrs. Frick.

The pause before Mr. Frick spoke was as thick as a summer storm.

“You like your numbers, don’t you?” said Mr. Frick, finally. “Then how about this one: sixty. Not quite an old woman, but close.”

Mrs. Frick looked miserably out the window, as if she wished she were anywhere else than this dining room.

Miss Helen rose from her chair, reaching for something in her pocket. “Father, look what I’ve had made for you.”

She took out a small miniature and gave it to him as Lillian cringed. She’d done everything she could to dissuade Miss Helen from this idea. And to present it now, in front of the entire family?

“Let me see.” Mr. Frick pushed his glasses up on his nose and peered down at the object, which in his big paw of a hand looked like a piece of sea glass.

Lillian already knew what he held: a picture of Martha that had been painted when she was around four or five, red-haired and pink-cheeked, wearing a white lace top and looking serenely out from a thin gold frame. Miss Helen, in a moment of what she considered inspiration, had commissioned an artist to add the figure of herself as a young girl next to that of her sister. They looked almost like twins, except Miss Helen’s likeness had blonder hair and a larger forehead.

“I thought you’d like a portrait of your two favorite daughters,” said Miss Helen.

Mr. Frick closed his palm over the image briefly, then held it up for the entire table to see.

Mrs. Frick looked as if she were about to be sick.

“You are so incredibly thoughtless,” said Mr. Childs. “Why on earth would you desecrate that with your ugly mug?”

Miss Helen spoke through gritted teeth. “See, Father? That’s what I’ve had to put up with my whole life. You understand why I did it, right? To please you.”

Mr. Childs didn’t back down. “You’re only concerned with the will. Don’t pretend it’s anything else.”

“Childs!” Mrs. Frick had found her voice again. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

Mr. Frick sat back in his chair, watching with what Lillian was sure was amusement the disruption unfolding around him. His beastly mistreatment of his children this afternoon didn’t square up with the softhearted man she’d met in the art gallery that late night, who was so tearfully proud and protective of Miss Helen. Late at night, among his treasures, was probably the only place he allowed himself to show any hint of compassion.

“Now we see what lies behind all of your flattery,” intoned Mr. Frick. “Both of you”—he pointed at Miss Helen and then at Mr. Childs—“ought to be ashamed. Martha would never have behaved so abominably. You’ll just have to wait, won’t you? Then again, patience was never your strength, either of you.”

He rose, but then sat down again, hard, one hand to his belly.

“What is it, Father, another attack?” Miss Helen placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Help me to my sitting room, Helen, would you?”

Mr. Childs rose to assist, but his sister called to Lillian. “Take his other arm, Miss Lilly.”

They brought him to the elevator and up to the second floor. By the time he reached the doorway to the sitting room he was looking a little less pale. He sat on the sofa, staring up at the coffered ceiling with a vacant expression on his face while Miss Helen fetched him a glass of water.

“Thank you, my love,” he said when she returned and knelt down at his feet, watching him drink and then holding the glass out for Lillian to take.

“Of course, Papsie. I’m sorry if I upset you.”

He put his hand on her cheek. “It’s a beautiful miniature. I will treasure it always. I do wish you could have grown up with Martha as your big sister. She had such a gentle nature. She might have tempered yours.”

The man knew exactly where to place the knife and turn it.

“I admonished Martha for two years, stop crying, stop complaining.” Even though Mr. Frick’s eyes stayed on Miss Helen, she was no longer his focus; he’d disappeared into the memory of another daughter. “We didn’t know what she’d done. I thought she was being obstinate. It was my fault.”

“No, it wasn’t. You didn’t know,” Miss Helen assured him.

“I told them not to operate, to practice homeopathy, which I had great faith in. But what if I’d let them fix her properly? She might have improved, and those four terrible years of suffering would not have happened. In the end, she couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, she wasted away. She could barely speak or breathe, she was so overcome with pain, her body riddled with sepsis. I gave her my hand to bite.” He held out the hand with the scar Lillian had noticed that night in the art gallery. “You see?”