The Death of Mrs. Westaway(71)

“Why?” Hal said aloud, hearing the despair in her own voice, the way the single word echoed in the silent flat. “Why? Why did you do it?” It was a cry for help, but there was no answer, only the imperceptible ticking of the clock, and the crackle as her fingers tightened on the diary in her hand.

The symbolism was painfully obvious—if there is an answer, Hal, it’s in your hands. She could almost hear her mother’s voice, a little mocking. And she felt rage flood her, at having the truth dangled in front of her and then snatched away, just as the legacy had shimmered there like a beautiful mirage for a moment before disappearing into nothingness.

But the answer was not there. If it was, it lay in the torn-out sections. Even in the passages that remained, her mother had blacked out names and paragraphs.

And she had no time. She had to leave tomorrow, before Mr. Smith’s men noticed that the girl they were hunting was back.

Slow down. Her mother’s voice again, softer this time. Think clearly.

Slow down? she wanted to shout. I can’t slow down.

More haste, less speed.

Very well, then. She had to puzzle this out, slowly and logically.

There could not be that many suspects. Who could have been at Trepassen, that long summer? The brothers?

The entry of December 6 was still open on her lap, describing the night her mother assumed she had conceived. Hal read it through again, and again, and this time she stopped at one phrase: Our eyes met—blue and dark.

Hal’s mother had dark eyes, like her own. Which meant that whoever she’d slept with must have been a blue-eyed man.

Ezra had dark eyes—uncompromisingly so.

Abel . . . well, that was more difficult. He was fair, but his eyes . . . Hal shut her own, trying to remember. Grayish? Hazel?

Blue eyes could look gray in the right light, but try as she might, she could not picture Abel’s kind, bearded face with blue eyes, nor could she imagine him in her mother’s arms. He would have said something, surely?

In desperation she pulled the picture from her pocket—the one Abel had given her, taken the very afternoon that her mother had been writing about.

There was Ezra, his dark head thrown back, laughing with an openness so at odds with his present-day cynicism that Hal thought her heart might break a little, his dark eyes just slits of merriment. There beside him was his twin, Maud, her fair hair cascading down her back.

And there, too, was Abel, his dark-blond hair glinting in the sun. She peered closer, trying to make out his face, beneath the faded color and the frayed folds of age, as if she could see through the paper to the past, and the people left behind.

Could it be? Could she be Abel’s child?

In which case . . . she stopped, feeling something cold against the back of her neck, like a chilly hand laid there. If she was Abel’s daughter, the legacy might hold up. Was that why Mrs. Warren had said nothing? Because the legacy did belong to Hal?

The thought should have been a welcome one, but for some reason it made her feel like the bottom of her stomach had fallen away.

Before she folded up the picture to put it away, she looked very deliberately at the fourth person in the frame, at the one whose eyes she had been avoiding—at her mother, her dark eyes uncompromising, staring out at her through the years.

What are you trying to say? Hal thought desperately. She felt her hands close on the old, fragile paper, the flecks of pigment disintegrating beneath her fingertips.

What are you trying to tell me?

It was as if her mother were looking out at her from the past, right at her.

But no.

Not at her.

At . . .

Hal’s fingers were shaking as she put the photograph down, very gently, and began flicking back through the pages of the diary, back, back . . . no, too far . . . forward . . .

And there, at last, there it was.

In the crumbling boathouse Maud untied the rickety flat-bottomed skiff, and we rowed out to the island, the lake water dappled and brown beneath the hull of the boat. Maud tied the boat to a makeshift jetty and we climbed out. It was Maud who went in first—a flash of scarlet against the gold-brown waters as she dived, long and shallow, from the end of the rotting wooden platform.

“Come on, Ed,” she shouted, and he stood up, grinned at me, and then followed her to the water’s edge, and took a running jump.

And then, just a few lines later:

“Take a photo . . .” Maud said lazily, as she stretched, her tanned limbs honey-gold against the faded blue towel. “I want to remember today.”

He gave a groan, but he stood obediently and went to fetch his camera, and set it up. I watched him as he stood behind it, adjusting the focus, fiddling with the lens cap.

“Why so serious?” he said as he looked up, and I realised that I was frowning in concentration, trying to fix his face in my memory.

Hal had imagined only four people in that scene: her mother, Maud, Ezra, and Abel—the four people in the photograph’s frame. But it was not quite the truth. Someone must have been taking the picture. And it was the person her mother was looking at. The same person she had gone down to the beach with later that evening. Her lover. Hal’s father.

Hal stared at the photograph, meeting her mother’s fierce, direct gaze—and for the first time she read the intensity in those eyes as something else. Not suspicion. Not antagonism. But—longing.

Of all the people in the photograph, her mother was the one who stared directly at the photographer, challenging him—whoever he was—with her eyes, locking his gaze.