Delusion in Death (In Death #35)(89)

“When did you tell him? When did you tell Lewis?”

“Russ—”

“If he did something, Audrey, it’s our responsibility to say. He’s our son, and we’re the ones who have to say.”

“He couldn’t do something like this.”

“Then you can help clear it up, put him off the list,” Eve prompted. “What did he find? What did you tell him?”

“There were things—journals and essays and mementos, pictures. I’m not sure. I never really went through all of it. My mother boxed everything up. They talked about destroying it all, Dad said, but it didn’t seem right. So they kept it all boxed up, put away, and my father told me about what had happened before he died.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Russ, I can’t.”

He only nodded. “I tended to Audrey’s father while he was dying, and I guess he could see I cared for Audrey. And she cared for me. So he told me everything, or everything he knew. Tessa’s half-sister was wild. She married a good man, but she betrayed him, and ran away to join Menzini’s cult. They used God’s word, twisted and defiled it to prey on the weak. She lay with him, and had his child. She was one of them. But she came to realize she’d taken an evil path, came back to her husband with the child. She begged for forgiveness from him, from her family.”

“And William took her back,” Eve prompted. “Took you as his own.”

“He was a good man,” Audrey said. “And he forgave her. They were going to take me away from her, and she ran away with me, went home.”

“But this Menzini found them,” Russell continued. “He killed them, took the child. William Hubbard was a soldier. He and his wife searched for the child, and finally found her. Menzini had vanished, but they feared for the child. They left their home, their friends and family, and came here to America. They changed her name, and raised her as theirs.”

“They loved me. They were good, and gave me a good life. I’m their daughter. Theirs.”

“Mrs. Callaway, I don’t believe in the sins of the father. I believe we make our choices, make ourselves. I believe Edward and Tessa Hubbard did the very best they could for you, and loved you, and that you were their daughter.”

“I was. I am.”

“Lewis found the boxes?”

“He came home. He was restless, and upset. Something at work. Someone stole one of his ideas.”

“Audrey.” Russell sighed.

“They didn’t appreciate him or respect him enough,” she insisted, with an edge of desperation in her voice. “That’s what he said. I don’t know why he went up in the attic. We were working outside. He found some things, and started to ask questions. We talked it over, and decided we should tell him. We should tell him what had happened all that time ago, and we should destroy everything. It isn’t who we are.”

“But he didn’t want you to destroy it.”

“He said it was his legacy, his right. That he should know his family tree, the truth of it. He seemed—not happy, but satisfied. He seemed calmer. As if, I thought, he’d always known something was different, and now that he knew the truth, it contented him.”

“He came back for more.”

“I had things of my mother’s. My mother,” she said, laying a hand on her heart. “And some things she’d kept from when she and her half-sister were young. Some I have in the house. My mother’s dishes, and some of her jewelry. Not heirlooms, really,” she said as her hand covered the little cross again, “but they matter. He was sure there was more, on Gina MacMillon, my mother’s half-sister, on Menzini. He searched the attic, the basement, the outbuildings. He came back again, again, looking, asking the same questions.”

“You don’t know what was in the boxes? You never went through them.”

“Not really. I looked, after my father died. I read some of Gina’s journal entries, but they were upsetting—written when she’d run off with the cult—so I stopped. She died for me, so I couldn’t throw her things away, but I didn’t want to read what she’d written when she’d lost her faith.”

“But he wanted to. Lewis wanted to read the journals.”

“He said it was important to know. And he …”

“What?”

“Don’t be angry,” she said to her husband. “Please.”

“Did he hurt you?” Russell’s fist balled on the table.

“No. No, he didn’t.”

“Has he hurt you before?” Teasdale asked.

“It was a long time ago. He lost his temper.”

“He wanted shoes, some fancy shoes we couldn’t afford. His mother caught him stealing money from her household bank. When she tried to stop him, he struck her. He struck her with his fist. He was sixteen, and though she tried to make excuses for him, I could see what he’d done. He came home with those damned shoes, and for the first time in his life, I laid hands on him. I struck him, my son, as he had struck his mother. I burned the shoes. He apologized, he made amends, and for a while …”

“It seemed better,” Teasdale prompted.

“But it wasn’t, not underneath it all. We knew,” he said to his wife, and laid a hand over hers again. “We knew.”