Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(48)

“Worry you?” She cocked her head.

I swallowed, and leaned back away from her as far as the counter would allow. “I think you’re trying to frighten me, and I don’t like it.”

My direct accusation broke the spell, or cracked it sufficiently that she withdrew, a look of honest horror on her face. She blinked quickly, repeatedly, like someone awakening from an engrossing dream. “Frighten you? Lizbeth . . . whatever are you going on about? I’m doing no such thing.”

I released a breath I hadn’t noticed I was holding, and when I did so, my corset stays stretched against the fabric of my dress. Apparently it was a big breath. Apparently I’d held it hard.

“I’m sorry,” I said, apologizing almost by reflex. “I didn’t mean to imply . . . it’s only that you’ve been so insistent, and I don’t understand. You were so strange the other day, when I found you here and the tea was cold . . .”

It was easy to ramble and sound as if I fretted in earnest, when I stuck so close to the truth.

“It was only cold tea,” she promised, but she kept her distance still. “Nothing more. I was distracted.”

“I called your name, and you didn’t hear me. Over and over I called it . . . and you were standing there, beside that stupid door,” I spit out, directing my sorrow and anger at the cellar and its contents. It was either that or I must point it toward myself.

“It’s only a door,” she breathed, abashed and innocent once more. “And you won’t let me past it, so I wonder, that’s all. I want to see what you don’t want to show me. I want you to trust me.”

“It’s nothing to do with trust,” I assured her, though as I spoke the words I knew they were wrong. It did come down to trust, didn’t it? I couldn’t trust her to visit without snooping for keys, trying to circumvent me.

“Then why?” she pleaded, leaning against the counter and half sitting upon it.

“Can’t I have a single secret? Just one?”

“But why do you need one?”

“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “One small bargain between lovers—people do it all the time; they ask that one thing be off-limits.”

Quickly, as if she’d been waiting for such a moment, she snapped, “And in such a bargain, you wouldn’t choose your parents?”

I was honestly stunned. What little discussion we’d entertained with regard to their deaths, it’d all come down to the easiest lie—they were killed by my half brother, or so I professed to believe. And she professed to believe that I was telling the truth.

Were we both lying? To ourselves, and each other at the same time?

“Is that . . . ,” I began to ask, and then adjusted my approach. “Do I hear doubt in your voice? Or accusation?”

“Given the circumstances, you might as well conflate the two.”

“All right then, I’ll answer your question: No, I would not place my parents’ death off-limits in any bargain between us. We’ve already had that conversation, and whatever else you’d like to hear, I’d be happy to share.” I’d lied that lie enough. It had almost become the truth, or a fiction vastly better than the truth—because my half brother had vanished, and there was no proving anything with regard to his involvement. Or lack thereof.

Wherever he was, whatever he was doing . . . he sure as hell didn’t care what I said about him.

“Then why the cellar?”

“If I told you that, we couldn’t call it part of the bargain, could we? Now what would you like to place off-limits? What subject must I avoid at all costs, that you can withhold explanation until the day we die?”

She frowned. Puzzled, I think. She was thinking, considering, trying to figure out something she hadn’t shared already. For the most part, she was an open book. If she had any secrets at all, she hid them well—behind a wall of information, chattered without apparent restraint, delivered at the slightest hint of permission or interest.

“I’ll think of something,” she decided.

“But you agree to the bargain? Leave me the cellar, and you’ll stop hunting for keys?”

“I’ll leave you the cellar. And stop looking for keys,” she vowed.

I want to believe her. Desperately, painfully, with all my heart. But that’s only what I want, and not what I think.





Nance O’Neil


APRIL 22, 1894

I have the key.

Do I regret my trickery? Not at all. How can I regret the measures I’ve taken to protect and assist my beloved? I know she needs help. Whatever she’s hiding down there, it’s more than she can manage alone. I am confident of this. I am at peace with this. And I will do what needs to be done.

Now that I’ve begun, I must follow through to the end, mustn’t I?

She might see it as a great betrayal. I don’t know. For all her silly talk of “bargains” and promises, there’s no good reason to believe that she doesn’t secretly want me to push onward toward the truth. Some people can’t bear to answer some questions, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want anyone to know the answers. I’m not sure what mechanism this is, or what drive; I don’t know why some people just can’t say what they mean, say what they want, and be done with it.