The story was getting more and more interesting, in Veronica’s opinion. “Is a saint?” she repeated. “Miss Winnie is alive?”
“She is. I visit her every couple of weeks. They take good care of her there, although I still have to remind the staff to look at her while they’re speaking.”
“I don’t think so,” Lillian countered.
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you when I wrote the letter. That Miss Winnie can hear better than she lets on. At least she could back then. She wasn’t partially deaf at all.”
“Of course she was. Why would you say such a thing?”
Lillian took one more look at her husband, who nodded. Whatever she was about to divulge had already been discussed at length between them. “One day, near the end, when things were in an uproar, Miss Winnie came to me with reassurance that all would be all right. She said that the accusations were baseless, and that I wasn’t a scoundrel, no matter what Mr. Childs said. I appreciated her thoughtfulness, of course, but only later I realized she was repeating what had been discussed in the library in front of the private detective, with the doors closed. A room where she wasn’t present.”
“What if someone had mentioned to her what was said?”
“I wondered about that as well. So I did a test. I growled.”
“You did what?”
“When your mother and Miss Winnie weren’t looking at me. I made a strange noise.”
“And I’m sure they thought you insane.”
“They both turned around.”
Miss Helen touched her own throat with a trembling hand. “Both?”
“Both.”
She looked down at the cameo, as if seeing it for the first time. “Well then. Off we go.”
“Where to, Miss Helen?” asked Joshua.
“To speak with Miss Winnie. To find out the truth, for once and for all.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Lillian had always wondered what had become of her former employer. Sometimes there were small items in the newspapers about Helen Frick’s art reference library or the Collection in general, but little else. Her own frenzied three months in the Frick mansion were like a fever dream, hazy and remote. But one summer she and Archer had splurged on a trip to Paris, and the walls of the Louvre had brought back a vivid recollection of painters and paintings. The bucolic serenity of a Constable, the cottony softness of a Fragonard—to think at one time she’d lived among them, passed by them several times a day.
Helen hadn’t lost any of her imperiousness, even after almost five decades. She blasted classical music on the radio during the forty-five-minute drive to the nursing home, making any chitchat among Lillian, Veronica, and Joshua impossible, a fact that Lillian relished as the Lincoln charged down the highway, sliding from lane to lane. Once they’d arrived at the nursing home—a beautifully landscaped Victorian mansion—Miss Helen strode up to the reception desk, banging her flat palm on the counter to call for attention. Some things never changed. But then again, she’d been protected from most perils of life by her piles of money, by her library, by creating a domain where she could rule with little pushback.
Lillian, on the other hand, had experienced the normal trials and tribulations. Her life with Archer hadn’t been easy, but they’d laughed their way through most of it. A surprise, really, considering how little she’d known him before her escape. Not long after her frightening leap from Mr. Frick’s sitting room to the roof of the loggia, Archer’s voice had risen up from the street below. With the help of some crates precariously stacked on top of each other, he’d guided her down to the safety of the sidewalk, and been by her side ever since. First in an uptown hotel, where he’d slept on the floor, then here in Pine Knolls, where he had a cousin who let them find their bearings. During that time, she’d fallen in love with Archer and been able to forge a new life for herself, far away from the Fricks’ calamitous influence. He’d seen her as a whole person, and hadn’t judged her by her past, nor been offended by it.
They’d scraped by with the money he brought in from playing at services and weddings at the local church, the organ a rangy, difficult beast compared to the Fricks’ thoroughbred of an instrument. But he’d never complained, not when he returned from teaching private lessons to children who had little talent or inclination, or directing the church’s shrill choir, top-heavy with sopranos. They’d made a tranquil life together, growing vegetables and fixing up the house, taking long walks in forests that used to be farmland, following obsolete rock walls that no longer fenced in livestock or delineated crops but had survived centuries.
No one here knew who she used to be, and neither would they care, Lillian surmised. Most of the townspeople rarely, if ever, ventured into the big city. Her likeness was only to be found in the mirror, and she’d watched with a removed curiosity as her skin drooped and became dotted with sunspots—how her mother would have cried to see her daughter’s ivory skin darken—and her hair became streaked with gray, growing finer, more likely to tangle. Archer still viewed her as a beauty, that was all that mattered, and when she looked at him, she still envisioned the handsome young gentleman with the shock of thick hair, never mind that it was silver now.
They’d had one daughter, Anna, who lived close by with her husband and her own baby girl. Lillian was eternally grateful that she and Archer had created a happy family with few disagreements. Maybe it was her hands-off approach, so different from Kitty’s overbearing style or Mr. Frick’s incessant meddling, that had done the trick. Or maybe it was simply luck.
So quickly, it seemed, she’d become a mother and then a grandmother, and had found genuine delight in the sound of a toddler’s giggles erupting like bubbles of joy. She’d reconnected with Bertha, and twice a year they met in the city and proudly shared family photos (Bertha had six grandchildren now). Although they rarely spoke of that final night at the mansion, they knew their secrets were safe with each other, that it was a bond that would never be broken.
When Lillian ventured into New York, she did her best to avoid passing any of her statues, as each stone-cold likeness stood as a reminder of how young and innocent she’d been, and how easily forgotten. While the sculptors’ names were etched into history, hers was lost forever.
As Helen harangued the receptionist at the front desk of the nursing home, Lillian studied the two young people in tow. They looked tired and confused, and she still wasn’t sure how they fit in to all this. The girl, Veronica, was an exquisite creature with the oddest haircut, and she kept looking at the man—Joshua was his name—as if she needed something from him.
“Miss Winnie’s in the solarium,” announced Helen. “Follow me.”
At the back of the building, they went through a door to a sunny room filled with ferns and orchids. The intense humidity inside brought back hot summer days when the thick air dripped with moisture. Helen stopped and pointed.
Miss Winnie looked almost exactly the same, stout and wrinkled, even though she had to be in her early nineties by now. Her hair was thinning, the scalp underneath a smooth and shiny pale pink. She was dozing in her wheelchair, her chin dropped forward, her hands clasped atop a plaid blanket.
“Wait.” Lillian stopped Helen with a hand on her arm. “I should go.”
“Why you?”
“The element of surprise. Didn’t you say you visit her regularly?”
“I come once a month.” Helen hesitated only for a moment. “I guess you’re right. We’ll go around to the back, where she can’t see us but we can hear.”
Lillian nodded. “I’ll wait until you’re in position.”
“I’d like to come with you as well, Lillian, if it’s okay?” said Veronica. She shifted from one foot to the other. “Maybe I can help in some way, if you get stuck.” She peered up at her from beneath thick bangs, reminding Lillian of a dog who’d misbehaved. Something was going on between this odd trio who’d shown up on her doorstep this morning, but she couldn’t suss out exactly what it was.