Chapter 2 - THE FILE HIS MOTHER TRIED TO BURY
Adrian’s mother had been dead for three years.
And apparently she had been controlling my career long before Vanessa ever touched a pair of scissors.
I stared at Helen.
“What do you mean?”
Helen looked terrified.
“Mrs. Cole gave me a written instruction.”
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
Adrian held out his hand.
“Where is it?”
Helen hesitated.
“I kept it.”
“Bring it.”
She returned twenty minutes later with a sealed envelope.
Adrian opened it.
The handwriting was elegant.
I recognized it from old Christmas cards.
Eleanor Cole.
Adrian’s mother.
The note was brief.
Nora Bennett is not to be transferred to executive offices, family records, accounts, or archives. Keep her employed. Keep her comfortable. Keep her away from anything connected to Maine.
My blood went cold.
“Maine?”
Adrian looked at me.
“You grew up there.”
“Yes.”
Vanessa stood near the fireplace now.
She had forced her way into the room.
“This is absurd.”
Adrian ignored her.
“What did my mother know about you?”
“Nothing.”
“Think.”
I did.
My grandmother.
Our little house outside Bar Harbor.
Her old photographs.
The way she never liked talking about my parents.
My mother died when I was six.
My father vanished before that.
My grandmother raised me alone.
“She might have known my grandmother.”
“What was her name?”
“Rose Bennett.”
Adrian went still.
Not much.
But I noticed.
“You know that name.”
“No.”
“You reacted.”
His eyes met mine.
“I’ve heard it.”
“Where?”
Vanessa interrupted.
“Can we please discuss something that matters?”
Adrian looked at her.
“My employee was deliberately kept away from family records under instructions from my dead mother. That matters.”
Vanessa’s face hardened.
“She is not your responsibility.”
“She became my responsibility the day she entered this house.”
Something inside my chest tightened.
I hated that it did.
Adrian turned to Helen.
“Did my mother say why?”
“No.”
“Did she ever meet Nora?”
Helen looked at me.
“Once.”
I frowned.
“When?”
“Your first month here.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You were serving lunch in the garden. Mrs. Cole saw you carrying tea.”
Helen swallowed.
“She dropped her glass.”
Adrian’s expression changed.
“What did she say?”
Helen closed her eyes.
“She said, ‘Rose’s girl.’”
I stopped breathing.
My grandmother had never mentioned the Coles.
Not once.
Adrian crossed to an old cabinet.
He unlocked it.
Inside were family ledgers, photographs, letters.
He pulled out a leather-bound album.
Page after page of old society photographs.
New York.
Boston.
Maine.
Then he stopped.
A summer estate overlooking the ocean.
A young Eleanor Cole stood beside another woman.
The second woman had dark hair braided down her back.
My grandmother.
Rose.
I touched the photograph.
She looked twenty-five.
Happy.
Nothing like the tired woman who raised me.
On the back were three names.
Eleanor.
Rose.
Thomas.
Adrian frowned.
“Thomas who?”
Vanessa went pale.
I saw it.
So did Adrian.
“You know.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“You do.”
“I don’t.”
Adrian moved toward her.
“Vanessa.”
She snapped.
“Fine.”
Everyone stared.
Her voice dropped.
“Thomas was your father.”
The room went silent.
Adrian looked at the photograph again.
His father, Thomas Cole, had died when Adrian was seventeen.
I looked at my grandmother beside him.
“What does this mean?”
Vanessa smiled without humor.
“It means your precious grandmother wasn’t just some housekeeper from Maine.”
I turned.
“How do you know?”
She looked at Adrian.
Then at me.
And delivered the secret she had clearly been waiting to use.
“Because Rose Bennett had a child with Thomas Cole.”
May you like
My heart stopped.
“And that child was your mother.”
Related Stories
