Page 30 of City of Liars

“I—”

“It’s for us! Everything I do is for our family. You have no idea the sacrifices I’ve made. And you’re willing to throw it all away, just like that. How can you even suggest that this disaster of yours would result in a happy reunion where we all ride off into the sunset? Are you that naïve?”

“I never said—” I tried again, but he interrupted me.

“The hell with being a therapist. I think you need to see one!” There was a crash, then the unmistakable sound of breaking china. “And I know I need a drink. This conversation is over.”

The tears fell harder now. I didn’t trust my voice, and my mother stepped smoothly into the breach. “Look what you’ve done to your father. Look how you’ve hurt your grandmother. Is this what we get, after all we’ve done for you?”

I wanted so badly to contradict her, but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. I’d never openly defied my parents before, not like this. Sure, I’d married Gray, but that could be written off as youthful irresponsibility, nothing that a prenup and a good lawyer couldn’t solve. This was different. It flew in the face of what I thought of as the Carter-Brentwood Commandments: You will not mention upsetting issues. You will respect your elders, regardless of whether you agree with their opinions. Family comes first, and you will protect ours above all else. What if this made my parents decide they were done with me? What if they decided they didn’t want me anymore, and by extension, Chloe?

Surely our bond wasn’t that fragile. But what if it was?

“If you’re not going to answer me,” my mother said after a long, fraught pause, “then your father’s right. This conversation is over. Goodnight, Olivia.”

And then, for the first time in my life, my mother hung up on me.

I stared at my silent cell phone in disbelief. Should I call them back and apologize again? Offer to replace whatever it was my father had broken? Tell them I’d drop the whole thing?

I’d dialed half their number before I thought better of it. Their closed-minded attitude, their suspicion of Theo, their refusal to consider they might be wrong—all of it was exactly why I’d agreed to open Pandora’s Box without telling them in the first place.

I thought of my two-year-old grandmother, cold and scared and alone. Of my biological mother, dead before I ever got to see her face. Of Chloe, and how devastated I would be if I lost her, and someone else tried to claim her as their own.

And then I thought of Theo, saying Please, Olivia, in that raspy voice of his. Of how hurt he’d sounded when he talked about the way he’d grown up. Of his grandmother, convinced she was responsible for the destruction of their family.

It wasn’t a choice. Maybe it never had been.

I knew what I had to do.

16

An Unpleasant Discovery - 1927

The knock sounded on Charles Carter’s door on Tuesday afternoon, twenty-three hours after his daughter had disappeared. His wife was crumpled on the couch, eyes red from crying, the lace-trimmed, monogrammed handkerchief he’d given her for her birthday clutched in one hand and Ella’s well-loved teddy bear in the other. She gave no sign that she’d heard the knock, and as the maid was occupied elsewhere, Charles roused himself to answer it.

Each step toward the door was an effort, like wading through gelatin. Ella’s gray cat, Smoky, twined through his legs, and he half-wished the cat would trip him; a bruised elbow or grazed knee would be a welcome distraction from the pain raging inside him. “Yes?”

“Police,” came the authoritative voice from the other side. “Open up, Mr. Carter.”

Charles’s stomach lurched. As if it belonged to someone else, he watched his hand rise and turn the knob. On the other side stood a uniformed officer, his expression grim.

The next few minutes were an ugly blur in Charles’s memory. When he tried to reconstruct them, they came back in snippets.

Child who matches Ella’s description found outside St. Jerome’s Refuge for Girls, he could remember the officer saying, his eyes downcast. Took her in and called the police, but it was too late for her, poor thing. Frostbite. Need you to come to the morgue and identify the body. So very sorry.

He could remember these words, but not how he’d replied, or what he’d done next. All he could recall was Elizabeth rising from the couch, the handkerchief falling from her hand and her voice soaring in a wounded animal’s howl. No, he remembered her screaming. Can’t be true. Mistake. Take it back. Go go go leave my house.

He remembered his pliant, decorous wife flying at the officer in a whirlwind of skirts, beating the man’s chest with her small fists. Trying to push the officer out the door, as if this would somehow rewind time itself, the words spooling back into his mouth like they’d never been uttered.

Surely he had apologized for Elizabeth’s behavior, most unbefitting a Carter. Surely he had called for the maid to put her to bed, and assured the officer he would do what must be done. But he couldn’t recall any of that. All he remembered as he stood in the freezing morgue, staring down at the small figure shrouded by a white sheet, was the stricken look on his wife’s face as she reached for his sleeve.

Don’t go, Charles, she’d pleaded. The rest of it lingered in the air between them, unspoken but undeniable: As long as you stay here, Ella is still alive.

The police officer, O’Shaughnessy, stood beside him. Across from them both, on the other side of the body, lurked the morgue attendant. He was a ghoulish man who looked like he’d been born to this occupation: dark-ringed, sunken eyes and a Frankenstein-like shamble. As unpleasant as the ghoul might be, Charles didn’t mind. He’d rather look at anything other than the tiny, motionless form beneath the sheet. As long as the body was covered, he could believe it was not his daughter.

O’Shaughnessy was talking, and Charles forced himself to listen. Found the body this mornin’ myself, he was saying in his thick Irish brogue. It reminded Charles all too painfully of the way Bridget, Ella’s useless twit of a nanny, spoke. The state of her—well, it’s no pleasant, but ye need to look.

Charles drew a deep breath, the bleach-scented air searing his lungs. And then he nodded, a jerky, forced motion, as if a puppeteer was yanking his strings from above.