Page 68 of City of Liars

I glanced over at him; he’d edged closer to me but then stopped, as if it had been his instinct to offer comfort. Maybe this should’ve made me feel better, but it didn’t. What did it matter how he felt, if he didn’t have the courage to act on it?

“Well,” Diane said, shifting in her seat, “from what Grandma said, he called her from Grand Central to tell her what he’d done and why. Grandma was horrified, of course. She tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. Said he had a plan, and all she needed to do was wait a couple of days. Then they’d be rolling in money, the little girl would be home safe, and no one would be the wiser. But the next thing she knew, James’s body had washed up on the shore of the Hudson, and Ella Carter’s disappearance was splashed all over the papers.”

“So Grandma Ella was with him at the train station?” My hands shook. Coffee sloshed over my fingers. “And then…what happened to her?”

“I wish I could tell you. But Grandma never knew. It broke her heart, especially after she had daughters of her own.” Diane fumbled for her napkin, blotting tears.

I scrutinized her face for any indication that she was lying, that James had actually given Ella to Maisie for safekeeping and Diane’s family had been hiding that secret all these years. But I’d spent enough time with my clients to know when a person was concealing something, even from themselves. Plus, there was what she’d said earlier, about⁠—

“What were you saying before, about a DNA test?” Theo said, in an eerie echo of my thoughts. I shot him an annoyed glance. He had no business understanding me so well, not when he’d taken what could’ve been between us and thrown it away.

“Oh.” Diane sniffed back tears. When she set the crumpled napkin next to her plate, the tip of her nose was red. “Well, Grandma Maisie didn’t like to talk about what happened to her. But I’d done the math, you know. I could see that my mom’s birthdate didn’t match up with the dates of Grandma’s marriage. So I asked my mom, and, well…it turns out James was right.”

She swallowed hard. “After he died, the Mob came after Maisie, and she didn’t know what to do. So she went to her boss’s son, George, asking if he’d loan her the money to pay off her brother’s debts. And he did, but I’ll give you one guess what he asked for in return.” Her lip curled in disgust. “Nine months later, there was my mom. Of course, the Armstrongs never acknowledged it, but I’ve got the test results to prove it’s the truth.”

I stared at her, dumbfounded. Diane Hayes did indeed come from money, but not because of the Carters. Those dates on the census…they’d been right, after all.

“He raped her?” I said, my voice trembling.

“You could look at it that way. Or you could argue she agreed to it, in order to get the debtors off her back. Either way, there was a serious imbalance of power.” Diane forked the wilted lettuce leaves on her plate around, looking disheartened. “But she named my mother Bella on purpose, so my mom would always know she was wanted. She told my mother it was because my mom was always beautiful to her, no matter how she came to be.”

Realization washed over me. Bella, for beauty—not for the name’s resemblance to Ella.

Maisie MacEwan hadn’t colluded to hide a crime. She was an innocent teenage girl who’d traded in the only currency she had in order to pay off her brother’s debts.

Theo set his coffee cup down on the table with a thud. “So the Mob killed James, then?”

“Grandma Maisie never knew.” Diane gave a one-shouldered shrug. “But who else, unless he just ran afoul of some thugs?”

Who else, indeed, I thought, wondering if Theo was right. If my grandfather had, indeed, been a murderer. It seemed unlikely, but… “And Ella?”

“We always wondered what happened to her, too,” Diane said. “She could’ve run off when James was killed, I suppose, if he was murdered at the train station—though you’d think such a thing would draw a lot of attention. Or she could’ve snuck onto a train and wound up out west, like so many orphaned and abandoned kids did back then. Or,” she said, warming to the possibilities, “she could’ve gotten picked up by a good Samaritan and taken to an orphanage, where that couple found her.”

“You seem to have given this a lot of thought,” Theo said, arching a brow.

She gave him a shy smile. “My mom and I used to talk about it sometimes. Skeletons in the family closet, and all that. She died last year, and Grandma’s gone, too. Now it’s just me and my brother and sister, and a mystery.”

There was a third possibility, I realized, even as I told Diane that I was sorry for her loss. What if the child who’d been adopted from Divine Grace wasn’t Ella or Lily, but a third little girl altogether? What if Lily was, indeed, the girl who’d died of frostbite, and the real Ella was somewhere out west, the way Diane had speculated, with no idea that a family back home had been searching for her for nearly a century?

“I used to wonder if the mob could have taken Ella after they killed James,” Diane said, setting her napkin beside her plate. “But I don’t think so. Her picture was all over the papers. If they had her, they would’ve tried to ransom her back to the Carters. She was so little, there was no way she would’ve been able to testify against them.”

“True,” Theo said. “Maybe the mob didn’t kill him, after all, then. Because if Ella was with James, they would’ve seen her. And how far could she have gotten on her own?”

“Who else could have done it?” Her brows knitted in confusion.

Theo’s mouth opened, but I shot him a warning look. “Theo’s got this crazy theory,” I said, cutting him off at the pass before he could insinuate that my great-grandfather was a murderer. That should’ve been a red flag that our relationship was doomed, and I’d waltzed right past it. “But there’s no proof”—unless you counted my dream, which I wasn’t ready to do—“so that’s all it is…a theory.”

Diane’s eyes darted to Theo, as if waiting for him to elaborate, but he shrugged and sat back, taking a sip of his coffee. I sipped my own, trying to figure out how all of this was connected: James, Mystery Girl, the girl who’d died of frostbite, our bizarre dreams, Susi’s photos, the woman at Atomic, Bye Bye Blackbird.

Thinking about it hurt my brain, and I had to pack for my flight. I paid the bill, thanked Diane for her time, and paid Theo a curt goodbye. He rose from his chair, as if to walk me out, but I shook my head. What had happened between us, the things he’d said, were still too raw. Every moment I spent with him, looking at his unfairly gorgeous face, made me want to either kiss him or smack him, and I was pretty sure I’d regret either one…although the jury was still out on the latter. It was best to get the heck away from him, before I humiliated myself again.

Making my way out to the sidewalk, my heart leaden, I knew one thing for sure.

A man had died under questionable circumstances, a child was still missing, and a teenage girl had been abused.

And at the center of all of it were the Carters.

Maybe Charles had murdered James, or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe the real Ella was dead or lost or safe at home in Wilmington. Either way, this search had become more personal than ever. I wasn’t going to give up until I had answers.