Page 74 of City of Liars

“You have, have you? What else have you done for them?” Her voice crept upward, becoming what Doctor Davies would surely term hysterical.

“Lizzie—”

“Don’t you Lizzie me!” She stamped her foot. “I’m your wife, Charles, not one of your underlings. And though you may earn our money, when you chose to marry me, we agreed what was yours, was ours—just as I’ve shared my inheritance with you. So you tell me now. Have you been going behind my back to spend our funds on those greedy liars, the ones who want nothing more than to take our only daughter from us?”

Charles set his shoulders, as if preparing to stride into battle. “I’ve given them coats, Elizabeth. Nothing more.”

She snorted, scorn seeping into her voice like blood through an ill-bandaged wound. “You expect me to believe that? I saw that woman today! She wore a threadbare jacket and no hat. If you must lie to me, surely you can be more creative than to come up with something I can contradict with the evidence of my own eyes.”

“I’m telling you the truth. She wouldn’t wear the coat I sent. Her daughter Susi, the one who was with her today, said she thought it was a bribe, the ill-gotten gains of blood money.”

Elizabeth let out an indignant squeak. “So you’re on a first-name basis with her daughter now, are you? Next thing, you’ll be telling me you take Shabbat dinner with them at their table.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The guilt was gone; now his voice was cold.

“Ridiculous?” She snatched her hairbrush from her dresser and hurled it across the room. It struck the mahogany armoire and bounced off, leaving a scratch behind. Under normal circumstances, this would have horrified Elizabeth; but these circumstances were anything but normal. “First you lie to me, and now you condescend to me. When we married, you promised to honor and respect me, Charles Carter. Clearly you have no hesitancy about breaking your vows.”

That hit home, as she’d known it would. Charles’s honor was paramount to him; he prided himself on being a man of his word. He’d bent over to inspect the damage to the armoire, but at her words, he straightened and glared at her. “You’re one to talk, Elizabeth.”

Her voice came frigid and haughty, every bit the regal debutante she’d been raised to be. “And what precisely do you mean by that?”

“You know what I mean.” He advanced on her, one step at a time, until he loomed over her. Charles was such a soft-spoken man most of the time, it was easy to forget how large he was. He had at least ten inches on Elizabeth, but she stood straight, refusing to drop her eyes.

Fury clouded Elizabeth’s vision. She stepped closer to him still, so they were toe to toe. “What do you expect from her? She’s been traumatized! She was tiny when she was taken!”

Charles heaved a sigh. “I know that.”

“Besides, there are things she remembers. Playing the piano, singing together. She remembers me reading to her; she’s said so. And her stuffed animals are precious to her, like they were before. Her sweet, curious demeanor...that’s just the same.” Elizabeth’s eyebrows lowered, drawing so close together, her head began to ache. “Does she remember that woman, is that it? Is that what you’re insinuating...that we should give up our daughter because a—a vagrant suggests she looks familiar, and you’ve somehow talked Ella into agreeing?”

“I haven’t talked Ella into anything. And no, she hasn’t given any indication that she recalls May, or Susi either.” His nostrils flared, the way they always did when he was on the verge of losing his temper. “But I’ll tell you one thing. May’s torment is unfeigned. If there’s one thing I know after all this time, it’s the look and sound of a woman who’s mourning a lost child.”

His eyes bored into her as that arrow struck home, as he’d meant it to do. That was the thing about being married; you knew each other’s weak spots. The fact that she and Charles had resorted to leveraging his honor and her desperate grief against each other portended nothing good. Elizabeth knew this; knew, too, that she ought to have more sympathy for May Dressler, even though the woman was delusional. But she couldn’t bring herself to. The urge to protect Ella was too strong, a lioness determined to stop at nothing to save her cub.

“How dare you,” she hissed instead. “To say such a thing to me, of all people!”

He stepped back from her, his hands curled into fists, and turned half-away, hunching his shoulders. “I would think you, of all people, would understand what she’s going through. What if Ella is her child, Elizabeth? Then, what atrocity will we have committed? What will we have done?” He flinched, as if she’d struck him. “If we’ve stolen another woman’s little girl, surely we’ll burn in hell for such a thing.”

Unlike Elizabeth, Charles had been raised to respect the dictates of the Church in a way that went beyond the secular, for the sake of appearances and societal connections. He was a true believer; but at this point in her life, there was little Elizabeth had faith in other than herself.

“Number one,” she said, raising a single finger, “Ella isn’t her child. She’s ours.” A second finger joined the first. “Beyond that, we didn’t steal her. That couple in Chicago called us, Charles. They saw the resemblance, just as we do. You saw that woman, Esther. She didn’t want to give Ella up. She was devastated. Do you think she would’ve relinquished Ella to our care, if she weren’t absolutely sure?”

He turned back to face her. The blue-gray shadows that rimmed the hollows beneath his eyes, as if he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in weeks, sent a pang through her heart.

“Small children often look alike,” he whispered, as painfully as if it were a confession. “It’s not as if the Dresslers could afford to put ads in the paper, as we did. When Esther and Daniel reached out to the police, they didn’t know Lily existed. It proves nothing, save that they were determined to do what they saw as the right thing.”

At his last words, Elizabeth gave a bitter laugh. “Let us say, for argument’s sake, not that I believe it for a minute, that the little angel in the other room is indeed Lily Dressler, Charles. What then?”

His eyes sprang wide. “What do you mean? We’d restore her to her rightful family, of course. What other choice is there?”

He was so naïve sometimes. It was part of what had made her fall in love with him: beneath the façade of the cutthroat tycoon beat the heart of a compassionate man who would do anything for his friends...or for her. Charles always thought the best of everyone. It was a blessing and a dreadful annoyance, all at once.

“Charles,” she said, as slowly as if she were explaining the situation to a child, “what kind of life can she have with those people? Living in poverty, never enough to eat, threadbare clothes, little access to education...is that what you want for her? You’re right; I’ve seen what the tenements are like. The conditions are—” She shook her head, the words catching in her throat. “The children live hardly better than animals,” she said at last. “Even if our little girl were descended from such ilk—which she’s not, I promise you—we can offer her so much better. We can give her a beautiful life, Charles. She will want for nothing.”

He stared at her, mouth agape beneath his drooping mustache, as if gobsmacked. For an uncharitable moment, it occurred to her that he resembled a fish that had been dotted on the head with a mallet; she’d seen the dockworkers do such things, when her father had taken them on family outings to the shore.

“Lizzie,” he said, and to her horror, he was trembling. “What’s happened to you? You never were a cold woman, before. I know how you’ve grieved these past years. I’ve been grieving with you. But sweetheart...you can’t mean that. Whatever material things we can give Ella—if we knew for certain that May Dressler was her mother, surely there would be no question that we’d restore her to her family, no matter how it hurt us.”

Agony bolted through Elizabeth’s body at the thought of losing the little girl she thought of as her own. Who was her own, no matter what doubt May Dressler or Charles might try to instill. Ella was her daughter. She had to be. Those blond curls…Elizabeth remembered how, when Ella was a baby, she’d pin a small pink bow in them each morning. Her big brown eyes were as full of light and promise as they’d always been, eager to take in the world around them.