3 From the Ashes (11 page)

“Mom…” Sarah hesitated when she called Angelica that, like the word was strange to her or hurt to say. “Just tell me why, please? You’ve let me and dad think you were dead all these years. Why?”

A sad smile crossed Angelica’s lips. “There are too many questions in there to know where to begin.”

“How about you start at the beginning,” Grace said, her notebook out and a pen ready in her hand. Darcy knew the camera in the corner would be recording everything, too, but her sister had always been this thorough.

“The beginning?” Angelica repeated. “The beginning of the story was wonderful. When I first married Louis, he had just inherited the business and the family fortune. We were so in love in those days. Everything was perfect. We tried for a few years for a baby. I wanted a family so badly. Then I got pregnant with you, Sarah. I was so happy.”

Darcy watched Sarah’s face. She was lost in her mother’s story, the untold story of her life that not even her father had told her.

“Louis was rich back then,” Angelica continued. “I can’t say that I married him for the money but it certainly didn’t hurt.”

Darcy nodded. “His family inherited money from the land sales they made.”

Angelica looked surprised. “That’s right, actually. When this area was first settled back in the 1700s, it was Louis’ ancestors who got the land grant. They kept the area in the family until his great-great-grandfather started selling off pieces at a time. The money from it had amounted to a small fortune.”

She took a sip of water from the glass in front of her. Grace scratched some notes down and waited for Angelica to continue. “Then something happened that I really hadn’t planned on. Louis and I fell out of love. Oh, it was just small things at first and I figured, hey, everyone goes through this. We’ll get out of it. Only, we didn’t.”

Sarah made a small strangling sound and shifted in her seat. Angelica looked at her then with sympathy. “Oh, honey. I really didn’t want you to hear about all of this. Ever. I was young, and stupid, and there’s no real way to explain it other than to say it happened.”

“What happened?” Grace asked, pen hovering over paper.

Angelica’s eyes took on a faraway look. “I fell in love. Again. His name was Milton Strader. He swept me off my feet and made me feel like I was sixteen again. We fell so hard and so fast that we…well, we decided to do something stupid.”

“No. Oh, no,” Sarah whispered.

“Did Louis know about the affair?” Grace asked her.

Angelica hesitated, and then she nodded. “Yes. He found us one day, a few weeks before the fire at the manor house. He was so mad. I’d never seen him that mad. He rushed Milton and kept punching him and Milton did the only thing he could.” She took a deep breath, the memory obviously painful. “He defended himself. He hit Louis with a baseball bat. Ended up fracturing poor Louis’ arm.”

There was silence as everyone in the room soaked that in. Then Grace prompted, “Then what happened, Angelica?”

“Well. Louis ran. He just ran to his car and drove away. He was so mad or so in pain or something that he drove the car into a ditch and broke his leg, too. He was so embarrassed by the whole thing and by what I had done that he just told everyone his injuries all came from the accident. It was just easier. I never told anyone the truth.”

Sarah had been wringing her hands over and over. Now she clenched her jaw together as her face reddened.

“I knew,” Angelica said slowly, “that I couldn’t stay with Louis after that. But I couldn’t leave him, either. He wouldn’t give me a divorce. What’s more, without him I had no money. No way to support myself. Milton was the love of my life but he had nothing, either. So together we devised that stupid idea.”

“You stole from Louis,” Darcy guessed. “Then you planned out a way to disappear.”

“I didn’t steal everything he had. Just what I figured was mine. Just half.”

“It was marital property,” Grace pointed out in a matter-of-fact tone. “You didn’t steal it. It was as much yours as his.”

She looked at Grace like a ton of bricks had just fallen on her. “I…didn’t know that. I swear, I didn’t. I thought I would be kicked out into the cold with nothing.”

“My great aunt Millie was a friend of yours back then,” Darcy said. Grace raised an eyebrow to that but didn’t interrupt her sister. “I found her journal a little while ago. The last thing she ever wrote in it was that she wanted to help you fix a mistake you had made. I take it she knew about you taking the money? About you wanting to leave?”

Angelica nodded enthusiastically. “Good old Millie. She tried to talk me out of it. She said I should stick it out for your sake, Sarah. I should have listened. I should have listened. I was young, though, and in love, and I thought I knew best.” She glanced at her daughter and then quickly looked away again. “Not that any of that is a good excuse.”

“No,” Sarah said in a clipped voice. “It’s not.”

“Tell us about the manor fire, Angelica,” Grace said to get the interview back on track again.

“I set it, of course.” She said it so matter-of-factly that Darcy wasn’t sure she’d heard it correctly at first. She looked at each of the women in turn, reading their shocked expressions correctly. “It was the only way I saw out of the situation. I was going to disappear with Milton. It was a Monday evening, I remember, and I had the whole house to myself. I picked up Milton, we went there together, and I packed only the things that meant the most to me. While I did that, Milton messed with the electrical box and then stuffed it full of old rags. A few sparks later, the place was on fire.”

“But I was in there!” Sarah shouted, standing up from the table, her hands fisted at her sides as she yelled out her frustrations. “Dad was in there! You nearly killed us both!”

Tears started in Angelica’s eyes again. “I’m sorry. Oh, honey I’m so sorry. You weren’t supposed to be home. When I left, Louis said he was going to take you to his mother’s for the night to visit. I couldn’t have known he didn’t go. We were sleeping in separate bedrooms at that point and you were in his room. For all I know he heard me in the house and just didn’t say anything because we were fighting all the time. If I had known, oh Sarah if I’d only known, I never would have put you in danger.”

“Really?” her daughter quipped. “You didn’t have any trouble abandoning me.”

Angelica wiped at her tears, smearing makeup as she did. “That’s where you’re wrong. I never stopped thinking about you. I never stopped regretting leaving you. I walked away from your father, not you. I just didn’t see how I could take you with me. With the money I had stolen,” she glanced at Grace as she said that, “Milton and I set up new lives. New identities, new names. I even had some plastic surgery done. But I kept coming back. I couldn’t help it. I kept coming back to the house to check up on you.”

The break-ins, Darcy realized. The break-ins had been Angelica coming back to check on her daughter. That was why there was never anything reported stolen. If Angelca had taken a photograph or two from Louis’ house, he would never report it. She probably could have robbed him blind, and he wouldn’t have reported it, for that matter. He just told Sarah that he had to keep her from knowing. Which meant…

“Louis knew you were still alive, didn’t he?” Darcy asked. Grace smiled quickly at her sister, pleased with that bit of deductive reasoning.

Sarah held her breath until her mother answered. “I think so. Well. I know so, even if I can’t prove it. He saw me in the window of the manor house the night of the fire. I made sure of it. It was supposed to be part of the act so everyone would think that I perished in the flames.”

She looked again at her daughter, who turned away in disgust. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I’m so, so sorry.”

Sarah tried to answer but her voice was too choked up. Shaking her head, she rushed from the room.

Chapter Seventeen

Jon arrived at the station a few minutes later. The interview was over and Grace was already typing up the reports. Darcy sat with Jon to fill him in.

“When I first saw the photograph that Sarah showed me of her mom I thought there was something familiar about her. Something about her eyes. It turns out I was remembering what Henrietta’s eyes looked like.”

“You mean Angelica, right?” Jon clarified.

“Right. I know, it’s hard to believe. She paid for facial reconstruction, dyed her hair white, walked with a cane. She did everything she could to keep people from recognizing her, all so she could be in town once a year to catch a glimpse of her daughter.”

“Hard to hate her when she did all that, I guess.”

“Well. Sarah isn’t about to forgive her anytime soon. She’s been here in town with her daughter for years, keeping away from everyone. Sarah never went up to Henrietta’s stand before so there was no way she could have known her mom was right there. That’s a lot of hurt to get past. She thought her mother was dead all these years.”

“Don’t forget,” Jon said. “Her father’s been lying to her all this time, too. So now she has reason to hate them both. She’s going to need a good friend to help her through this.”

He looked at her in that way he had and Darcy knew what he meant. “I plan on checking up on her tomorrow. And Sue and Linda said they’d do the same. Between the three of us, she’ll always have someone to talk to.”

His hand found hers across his desk. “You’re a good person, Darcy Sweet. Very few people I know would put this much effort into helping someone out that they hardly knew.”

Darcy shrugged, a little embarrassed by his compliment.  “So is Angelica in a lot of trouble?”

“Yes. She may have thought she had reasons for what she did, but she still broke the law and put a lot of people in danger, including her own daughter. That boyfriend of hers, too, that Milton guy.”

“Right. Too bad he died.”

Angelica had further explained that after being together with Milton for nearly eight years, he had died of an undiagnosed heart condition. That had left her all alone and it was right around that time when she started showing up in town as Henrietta, kindly old woman. She had missed her family so much but that was the only way she could think of to see them again. That, and breaking into Louis’ house.

It had been Milton that Sarah saw the night of the fire in the window with her mother. Just four years old, she couldn’t describe him or even explain fully what she had seen. It had been Milton who the ghost of Officer Grant Peterson had told her about seeing as he tried to save Angelica from the fire, not realizing that she didn’t need saving.

All of it fit together nicely, now that they had Angelica’s confession. She had even shed a little more light on the checks that Sarah had gotten all of her life. That was money from a trust fund account Angelica had set up for her daughter with part of the money she had taken with her when she’d disappeared. It matured at different rates based on the stock market, and that was why the amount was always different. It really had eaten at her, leaving her daughter behind. So she gave what she could to make sure her daughter would never want for anything.

Angelica just hadn’t realized her daughter only really wanted one thing. She had only wanted her mother back.

“Now that she has her mom in her life again,” Jon said, coming around the desk to Darcy, “maybe the two of them can find some way to reconcile.”

She stood up with him and folded herself into his arms. “Maybe. I hope so, anyway.”

“Let me talk to Grace for a minute and then I’ll drive you home,” he told her. “No sense both of us being up until dawn.”

Darcy looked at him, waiting.

“What?” he finally asked her.

“I’m waiting for you to say something about how it would be easier if you moved in with me and then you wouldn’t have to go home to your lonely apartment when you get done.”

He laughed and took her hand in his. “I could still do it if you want me to. Seriously, though, I think I’ve said enough on that subject for now. You know what feels right for you. I’ll go along with whatever you decide. As long as I have you.”

Darcy leaned her head against his shoulder. She loved this man so much. “You’ll always have me, Jon.”

He pulled her into a deep kiss, and didn’t let her go until the room spun around her. “I love you, Sweet Baby.”

“I love you, too.”

Chapter Eighteen

Later that week Darcy was at Grace and Aaron’s saying goodbye to their mother. Darcy knew there was something her mother was still not telling her. She was determined to find out what was going on before she left.

“Okay Mom, what gives?” Darcy crossed her arms and held her mother’s gaze. “All visit long you’ve been acting strange.”

“She’s right, Mom,” Grace said in agreement. “We know something is up. Might as well tell us. You can’t hide it from a couple of ace detectives like me and Darcy.”

“Mmm…” Eileen looked thoughtfully at Darcy and then at Grace. Finally she sighed loudly and threw her hands in the air. “Okay. You’re right. There is something going on. I just didn’t know how to tell you girls.”

“You’re not sick are you?” Grace asked. “I remember you had that scare at your last checkup.”

Eileen shook her head. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s a good thing, actually.” She paused and looked intently at the two of them again with a wide smile. “I’m getting married again.”

“Married!” Darcy and Grace exclaimed together.

Eileen laughed then. “Yes, married. You make it sound like it would never happen for me again. You have your wonderful Aaron, Grace. Darcy, your Jon seems like a wonderful man. Is there some reason that I shouldn’t be happy, too?”

“We didn’t mean it that way, Mom,” Darcy said to her while Grace asked who the person was and if it was anyone they knew and when could they meet him and so on until Eileen finally held a hand up to ask her to wait.

“He is a perfectly nice man. His name is James Bollinger. You’ve never met him. He’s a retired businessman. What else do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Darcy told her. “You wait until you’re leaving to drop this on us?”