Thorns of Truth (39 page)

When it was time to go, Rachel felt almost grateful for the soft wet mud that sucked at her shoes as they made their way slowly back to the car, reminding her that she was still alive, still firmly grounded on this earth.

Back home, at her mother’s, the family gathered in the library, while the friends and relatives assembled upstairs—among them Mama’s Filipina housekeeper, Milagros, who, for once, was a guest in the home she’d cared for so faithfully.

Peter Harbinson, scarecrow-thin, with his stiltlike limbs and narrow face, sat in the leather-upholstered swivel chair that had once supported the more substantial girth of Rachel’s father—or, at least, the man she’d
believed
was her father. In his dark-brown suit, Harbinson reminded Rachel of a long Dunhill cigar, like the ones in the embossed-leather humidor that still occupied a corner of the massive Edwardian partners desk.

He cleared his throat and looked around him. Rachel was only vaguely aware of the others in the room—Brian and Iris, Rose and her sons, and Nikos, of course. But Harbinson’s lugubrious gaze seemed to take them all in at once.

“First, I’d like you all to know how sorry I am for your loss,” he began in his reedy voice. “Two years ago, when my wife was diagnosed with leukemia, it was Sylvie who found us the best oncologist in the city, and who visited Margaret in the hospital nearly every day. I echo my wife’s sentiments in saying that Sylvie was that rare and special friend—the kind who is there for you in times of need. Her generosity will long be remembered. Which is what brings us here today.” He cleared his throat again, glancing down at the thick document in front of him. “As you know, she … ahem … was a woman of some means. I think it’s fair to say that everyone in this room has been amply provided for.…”

Adjusting the half-glasses on the end of his long, skinny nose, he began to read from Sylvie’s last will and testament. Rachel sat stiffly upright in her chair, trying hard not to succumb to the tug of familial gravity exercised by Papa’s favorite room. The dark, polished shelving lined with books, and bound librettos of the operas he had so loved. The framed hunting prints matted in dark green. The collection of antique letter-openers on the small table next to the leather sofa. It even smelled of him, like pipe tobacco and old sweaters.

But the man she’d called Papa—who had carried her up the stairs to bed every night until she grew too heavy for him to lift—had been
no one’s
father.…

Lies. All of it lies …

When Rachel heard Harbinson list all her mother’s assets, which included a sizable bank account, an investment portfolio worth close to six million, and several limited partnerships in office buildings, she wasn’t surprised. Even when she learned that it had been bequeathed to her—with the exception of the trusts set aside for her grandchildren—it left barely a scratch on the glassy surface of her detachment. Only when Harbinson got to the disposition of the house itself did Rachel come suddenly, sharply to attention.

“ ‘… I give, devise, and bequeath title to the property located on Riverside Drive to Rose Santini Griffin, with the understanding that my longtime companion, Nikos Alexandras, shall have full use and occupancy thereof for the remainder of his lifetime.…’ ”

Rose? This house? Rachel felt like a sleepwalker slapped awake. She swiveled around to face Rose, who looked equally shocked. Her olive complexion pale as old, bleached clay. Rose sat gripping the arms of her spool-backed chair, shaking her head slowly as if to deny what she was hearing.

Mama gave her this house, and she doesn’t even want it.

The enormity of the betrayal sluiced down over Rachel. She felt as if she were tumbling over and over, with nothing to grab hold of.
Brian … please
…
help me.
But Brian, though seated next to her, seemed to be a distant figure on some far-off shore. He wasn’t reaching out to her; he merely watched with a somewhat bewildered expression as she sat gasping for air, her mouth opening and closing.

It was Iris who broke the stunned silence. Iris, who had barely uttered two words the entire afternoon. Now, suddenly, like a flame from a seemingly dead ember, she was shooting up from the ottoman at Drew’s feet. Crying, “No! You can’t! I don’t
care
what you were to Grandma. This house doesn’t belong to you!”

Watching her daughter fly across the room, Rachel found the strength to rise up, to beat at this numbness that had settled over her like a bell jar. She started toward Iris—sluggishly, for her limbs were stiff with disuse—but it was too late. Iris was out the door, the rapid tapping of her high heels against the tiled hallway like an urgent message being telegraphed. A message Rachel desperately wished she could decipher, before it was too late.

“How are the boys doing?” asked Rachel.

“Not too badly … considering.” Rose shrugged.

They stood side by side on the flagstone patio, near the steps leading down into the garden, two women—one tall and dark, the other slight and fair—their elongated shadows like the hands of a mammoth clock that had wound down. The afternoon sun was low in the sky, its storybook light striking the far brick wall and cutting a glorious swath of green through the dark tumble of ivy, where a rogue purple blossom from a late-blooming climber clung in stubborn defiance.

It had been more than two weeks since the funeral. But for Rose, every day was like the day before: a bizarre, through-the-looking-glass world where nothing was quite what it seemed. Strangers to whom she was now officially related, calling or dropping by to offer condolences that were merely an excuse to pry. Mandy, at work, eyeing her strangely, as if wondering what had given Rose the right to comment on
her
life while harboring such a huge secret of her own. Nikos, at her dinner table, attempting to explain to Drew and Jay, both of them confused and more than a little hurt, why it had taken so long for them to learn the truth about their grandparents.

This house, too. Rose couldn’t get used to it being hers. It made no sense! Sylvie’s bequest would accomplish nothing, except to alienate her further from Rachel. Look at the trouble it had caused so far—like that awful scene with Iris during the reading of the will. Rose, who’d been just as stunned, had felt personally responsible somehow, as if she were robbing Rachel and her daughter of their legacy. Which was why—last week, when Rachel suggested they meet today to go through the papers in Sylvie’s office—Rose had welcomed the chance to be alone with her, to confront the five-hundred-pound gorilla neither of them could bring herself to mention.

Yet now here they were, hours of clearing and organizing behind them, no more at ease with each other than at the outset.

In the awkward silence that had descended, Rose surveyed the garden that only a short time ago had been Sylvie’s pride and joy, idly noting the bushes and bowers that were drooping, the yellow leaves scattered over grass withered by last night’s cold spell. She thought.
We ought to get a gardener in here sometime in the next month or so, before it freezes.
To trim back where it had become overgrown, if nothing else.

At the same time, she rebelled at the very idea. A gardener? Sylvie was the keeper of this garden. Anyone else puttering among her rosebushes and flower beds would seem like a trespasser.

Your mother is dead,
a voice reminded her.

Mother. The brief euphoria Rose had felt in the beginning—oh, to be able to speak that word at long last!—had passed. The deepest cut of her grief was healing. But her resentment at the unfairness of it all, like a weed broken off at the top instead of pulled out by its root, had begun to grow back. How could Sylvie have done this to her? Left the most important thing until the very last, when it was almost too late to be of much value?

She turned to her old friend—whom she now regarded warily, but not without affection. Rose had set aside any resentment she might have felt toward her friend. What she was having a hard time coping with was how cold Rachel had been acting—as if the secret Sylvie had revealed on her deathbed were somehow Rose’s fault, as if Rose herself weren’t suffering.

At the moment, Rachel stood gazing out at some distant horizon, lost in thought, her eyes as blue and empty as the sky overhead. A light breeze had kicked up, ruffling her hair and scouring her cheeks pink, making her look years younger. Girlish almost, in her white dungarees and oversized navy sweatshirt.

Rose felt a sudden rush of tenderness. She touched Rachel’s shoulder, and felt her jump slightly. “Do you want to call it quits? We don’t have to do it all at once. There’s so much—it looks like she never threw anything out.” The irony of this caused a hollow laugh to surface. The same woman who’d safeguarded her secrets with such care had also saved every sales slip and taxi receipt …

“Quit?” Rachel echoed, shaking her head as if to clear it. “Sure. Why not? What difference will another day make? Or another year, for that matter?” She swiveled around to face Rose, her expression no longer blandly vacant, but a mask of hard angles. “I just want it to go away … for everything to be the way it was. And I know that’s not going to happen. It’s funny, because that’s about the
only
thing I can be sure of these days—that my life will never be the same. I’m not even the same person.”

“You’re wrong about that,” Rose told her with the assurance of one who knew. “You’re exactly who you’ve always been. It was your
place
in all this that didn’t make sense.”

Rachel went back to staring fixedly into the distance. Softly, she said, “I always thought it was me, that the reason I felt as if I didn’t quite belong here was because there was something the matter with
me
.”

Rose’s mouth stretched in a smile of shared bitterness. “I know. I felt the same way, only like I didn’t belong in my own skin. But at least you had a mother who loved you.”

She looked down at her feet as if that might stop the tears forcing their way up the bridge of her nose. With the toe of a scuffed brown loafer, she pushed at a fallen leaf.

A muffled sob escaped Rachel. “What kind of love was that? Keeping me in the dark all those years? Denying me my own
family
? I like your sisters well enough, don’t get me wrong. Marie, especially. But they’re
yours.
How am I supposed to wipe the slate clean and start over?”

“I didn’t say that what Sylvie did was right. Only that she loved you.”

“How do you
know
that?” Rachel turned angrily to face her.

“Because,” Rose said slowly, lifting her face to the light that all at once appeared to be radiating from every sunstruck surface—the rosehips like tiny polished apples that dotted every rosebush, the silvery bangles of a wind chime tinkling below the latticed bower. “Because, if she’d loved me half as much, she’d have told the truth sooner.”

She tried to keep the resentment from her voice, but failed. Rachel felt cheated?
How can she possibly not realize how much better off she is for having been lied to?
On Rose’s wedding day, there had been no mother to beam at her from the front pew. At her sons’ baptisms, no grandmother to cradle them in her arms as they were blessed with holy water. Even when Max died, Rose had been careful not to lean on Sylvie too much.

So what
had
Sylvie given her?

This house. In which Rose had been conceived, but not raised. Could Sylvie possibly have imagined it would make up for all those lost years? Had she believed, even remotely, she could somehow
buy
Rose’s forgiveness?

To make things even more complicated, Nikos had insisted on moving out. He couldn’t bear the idea of being here without Sylvie, he’d said. Hearing her voice behind every door, imagining each time he walked into a room that he’d find her waiting. Anyway, as far as he was concerned, the house belonged to Rose. Money wasn’t an issue; Nikos was wealthy in his own right. A week after the funeral, he’d taken an apartment in one of his own newly constructed buildings.

Now the house, and its garden, stood empty.

As empty as Rose felt inside.

A part of her understood that Sylvie’s intentions had been good. In her own way, Sylvie had wanted to balance the scales, to do what was fair. This place had to be worth several million at least. But what the hell was Rose going to do with a mansion? She certainly couldn’t see herself living here. Yet how could she sell it? Whether she liked it or not, it was as much a part of her heritage as it was Rachel’s.

“Look! Over there … the tree peony.” Rachel pointed. “I remember when Mama planted it—just after Brian and I were married. In honor of us, actually, because of its name—‘Bridal Gown’.” She blushed slightly. “I didn’t know peonies bloomed this late in the season.”

“They don’t,” Rose said.

Nevertheless, she caught a flash of something snow-white through the weeping branches of the Japanese maple: a single teacup-sized blossom, like some ghostly reminder of Sylvie. Rose glanced over at Rachel, who was smiling—a real smile that softened her whole face. Rose smiled, too. A peony, of all things. God
was
in the details, she supposed.

“Will you miss it … this place, I mean?” she asked cautiously.

“What I
miss
is my mother,” Rachel replied firmly.

Rose shook her head. “If I’d known she was planning on leaving me the house, I’d have told her not to.” She hugged herself, shivering. “What on earth am I supposed to do with it?”

“Sell it.”

Rose darted a glance at Rachel to see if she was joking. But Rachel was perfectly serious. Her blue eyes, narrowed against the bright light, regarded Rose with the directness that had always been her trademark.

“You can’t mean that,” Rose protested.

“As a matter of fact, I
do
.” Rachel’s voice was coolly emphatic. Rose had long presumed that this house meant as much to Rachel as it clearly did to Iris. But, like so much about Rachel, there was more to her than met the eye. “You want to know something?” Rachel went on. “My whole life, I never felt at home here. Not really. I was always tiptoeing around, afraid of breaking something. I even used to wonder if Mama felt that way, too. If that’s why she spent so much of her time out here, in her garden.”