"Understood what?"
"That it was over." Helen's voice rose. "That the past was sealed. The trust, the payments, they were to keep things quiet. To keep it clean. And it was clean. She had a beautiful childhood. She is a beautiful young woman. We did our part. We kept our part of the arrangement."
Catherine kept her expression unchanged, though her heart was hammering. The arrangement. Theodore's name. The money. Confirmation, spoken aloud.
"And the other one?" Helen asked suddenly, her voice dropping. "You said there were two. What happened to the other one?"
"She was left at Saint Mary's Orphanage. A nurse who couldn't complete the handoff left her on the steps with a blanket. She grew up in foster care. She works as a waitress."
"That's not possible. Theodore said there was one child. He said one."
"He lied to you too, Helen." Catherine's voice was gentle, and she hated how much the gentleness cost her. "He kept the daughter he could shape and discarded the one he could not use. He told each of us exactly the story that would keep us quiet."
Helen sank into the nearest chair as if her legs had given out. "Iris," she whispered. "My Iris."
"She doesn't know. I came to you first."
Helen looked up, tears on her face. "What are you going to do?"
"Tell her the truth. All of it. With proof she can't refuse to see."
"You'll destroy her." Helen's voice broke. "You'll tear apart everything she believes."
"Someone already tore it apart, Helen. Twenty-three years ago. I'm only showing her the pieces." Catherine moved toward the door, then stopped. "The trust, the payments, the arrangement. If I need you to say that on the record, will you?"
Helen was silent a long time. Then, barely audible: "I don't know."
It was not a yes. But it was not a no. For now, it would have to be enough. Catherine let herself out, and behind her the house was silent, holding its breath like a woman who had just confessed to a crime she had spent twenty-three years pretending was a kindness.
Chapter 15: Confrontation
Theodore was in the study when Catherine came home, lamplight and leather, a decanter of scotch at his elbow. He had been waiting.
"Catherine. Helen Webb called me. She is quite distressed."
"I went to see her," Catherine said, closing the door, her handbag still on her shoulder. "She told me about the arrangement."
"And what arrangement would that be?"
"Don't." The word came out low and sharp. "Not the charm, not the deflection. Helen said your name. The placement, the trust, the payments. She called it an arrangement because she lacks the spine to call it what it is."
Theodore rose and walked to the window. "The Webbs adopted a child. A private adoption with sealed records is not a crime."
"Two girls were born at Saint Anne's that night, and you had Lang falsify the records to say one died in a fire that barely scorched a wall. The other you didn't even register. You handed her to your business partner like a line item."
He turned from the window, his face blank. "That depends on which version of the truth you believe."
Catherine stared at him. "That is your answer? After thirty years of marriage, a lawyer's shrug?"
"It is the truth as the world understands it." He poured a measure of scotch, without offering her one. "Court records. Sealed, but legitimate. A deceased infant. A legal adoption. You signed papers. Sedated and grieving, you signed everything we put in front of you."
"I have a photograph of a little girl with my daughter's face and a heart-shaped birthmark on her wrist. I have a DNA test that says Nora Fields is mine, and I have Helen Webb's own mouth telling me you built the whole thing." She gripped the back of a chair. "How many versions of the truth can there be, Theodore?"
He drank, unhurried, and set the glass down. "Why did you go to see her? Iris has a life. An education, a career, a mother who loves her. What did you think you would accomplish, standing in that house with your locket and your grief?"
"She's my child. I don't need to justify wanting to look at her."
"She is not your child." The words came flat, and he added, more carefully, "Not anymore. You were told she died, and for twenty-three years that was the truth that let everyone sleep at night."
Catherine laughed, a short, broken sound. "Everyone. You mean you."
"Think about what you're doing." He crossed the room until only the desk stood between them. "You are about to destroy a young woman's identity because you found a waitress with a birthmark. Do you know what that will do to Iris? Do you care?"
"Don't you lecture me about caring." She leaned forward, both hands on the desk, and her voice finally broke open. "You took my daughters. You told me my baby died in a fire while you handed one of them to Marcus Webb like a signing bonus and let the other get dumped at an orphanage. Tell me why. I want to hear you say it."
For a long moment he only looked at her, and then something in him settled, as if the game was over and there was no point in playing it anymore.
"You were never going to give me what I needed," he said.
"And what was that?"
"A family I could hold together." He picked up his glass. "Your family's money built everything I have, Catherine. Every door I ever walked through was opened with your name, not mine. And you, always so independent, so untouchable, doing exactly as you pleased. I needed an heir. Someone loyal to me. Someone easier to control."
"You wanted a child who would not grow up to be me."
"I wanted," he said, his voice hardening, "a child who would not treat me as an accessory to her virtue."
The silence that followed was so complete that Catherine could hear the clock ticking in the hall. She understood, with a clarity like ice water, that she had never once known him.
"She is your daughter too," she said.
Theodore's jaw worked. He said nothing.
"Not an heir. Not a line item. Your daughter. She was born with your blood in her veins and you looked at her and saw a problem to manage. You took her from her mother and gave her to a man who bought her. And Nora, you didn't even bother to place her. You just let her disappear. What do you think would have happened to her if Ada Kowalski had done what you told her to do?"
"I don't answer hypotheticals."
"You handed a newborn baby to a stranger in a parking lot!" The words tore out of her. "There is no version of the truth where that is anything but monstrous."
He met her eyes, and there was nothing in his now, no remorse, no defense. "It is done," he said. "Twenty-three years done. You cannot unmake it by marching through people's houses."
"No," Catherine said. "But I can tell the truth about it." She straightened, letting go of the chair, and felt suddenly, strangely calm. "Iris deserves to know who she is. Not the version the Webbs bought for her. Not the story you wrote. The truth, with proof. The locket, the photograph, the DNA, the records. Everything."