Page 68 of The Perfect Guests
“But you want me to believe—what? That you were a stranger? That she picked you at random from a children’s home? A blond musical child who might just pass as Anneliese’s granddaughter?”
“Yes, so you wouldn’t kick them out,” I say. “And sell Raven Hall. And it worked, didn’t it?”
He stares at me, and then we both drop our gaze to the hearth, where the photo of Anneliese lies surrounded by splinters of glass. I can feel my whole history trembling.
“What does it mean?” I say.
Hendrik shakes his head, frowning. “I don’t know. We must be missing something.”
“Well, come on, then.” Sadie steps forward and picks up the photo. “There’s only one person who might be able to explain this. And the way I see it, her daughter nearly killed me a few hours ago, and she, at best, took advantage of you when you were a child, Mum.” She looks from me to Hendrik, and her eyes glow with determination. “Leonora owes us some answers.”
***
“Why should I tell you anything?” Leonora snaps.
She sits with her arm touching one of the dining room curtains, in an unsettling mirror image of my earlier position at the drawing room window, and my heart contracts with unexpected sympathy as I follow her gaze through the glass to the ambulance that still hasn’t moved from the driveway. Despite everything Nina’s done, Leonora still loves her. I’m not convinced Nina loves her back, but my own feelings about the pair of them are too complicated for me to analyze their relationship right now.
“I’m sure if Nina wasn’t okay,” I say gently, “they’d have taken her to hospital by now.”
Leonora gives a tiny nod of acknowledgment.
“It’s just... ,” I say. “I know about Nina’s biological father now. But still—I’d really like to understand my part in the—in the game. Why you asked me to pretend to be Nina.” I study her closedexpression. “You gave me a very happy home here, Leonora.” I cross my fingers behind my back before I realize what I’m doing. It’s as if asking a favor of Leonora has made me revert to being a child again.
To my surprise, tears well up in her eyes. “I did try...”
“Oh, you did.” Hurriedly, I drag across one of the heavy dining chairs, and I seat myself next to her. “You were always extremely kind to me.”
She searches my gaze. “I never meant to hurt you, Beth. We were desperate, that’s all. When Stephanie told us Hendrik was coming back...”
“Stephanie, Jonas’s mum?” I manage not to glance toward the half-open door, behind which Sadie, Jonas, and Hendrik are hiding, listening to every word. Thankfully, the police were still questioning Leonora in the study when Hendrik arrived, so she has no idea he’s even in the house.
“Stephanie was the only other person who knew about Nina,” Leonora says. “She saw me get into Roy Everett’s car once, and that was the evening he...” She shakes her head as if it were something she cannot bear to remember. “And she was the one who helped Markus and me get back together, a couple of months later. So when Nina was born only seven months after that, and what with her looks and everything...”
“Ah.” I let this sink in. “But surely Hendrik did the math too?”
“He couldn’t have been sure, though. Markus and I had been seeing each other beforehand, so for all Hendrik knew, we might have been sleeping together then. And he never saw Nina as a baby.”
For a second, my sense of injustice overwhelms my caution. “But it was none of Hendrik’s business anyway! NinawasMarkus’s daughter—okay, not in the biological sense, but in every other sense.” It takes all my effort not to glare across at the door. “Why couldn’t Hendrik just accept you and Nina as part of his family?”
Leonora gives me a tired look, as if I’m missing the point. “He’d have accepted us if we’d all moved to the States, like he wanted, I’m sure. It wasn’t about acceptance. He just... He always suspected my motives for staying in this house. If he found out for sure that Nina wasn’t Markus’s daughter, I was afraid he might...”
“What?” I stare at her. “Oh. You thought it would destroy Nina’s chances of inheriting the house—is that what you mean?”
She presses her lips together and turns away. I’ve clearly stumbled into dangerous territory. Frantically, I try to pull the conversation back.
“So, when Stephanie told you Hendrik was coming...”
She relaxes slightly and sighs. “We guessed then, he wanted to sell the house, to force us to follow him to the States. But we thought if we could just show him how much Nina needed to stay here... Except to do that, we needed him to believe shewashis granddaughter. And we couldn’t change the way she looked, of course. But Markus had this crazy idea that we could get her intensive music lessons, take advantage of Hendrik’s weak spot, because Anneliese used to play the cello. Markus said he’d ask a client of his, a violinist...”
I sit up straighter. “Caroline?”
“Exactly.” Leonora pulls a face. “But of course, Caroline said Markus was being ridiculous. Nina had no hope of learning enough in three weeks to impress anyone. Caroline told him her own niece had been playing the violin for seven years, and she was still constantly learning and improving...”
I swallow hard.That was me.
Leonora gazes through the window, lost in her memories now. “But apparently, during this conversation, Caroline mentioned she was trying to adopt her niece. And when Markus got home, he said she’d shown him a photo. And he said,‘It’s a shame Nina doesn’t lookmore like Caroline’s niece.’He said,‘She’s plump and blond and round-faced, just like my mum’s side of the family.’”
I can hardly breathe. “So you thought...”
