“Did she know you survived?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did she never tell me?”
His face became still.
“Because your mother did not die from illness, Vivian.”
I stared at him.
The official story was a sudden aneurysm.
There had been no autopsy because my grandmother refused one.
Adrian took a breath.
“Your mother was murdered.”
The terrace seemed to tilt.
He continued before I could speak.
“She was preparing to testify. Beatrice discovered it.”
“Beatrice killed her too?”
“I believed so for twenty-one years.”
“Believed?”
He slid a sealed evidence bag across the table.
Inside was an old photograph taken outside a hospital.
My mother stood near the entrance.
Beside her was a younger Beatrice.
And behind them, partially hidden by a newspaper, stood my grandmother.
On the back, someone had written a date.
The day my mother died.
I looked up.
Adrian’s eyes were filled with grief.
“The toxicology report was hidden in the vault,” he said. “The poison was administered in tea.”
My grandmother had been the only person in the hospital room when my mother drank it.
I shook my head.
“No.”
“Vivian—”
“No.”
My grandmother had raised me.
Protected me.
Built the trust.
Preserved the evidence.
She had loved me more fiercely than anyone alive.
“She wouldn’t.”
“I don’t know what happened,” Adrian said. “But there is one person who might.”
He nodded toward the French doors.
A woman stood inside the house.
She was thin, elegant, and trembling.
