Ashes.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Janis asked. “My mother’s dead.”
“Yes,” Aubrey said.
Janis nodded. She held up her arms, bound together by handcuffs. “Finally, I’m free.” A smile grew on her face. “And so is Mom.”
Free, Aubrey thought.
So why was it so difficult to breathe?
CHAPTER 54
Her ears hadn’t stopped ringing, and her head felt as though it were filled with sawdust, but she was alive. More important, Ethan was safe, in good health, and reunited with his mother and father.
Diana rolled her wheelchair out of the hospital room where she had spent the last twenty-four hours. Her hands were in bandages, and it was painful to use them to operate the wheelchair, but she was too unstable on her own feet.
She had been to Larry’s room earlier today, shortly after he’d regained consciousness, but she had wanted to wait until they were alone and he was stronger before she spoke to him.
If not for the misunderstanding, she might never have put it all together. The nurse had assumed she was Larry’s wife, not ex-wife, and had brought her a large folded paper that had been tucked into Larry’s waistband when the medics had brought him to the hospital. The old, yellowed paper was spotted with recent blood. She had unfolded the document and realized it was the blueprint of Low Library that she had seen forty-five years before. But it was only when she examined the notations in the margins that she recognized the handwriting. Handwriting that had been so new to her when she first saw the blueprint, she hadn’t made the connection.
That’s when everything came together for her—Gertrude’s last words before she blew up the time-share, Larry’s reluctance to go to the FBI so many years ago, and Diana’s confused memory of the two people huddled together a few doors down from the exploding brownstone.
The hallway was quiet, just the sounds of beeping coming from patients’ rooms. It was after ten and the visitors were mostly gone. Aubrey had left a few minutes earlier. Diana had reprimanded her daughter for risking her life, but there was no heart in her motherly scolding, and Aubrey had known it. Without her daughter’s intervention, Diana and Ethan would never have survived.
She stopped at the doorway to Larry’s room. A basket of wildflowers from she didn’t know whom. A balloon held by a coffee mug filled with candy—“Get Well Soon!” She eased the wheelchair closer to the bed, grimacing as her hands touched the wheels.
His bed was raised, and he was propped up against a couple of pillows. A white bandage covered his head. It reminded her of the white bandanna he’d worn when he’d been Lawrence of Columbia.
A million years ago. Mere seconds ago.
He opened his eyes—sky blue set in bloodred. “Diana,” he said, his voice hoarse, “so glad to see you.”
His words were muffled, almost drowned out by the ringing in her head.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Been better.” He tried to smile. The cleft in his chin quivered. “How about you?”
“About like that.”
“What about our girl Aubrey, eh? She really saved the day.”
“She could have died.” Her voice came out too harsh, but she didn’t care. She wanted him to understand the magnitude of what could have been.
“How long have you known Star was Gertrude?” she asked.
He jerked, and the heart-monitoring machine he was attached to beeped his agitation. “Not until the day she tried to kill me,” he said. “When she recognized the ringtone on Aubrey’s phone as yours.”
Our love is stronger than the pain. Sentimental nonsense. She should have moved on years ago.
“So for eight years you didn’t realize who she was?”
“Everything about her was different,” he said quietly. “Her face, her body, the way she talked and moved.”
“How could you not have noticed her finger?”
“I don’t know, Diana. The prosthetic was perfect, and she never took the ring off.”
Or maybe he had seen what he’d wanted to see. “What about the ransom note?” she asked.
“What ransom note?”
“The one in the greeting card you left for me at the house.”
“Greeting card?” he said. “My God. Star gave me an envelope when I went to the house to see you. She said it was a ‘We’re-thinking-of-you’ card and asked me put it with the mail. She didn’t want me to make a fuss about it. Was there a ransom demand?”
“There was.” Diana was fairly certain he was telling the truth. At least about that. “I finally remembered,” she said. “About April Fool.”
He kept his bloodshot eyes on her.
“When I was carrying the little boy away from the explosion, I saw two people standing near a stoop a couple of doors down.”
The heart monitor beeped again.
“Something about the two people seemed familiar,” she said. “I don’t know—maybe I was concentrating so hard on getting the boy to safety that I didn’t pay attention. Or maybe I blocked the memory.”
“You had a serious head injury.”
“I did,” she said. “Were you hoping either the injury or the trauma of the explosion would wipe away my memory?”
He seemed to go whiter. The monitor beeped more quickly.
“You were right,” she said. “At least, for the last forty-five years or so. But today, I remembered.”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“The two people by the stoop,” she said. “He was wearing a white bandanna, and she had a long black braid.”
She waited for him to deny it, but he said nothing. Just lay there taking shallow breaths.
“I thought I had figured everything out, but I hadn’t. Gertrude even told me I was mistaken just before she died.”
His eyes flew open.
“You were the one who planned to blow up Low Library.”
“No, Diana. I didn’t.”
“Stop lying.” Her voice carried over the ringing in her ears. “I have the blueprint. It’s your handwriting on it, Larry.”