Lydia stares at me. Waves her hand to clear the smoke, which hangs about foggily in this thick night air. “Tell me something. How long have you known?”
I press my lips together.
“Oh, just tell me. My goodness. What does it matter?”
“Since this evening. When Clara arrived.”
“Clara!”
“Yes. The real Clara, I mean.”
Lydia smiles. “Oh, right-ho. Of course. I suppose I knew she would turn up eventually. But where is she now?”
I shrug my ignorance, and it’s the truth. The sidewalk was empty when we left the hotel, the Packard untouched. No sign that Clara had been there at all, and it occurred to me, in that instant, that I hadn’t told her about Simon. Or did she still believe he had died in February?
Lydia reflects on this. Glances at Samuel, who’s standing next to a tree, arms crossed, wearing an expression of deep discomfort. “We’re sisters, you know,” she says idly.
I shrug again.
“My father sired her in Borneo. Nobody ever mentioned it, of course—terribly awkward—but you only have to look at us together. And then we were born in the same week. One can only imagine, eh?”
She means to shock me, naturally. Maybe I’m shocked; I don’t know. I’m so accustomed to shocks, they’ve left me numb. Numb and rather cold, you see, so that I no longer feel any particular emotion at this singular detail of Clara’s conception, except a raw and painful fear reserved for Evelyn, sleeping now along the length of the Ford’s backseat—a fear I keep in check by force, because I must. And a sort of otherworldly curiosity. I’ve never seen Lydia’s father, either in person or in a photograph, but I now imagine he was a slightly built man, handsome, and his eyes were almost certainly blue.
“Borneo seems to have been a bad idea all around,” I say calmly.
“Doesn’t it? Except I reckon Clara would rather have been born than not, even if she’s a cuckoo in the nest.” She says this without bitterness, but as she speaks I wonder if this piece of information, flung so carelessly into the open, isn’t the key to everything. That’s what the psychologists would say, isn’t it? That the sins of the father redound on the head of the daughter, penetrating deep into the chambers of the unconscious where they shoot about like tennis balls in a drawing room, smashing all the china and disfiguring the paintwork.
“Look,” I say, “if it’s money you want, you can have it. I don’t give a damn. I’ll write you a check the instant we arrive at Maitland, if you’ll promise to leave us alone. Leave Florida, leave the country. Go back to England.”
Lydia sucks on her cigarette and turns to Samuel. “You see, darling? This is why I adore you. Everybody else only wants to get rid of me.”
“How much?” asks Samuel. Addressing me.
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
A burst of laughter from Lydia. “Not nearly enough, I’m afraid. That’s—what? Ten thousand pounds or so. Do you know how long that lasted us in England? Three years.”
“Three years?”
“Less, really. I’m rather extravagant.” She looks modestly at her hands.
The headlights make a lurid, conical glow on our bodies. I gaze at Lydia and her small, self-satisfied smile, then at Samuel, whose stiff face reveals no emotion at all, no human pleasure, and my mind seems to expand, like the coming dawn, to take in all of this, the vast reach of their fraud. And I think, Why, this is the real proof, isn’t it? A piece of hard, genuine evidence that Simon, in his last letter, was telling me the truth.
“You tricked my father. That check he sent to Simon, to keep him from bothering me. That was you. You were the one who took his money, not Simon.”
“I hadn’t much choice, had I? Simon left me with nothing. Not even my own child.”
“As if you cared about Sammy. Either of you. I’d ask which brother he belongs to, but I don’t suppose it matters.”
“Oh, I’m happy to tell you. He belongs to Simon, of course. A little lie, I understand, on the part of my dear ex-husband, which amuses me terribly, even now. But that was always his weakness. Women, I mean, not lying. But the one usually follows the other, I’ve found.”
Samuel turns away and puts his hand on the trunk of the tree.
“Yes,” I say. “Look at Samuel. Everything he’s done for your sake. All the lies he told me, and I believed him. Because of my father, you see. Because my father killed my mother, and I saw everything—everything—through a glass, all distorted, so that whatever Simon said or did—”
Lydia starts to laugh. “Oh, you poor dear child. You poor deluded thing. You really haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
She turns to Samuel. “You didn’t tell her? Show her the newspapers?”
“I don’t read newspapers,” I say.
“My God. The story was everywhere. I tried to keep it from you—that’s why I took you to Maitland to begin with—but I thought you must have learned by now—”
“Learned what?”
“Dear child. Your father didn’t kill your mother. It was the kitchen maid. Well, her lover, rather, but your lovestruck father decided to protect her. All those years.” She shakes her head.
I stare at her and then at Samuel. The air reels around my ears. “Is this true? Father’s innocent?”
He shrugs. “Yes.”
“I’m afraid he’s dead now, however,” Lydia says. “There was a confrontation. The lover shot him dead, to keep him quiet. I don’t remember the details.”
“Lydia, stop! For God’s sake. Look at her.”
I’m sinking to my knees in the warm grass. Hands over mouth. I think, It’s too much. And then, She’s lying, she must be lying. I turn to Samuel, whose familiar eyes regard me with a rare expression of pity, though his arms remain crossed over his broad chest, and the yellow glare of the headlamps shadow his face like a demon’s. He shakes his head and turns away, and I know it’s true.
“Good news and bad news, you might say,” Lydia chirps. Lifts her cigarette carelessly to her lips. “But at least it’s relieved you of a tremendous psychological burden. I have a friend who’s an analyst, a head doctor, and he says there’s nothing more damaging for a girl than a father she can’t trust. Why, anyone can see what it’s done for you! But better late than never.”
My hands fall to my sides. A curious numbness overtakes me, as if my nerves, vanquished, have simply switched themselves off. I think, I must stay calm. I must set aside all these things, all this grief clawing at the back of my head, because of Evelyn. To save Evelyn. I rise to my feet—my God, the effort—and I hear myself saying, in a cold voice, “No. It is too late. Simon’s dead, too. Samuel killed him.”
Lydia flicks a nub of ash into the dirt. “So I understand. Terrible shame. But it doesn’t change anything, does it? You’ve still got all the money. His final revenge on me.”