He drains the last of his glass, and she can tell he’s contemplating letting her in on something.
“There was always something with the money. I think Ethan thought Loulou would know best what to do with it,” her father continues. “He never imagined she’d need it for herself after the divorce.”
Loulou had famously divorced Dicky for his philandering decades ago, when it became so public she couldn’t ignore it anymore. Done at a time when such things were much more scandalous, it was a testament to her social standing that Loulou had managed both to come out on top, and to remain friends with her choice of the Cavanaughs. The split had even provided cover for her to change her name back to the more recognizable Quincy. It was what everyone called her anyway. And while she’d had a bit of money herself, Dicky had never made much, and so they’d been draining her inheritance the entire marriage.
“So when Ethan signed over your mother’s guardianship, all the money went with it. He never changed his will after May died to make specific provisions for a child, so with her gone, it all landed on Loulou. The expectation, of course, was that Loulou would give it to your mother, and while your mother was well taken care of, you know as well as I do that Old Lou spent most of it as right and didn’t think twice about it.”
A knock on the door makes Nell jump and brings a strange panic, as if she should get in the closet like when she was young and playing hide-and-seek.
“Sorry, need to use the bathroom.” Baldwin strides in, and Nell wonders at his sixth sense, wonders if he was listening at the door for secrets about to be revealed.
“Why don’t you use the other one?” her father says, enjoying kicking Baldwin out of any part of the farm. “We’re in the midst of a chat.”
“That’s just great,” he says, with a weak smile. “Some father-daughter time. I’m sure you need it.” He shuts the door as he leaves.
Her father watches, waits until the door latches, and then waits a beat more. She almost expects him to get up and check that Baldwin isn’t crouched on the other side with a glass cupped to his ear. “Your mother thought you should be allowed to have your own view of things. Your own view of the family. Your family. She never wanted to tell you. Didn’t think you should be influenced by her. And the money had messed everything up in her mind. She knew that, and she didn’t want that for you. But then again, she absolutely believed what she believed. And that wasn’t going to fly around here.”
Nell wills herself to be quiet, knowing that urging him to get to the point will only make him drag this out longer. She’s wondering what could possibly cause this kind of secrecy, but somewhere in her gut, she’s always known.
Sighing and not looking at her, he says, “She thought that maybe Ambrose was her father, not Ethan.”
Nell sits down, felled by an assertion both outrageous and obvious. Something known but never spoken of.
“The timing?”
“Is possible.” Her father gets up out of his chair and walks to the wall hung with a gallery of Quincy ancestors preserved much like the blackbuck out front. He’s searching, and Nell is taking in this news when he says, “And look.”
He points to a framed picture of her ancestors Ambrose and Ethan Quincy, side-by-side, arms around each other, knees tied together at the start of a three-legged race. “She, much more than you, had it. But even you must see it here. These things tend to skip generations, you know.” He’s gesturing to the picture. “The dark hair, the dark circles under the eyes. Luckily for you, you got some of my Italian, so it blends more on you. But it was quite striking with your mother’s pale coloring. Striking to anyone who knew the family.” Nell is peering closely at the photograph. “Or even looked at pictures. She looked quite a bit like him. Black Irish, you know. Bit of an adventurer, loved travel and speed, just movement really.”
Nell looks at the picture as if hearing something through an echo chamber, pieces and parts of the Quincy family refitting and reconfiguring in her head. “That’s my grandfather?”
“It would explain the money. Why Ethan never changed his will. He was hoping for children of his own. Your mother and I were sure of it. Of course, everyone made out like she was crazy, most of all Loulou, who was going to have issues with your mother no matter what. Loulou revered both her brothers, but Ambrose was the favorite. That’s what everyone said. To suggest something this tawdry, a love triangle among brothers . . . Well, you know how she was.” Nell did know. Loulou had been prim, uptight, and never very interested in any of the sensual pleasures of life except the pleasure of new clothes. “She pretended your mother was crazy, spiteful because she never felt like she belonged and Baldwin got all the attention. Imagine being jealous of an old washout like Baldwin.” Her father leans closer toward the photograph, as if contemplating this. “But these things are never rational, are they? It was clear to everyone that Loulou was expecting a level of gratitude your mother never mustered. But how is a child supposed to do that, even understand it, really? It made things strained. The rest, you know.”
At Nell’s silence he says, “She never had proof, of course. Never had anything but what she believed in her gut. And, of course, me. I agreed with her one hundred percent.” He says it with pride that makes Nell wonder if he’d had to convince himself. Maybe he’d done it so successfully that now he even believed it.
“Grandmother May would have been pretty shady,” Nell says, and peeking out at her is both the recognition of the truth when one hears it and the realization that she wishes she didn’t know.
Because Nell can instantly see it from the other side. What was Loulou supposed to do? There was no proof really, besides a family resemblance—and that was murky evidence. What her mother believed in the end couldn’t be corroborated or unequivocally known. And so it was just unpleasant, perceived as a veiled vehicle for a complaint about money or favoritism. Frankly, the more Nell thinks it through, the more impressed she becomes with Loulou and Baldwin and their patience and long-standing attempts to overlook this accusatory “quirk” of her mother’s, her insistence on a conspiracy theory of the most unsavory kind. Their efforts to continue to include her, to leave it unsaid, to hope she “grew out” of this belief—really, what more could one do in a family?