Katie huffed a put-upon sigh and stomped out of the room. She didn’t look back.
He was sitting at a table in the dining hall, waiting. Before he noticed her, Katie took stock. He was twenty-one, according to CeCe. Dark hair slicked back. Nice suit, pressed shirt. A narrow face, gray eyes. He sat politely, no fidgeting. His hands were folded on the table in front of him, and she saw that they were elegant and masculine, the fingers long, the knuckles well formed. Nice hands, she thought, gathering her courage. I can deal with a man with nice hands.
She glanced to see that no one was looking. Then she folded the waist of her skirt with a quick twist of her wrist, making the length climb an inch above her knees, and then another. She unbuttoned the Idlewild cardigan but didn’t take it off, letting it fall open just so, so that he would be able to glimpse the stretched blouse beneath. Then she squared her shoulders and walked toward him.
He was expecting CeCe, so it took him a moment to realize she was coming his way, that she was heading for him. He lifted his chin and looked at her and froze perfectly still.
Katie blinked her tilted, long-lashed eyes at him and smiled. Sweet and knowing at the same time. Abashed, as if he was having an effect on her, yet she didn’t quite want it to show.
Joseph Eden watched her come toward him, and his eyes went wide, his jaw dropping open just a little as he watched her thighs move below the hem of her skirt.
“Hi there,” Katie said to him, pulling up a chair and sitting across from him.
“You—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “You’re not CeCe,” he managed.
She smiled at him again. “No, I’m not. I’m her roommate. She’s not feeling well today, but she felt terrible that you came all this way. So she sent me instead.” She held out her hand and leaned across the table, letting the cardigan fall open just the right way. “My name’s Katie,” she said. “Katie Winthrop.” When he shook her hand in his bigger one—Nice hands, she reminded herself—she squeezed it and leaned forward across the table. Now he’d have a hint of cleavage, hidden in the shadows of her sweater and her blouse. “I have to confess, I’ve always wanted to meet you,” she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially.
He blinked. “Me?”
“CeCe talks about you so much.” Katie let a dreamy look cross her expression. “Her wonderful brother. We’re all dying of curiosity.” She lowered her voice again. “Especially me.”
He caught her gaze, and she saw the second his shoulders relaxed. He smiled. Hooked, but not quite reeled in. Not yet. “Well, I’m Joseph,” he said. “Joseph Eden. It sure is nice of you to come and keep me company if CeCe isn’t feeling well. I did come a long way.”
She let his hand go and smiled again. He had a nice enough smile, lovely hands, and a good suit. And he wasn’t legitimate, but he was Brad Ellesmere’s only son, and would someday be his heir.
Katie was counting on it.
You make your own fate, she thought. You build it every day. This is how it begins.
“Well, then,” she said to Joseph Eden. “We have some time to kill before you go all the way home again. I think we can entertain each other. Don’t you?”
Chapter 35
Barrons, Vermont
November 2014
She had made her full statement to the police, and the doctors gave her permission to go home, so Fiona pulled clothes from the overnight bag Malcolm had brought for her and spent forty-five minutes putting them on, slowly pulling on underwear, jeans, a T-shirt, and a zip-up hoodie. The fever had broken, but she was still woozy and tired, her muscles made of melted butter. She put on socks and walked to the bathroom adjoining her hospital room, washing up the best she could. Her face in the mirror was ghostly, her skin waxen, shadows under her eyes. Her red hair looked stark under the fluorescent lights and against the pallor of her skin. She tucked it behind her ears and looked down into the sink again.
When she was finished, she walked to the bathroom door and stopped.
A woman stood in her hospital room. Small of stature, but straight of posture. Thick white hair cut short and curled. She wore a wool coat, belted at the waist, her hands in the large pockets. When Fiona made a noise in the bathroom doorway, she turned and looked at her, one eyebrow raised. It was Margaret Eden.
Fiona stared at her. She was light-headed; this felt a little surreal. She said, “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you,” Margaret said.
Even in her ill state, Fiona didn’t think for a second that Margaret Eden was concerned about her health. “Why?” she asked.
Margaret stayed where she was, hands in the pockets of her expensive coat, and waited. Finally she said, “Fiona. Do we have something to talk about?”
Fiona stepped farther into the room, steadying herself on the doorjamb. “I know who you are,” she said. “Who you really are.”
“Do you?” The older woman seemed curious, but unconcerned.
“Yes.” Fiona felt her fingers go slick against the door, cold sweat on her palms. “You’re Katie Winthrop.”
She hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t the smile that spread over Margaret Eden’s face, her features relaxing. Margaret turned her chin, directing her words back over her shoulder. “Girls,” she said. “She knows.”
Two other women came into the room. One was Roberta Greene, tall and stately, her features composed. The other, the same age as Katie and Roberta, was shorter and rounder, her eyes kind and her hair cropped close to her head. CeCe Frank, Fiona thought to herself, or whatever her name is now.
“It’s nice to meet you, honey,” CeCe said, taking Fiona’s hand and squeezing it. “Oh, sit down. Katie, she’s still ill.” CeCe sighed and looked in Fiona’s eyes. “She forgets about people’s feelings sometimes.”
Fiona turned to stare at Katie again. “The first time we met, you told me you’d never been a student at Idlewild.”
Katie shrugged. “I lied,” she said. “I do that sometimes. When I have to. How did you figure out it was me?”
“I’ve seen your Idlewild file. It has your full name—Katherine Margaret Winthrop. It didn’t click at first. But I asked your son what your maiden name was, and when he said Winthrop, I knew.”
That made Katie laugh. “All right, it isn’t a state secret. I just don’t make my past public, that’s all.”
“How did you do it?” Fiona asked Katie, walking to the edge of the bed and lowering herself. “How did you change your name? And why?”
Katie still stood, her hands in her pockets. Beauty, but not the wholesome kind, Sarah London had said of Katie Winthrop in 1950. She was a discipline problem from the day she arrived until the day she left. She looked down at Fiona where she sat on the bed, and in the arched brows and the determined set of her jaw, Fiona could see that girl from sixty-four years ago. “Well, I married Joseph Eden, for one,” she said. “I didn’t want to be Katie anymore. I wanted to leave everything behind—my family, Idlewild. Not the girls, of course. But the rest of it, yes. My parents had always treated me like an embarrassment, and as Joseph’s wife I could forget about them entirely. I was young, and I thought I could start new. I told Joseph I’d always hated the name Katie, and that I wanted to be called by my middle name, Margaret, instead. I told him I wanted to leave that old wayward girl behind and start a new life as his wife.” She shrugged. “He agreed.”
“Who was Joseph Eden?” Fiona asked.
“He was my brother,” CeCe supplied. She pulled up a chair and sat on it facing Fiona, as if they were going to have a chat. Katie stayed standing, and Roberta had walked to the window, where she listened as she looked out. “My half brother, that is. We had the same father.”
“Brad Ellesmere,” Fiona said.
CeCe blinked. “Is that in my file?”