Inheritance (The Lost Bride Trilogy, #1)(16)

“I’m going to try to answer them. Can we sit here, at the table? I also have some other things to show you, some papers.”

“All right.”

She set his coffee on the table, sat. “You said he died last month. Was he ill?”

“It’s kind of you to ask. I’ll try to explain that, too. First, I want to tell you Collin didn’t know he had a brother, not for many years. That was kept from him. He learned about your father shortly before your father’s death. From me. Genealogy is my hobby, a kind of passion really. I decided to research Collin’s as a gift. Do an extensive family tree, as it seemed there were missing pieces—or branches, we’ll say, on that tree.”

He opened his briefcase. “This is a picture of Collin’s father. Your father’s father. This was their mother.” He laid another photo on the table, smiled a little. “It was the sixties, after all.”

The woman—girl, really—had long, straight blond hair. She wore a colorful band around it, over her forehead. A pretty face, Sonya thought, heavy on the eyeliner around blue eyes. A thin build in a T-shirt and low-slung bell-bottom jeans. She held up a two-fingered peace sign with a hand studded with rings.

“Lilian Crest, though apparently she went by the name Clover when this was taken. She died giving birth to the twins. A home birth that went very wrong, it seems. And a storm that knocked out power and phone for two days. The house—the manor—is a bit remote. Not inaccessible by any means, but a few miles from the town of Poole’s Bay.”

“She’s so young.”

“Only nineteen when she died. She’d left home at seventeen. She and Charles took up residence in the manor. His parents, twin brother, and his sister made their home just outside of Poole’s Bay. At that time.”

“Twins run in the family.”

“They do. Charles was, by all accounts, devastated by her death, and I’m afraid wanted nothing to do with the children he blamed for it. He took his own life not long after. Before he did, his sister took Collin, and adopted him. Your father was placed with a foster family, and put up for private adoption. Out of state, you see. The Poole family insisted—from what I can read in the paperwork—the adoptive family have no information regarding his birth parents.”

“They didn’t know.” The relief there came in a flood. “My grandparents. They didn’t know Dad had a twin. They would have taken them both. They’re good people. Loving people.”

“I can’t tell you why the Pooles separated the children. I know that Patricia Poole, your father’s grandmother, was a very hard woman. I know that your father’s uncle, Lawrence, closed up the manor again after his brother’s death. and it stayed closed until Collin opened it when he turned eighteen. It came to him, you see. Legally when he turned eighteen, as his uncle died four years before without an heir.

“You make good coffee.”

“Would you like more?”

“I wouldn’t say no. This is a lot to take in,” he said when she went into the kitchen. “And it may seem like a lot of history you don’t need to know.”

“I don’t know any of the history, so I need to know.”

“Collin and I grew up in Poole’s Bay together. He was best man at my wedding—thirty-three years ago this spring. And I stood up for him at his.”

“You married young.”

He laughed. “Not so very young, but when you know, you know.”

“I suppose.”

“Thank you,” he said when she brought him another coffee. “Collin didn’t have much interest in his family’s history, but he loved the manor. I can’t tell you how often the two of us—or a gang of us—snuck into it when we were boys. It’s quite haunted.”

“Naturally.”

At her amused tone, he looked down into his coffee. “Well. In any case, it’s a storied history, but his interest was art. Like your father. Like you.”

“He was an artist?”

“That was his calling, his passion. Though he was pushed into the mold of the family business. Shipping, shipbuilding. Poole’s Bay is named for the first Poole who began building wooden ships, who started a mill, who founded Poole’s Bay and built the original portion of the manor, in 1794.”

As if catching himself, Oliver held up his hands.

“A storied history, as I said, which I hope you might find some interest in.”

“He never knew any of this, my father. He never knew he had a brother, a twin.”

“No, and I’m sorry for it. I want to assure you, Collin was a good man, a good friend, and if he’d had the opportunity, I have no doubt he’d have been a good brother. He’d have been a good husband and father.”

“You said you stood up for him at his wedding.”

“I did, some five years after he did the same for me.”

“Did he have children?”

“No. Tragically, Johanna died on their wedding day.”

“That’s—” It closed her throat, clutched at her heart. “That’s horrible.”

“It was. She fell, coming down the stairs during the reception. There was nothing anyone could do. Collin was never quite the same. He rarely left the manor. He grieved, Ms. MacTavish, deeply.”