“Here will be fine. Thank you.” This was her house, after all. Eve was the intruder.
Eve gestured to her car outside in the carport, loaded with Audrey’s suitcases. “Did you bring everything you own?”
“I’ve made arrangements for the rest to be shipped once we’re settled here.”
“Settled here?” Eve shook her head. “You can’t stay, Audrey. There isn’t room for both of us.”
Audrey didn’t reply, struggling not to cry again, unwilling to upset Bobby any more than he already was. “Will you make us a pot of tea? I would love a cup.”
Eve rose and bustled around the kitchen, pulling cups and saucers from the cupboards, warming the teapot, boiling the water. “Don’t expect it to have much flavor,” she said. “It’s impossible to find decent tea over here. Everyone drinks coffee.”
“At least you can get tea. We still have shortages back home, even though the war ended five years ago.”
By the time Eve arranged everything on the table with the tea brewing in a pot, Bobby was asleep in Audrey’s arms. Eve sat down across from them. “Now explain what you said, Audrey. What do you mean, you’re not your father’s daughter? Did he disown you for marrying a Yank?”
Audrey stared at the tabletop, regretting that she’d blurted the truth. She took a moment to reply, swallowing her sorrow. “No, he didn’t care that I’d married Robert. I think he rather hoped I would move far away to America.” She met Eve’s gaze. She had nothing left to lose by telling the truth—nothing at all, including her pride, which had withered away long ago. “Father called me into his study—what was left of his study—and told me to pack my things. He was selling Wellingford Hall and moving back to the north country where he came from. I could tell he’d been drinking, even more than usual, so I said, ‘You don’t really mean that.’ But he cut me off with a shout. ‘It’s done!’ he said. He had already spoken to an estate agent. Wellingford was cursed and he never wanted to see it again.” She swallowed, then drew a shaky breath to continue.
“Father had been depressed for months. He’d never recovered from the war, and he’d lost all interest in life. I’d been waiting for him to decide to live again, but he holed up in his study, day after day, year after year, until it became a hoarder’s lair, with—” She halted, unwilling to disgrace him further by describing the piles of newspapers, discarded clothing, and filth-encrusted dishes. The mounds of dust and garbage that accumulated when he refused to leave the room, refused to allow the maids inside. “Father rarely left his study, taking his meals there, even sleeping there. When I tried to talk to him, he acted as if I were invisible. He became a recluse, Eve. But I never imagined he would sell Wellingford. When he told me that he was, I said, ‘What about your grandson? Wellingford Hall is his inheritance. You can’t sell his family home.’ He said, ‘I don’t have a grandson.’” Audrey paused, barely clinging to her composure as she remembered.
“I wondered if he’d become senile, so I reminded him that I had a son, Bobby. He said, ‘I know who you mean, Audrey. I haven’t lost my mind. But that boy is not my heir.’ I was certain that he was merely confused, so I said, ‘I’m your daughter—’ But he shouted, ‘No, you’re not! You’re not my daughter!’”
Audrey would never forget that terrible moment. She felt as if he had slammed her against a wall—like the aftershock when a bomb explodes. Father had worn a sick smile on his face as he’d stared at her.
“He told me I was the product of one of Mother’s many dalliances. An unfortunate accident.” Shame consumed Audrey as she remembered. And Eve would surely remember the shocking sight of Mother kissing a stranger on the town house steps. Audrey hurried to finish her story, her grief as fresh as on that terrible day. “All I could think was, no wonder he’d never loved me.”
Audrey looked up at Eve, trying to read her expression, dreading her pity, but Eve’s thoughts were unreadable. “I was so desperate, Eve, that I dropped to my knees and begged. You know what he said? ‘Go find a rich, gullible fool to live off like your mother did.’”
Audrey paused as the pain rocked through her again. Her beloved home was sold. She was alone. Everyone she loved was gone. No, not everyone. She still had Bobby. She pulled him tighter against her chest as he slept, both of them damp with their mingled sweat. “You were right, Eve. I should have brought Bobby here to America to live with his grandparents right after Robert died.” But the fear of being rejected by them, the fear of leaving England and the home she loved, had been too overwhelming. Besides, she was the reason that Robert was dead. How could his parents ever forgive her?