“Of course I did.” Thia’s eyes pooled with tears. “I’ve thought of little else since I found that book. I had no idea what to do with what I’d learned. I tried to tell him once, when he called from London on my birthday, but he threatened to hang up and never call again if I so much as mentioned her name, and I believed him.” She shook her head, chin quivering. “Soline isn’t the only one left fragile by all of this. What happened during the war changed my brother. Coming home finished him.”
“But he knew her, Thia. He loved her. I don’t understand how he could believe your father’s lies about a woman he loved.”
“He didn’t at first. In fact, they fought like sailors over the things my father would say about her, that she’d always been after his money, but in the end, even that hadn’t been enough to make her stay if it meant pushing her husband around in a wheelchair. It was like he was punishing Anson for loving her. There were times when I was afraid they would come to blows over her.”
“So what changed?”
“I don’t know. One day it was as if someone flipped a switch. All of a sudden, Anson refused to even say her name. And he didn’t want anyone else saying it either. It’s still that way. Anytime I’ve tried to talk to him about it, he’s ended the conversation. It’s like she poisoned him.”
“That must have made your father happy.”
“I suspect it did. He got what he wanted. But then, he usually did. Even if it meant destroying the people he was supposed to love. He certainly destroyed Anson.”
“And the baby,” Rory replied. “He just gave her away. His own grandchild, and he had no idea where she was or what happened to her.”
“Oh, he knew.” Thia’s eyes slid away. Her voice had taken on that ominous quality again. “The woman who ran the Family Aid Society sent him a copy of the adoption decree, proof that his money had been well spent. That’s the kind of monster he was. No concern for the child, just his plans for Anson and the Purcell empire.”
“How very tidy.”
“That was my father, determined to get what he wanted at any cost. And Dorothy Sheridan was only too happy to help—for a fee, of course. I did some checking when I found the ledger. It appears the police got wind of Miss Sheridan’s enterprise in 1972. That’s why the entries in the ledger stop. She disappeared, and my father was finally off the hook.”
Rory felt cold all over. “It’s inconceivable. Soline has spent forty years grieving a daughter she believed dead and buried, and she’s been out there the whole time. How could a woman do something so despicable to another woman?”
Thia studied her through narrowed eyes. “You seem awfully protective of her. Driving all this way. Asking all these questions.”
“Yesterday a friend of mine, a reporter who was helping me dig up a photo of your dead brother, unearthed one taken two years ago. I think questions are in order.”
“Why did you want a picture of Anson?”
Once again, Rory felt she was being accused of something, and it irked her. “I wanted to frame it and give it to Soline as a gift. Because she’s my friend. She was your friend, too, once.”
“Yes. She was.”
Thia’s voice was softer now. Rory felt herself soften too. “She told me about your sketches and the dresses she made for you, how you wanted to live in a garret and paint. It broke her heart that she never got to say goodbye, but your father wouldn’t let her.”
Thia pulled her arms around herself protectively. “He sent me to some horrible all-girls’ school. When I came home, she was gone. I thought she’d abandoned us—abandoned me. By the time Anson came home, I’d grown to hate her. Not only for leaving me but for leaving him too. My brother and I were close once, but when he came home he was so cold and withdrawn. I thought if I hated her, too, it would make us close again, but it only made him angrier.”
“He used you,” Rory said softly. “Your father, I mean. He made you hate Soline, and then he used that hate to fuel your brother’s pain.”
Thia’s eyes flicked to hers. “I told you he was a monster.”
“I’m sorry. I realize this is hard for you too. I just wanted a picture. I never meant for it to turn into all this.”
Thia blew out a long breath. “I think it’s time for you to see the family photos.” She rose and went to the closet, returning a few moments later with a pair of leather-bound albums. “My mother was a fanatic about family photographs. She kept an album for each of us. This is Anson’s.”