“It was my mother. The great Sebastian Bell was dead. He died of a heart attack, she said, and I needed to come home quickly. Of course, I dropped everything and rushed to my mother’s side. When I got here to La Belle Vie, I found my mother alone and grieving and the studio boarded up. The whole house was shrouded in black cloth.
“My father had already been cremated, per his wishes—or so she told me—and she gave me strict orders to never enter the studio again. It was to remain as it was when he took his last breath, at the easel, forever, throughout time.
“What I didn’t know then was, Grey had gone missing. Of course, I asked her where he was, why he wasn’t with us, and she said he had been gone for days. Daisy, too. She speculated they had run off together.
“It didn’t make any sense to me. So, I asked around. His friends, her friends. Nobody had seen them. Nobody knew anything. I even talked to Frank, whom I had always hated, but I have to admit feeling a little sorry for the man. His wife had apparently run off with my brother, leaving two young children for him to raise alone.”
Indigo took another sip of his coffee.
“After my father’s funeral—hundreds of people attended from all over the world—I went back to my internship in the Twin Cities. I didn’t know what else to do. My mother was grieving, but she pushed me away. She needed time to herself, she said. I should go and finish my education, she said. And then I could come home and take up the business of tending to my father’s legacy. It was in my hands now.
“And so, I did. I graduated from school with degrees in art history and business, and you know the rest. We never heard from Grey again, despite looking for him for years. Frank moved from Wharton, and we never saw him or Daisy’s children again, either. Your mother and I got married, you came along, and I spent the rest of my life running the foundation. Now Eli is set to take it over.”
“But that’s not all there is to the story. Isn’t that right?” Jane asked.
Indigo let out a dejected, defeated sigh. “No,” he said. “That’s not the whole story. Because, you see, I couldn’t just let it go. I couldn’t just accept what my mother had told me. Grey, suddenly disappearing without a trace? It was preposterous. If he and Daisy had run away together, he would’ve contacted me. Would’ve told our mother. And more than that. The more I thought about it, the more I realized they didn’t even need to run away to be together. My father, with all of his power and influence, could have forced Frank out of the picture. A million dollars to walk away? Frank would’ve taken it in a heartbeat.
“But the bigger thing that kept nagging at me about the whole thing was—Daisy.” Indigo shook his head. “She loved those kids. No matter how much she loved my brother, she loved her children more. She would not have left the kids. Period.”
Tess felt a whoosh of cold waft over her, even there, in front of the fire. She caught Jane’s eye. Jane felt it, too.
“And, there’s something else. Something worse. When Daisy and Grey broke up before she married Frank, it was for a good reason. A very good reason.”
Wyatt, Tess, and Jane were all leaning forward, hanging on Indigo’s every word.
“What reason?” Tess whispered.
Indigo closed his eyes for a moment. “It was the madness, my dear.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
It was like his words had sucked the oxygen from the room. Nobody said a word. Nobody even breathed. Jill put a hand over her husband’s.
“It’s okay, honey. It’s time they knew.”
Indigo turned to his daughter. “When you told me you had found some finished paintings in the studio, as I said last night, I knew they couldn’t have been my father’s. My mother never would’ve kept them from the world, and neither would he. I highly suspected they were Grey’s, and one look at them told me I was right. You can see the desperation running through them.
“He was born that way, with that undercurrent. Nowadays, we have other names for mental illness, other forms, medication that can help people suffering from it. But . . . to tell you all the truth, I don’t think it was about that. I think it was something else. Something deep and primal that ran through Grey. Something evil that slipped through the veil and into him, somehow.”
“It was always there?” Tess shook her head. “But from what you’ve told me, you had an idyllic childhood here in Wharton.”
Indigo nodded. “That’s right, honey. In a sense we did. But if there was anyone who experienced childhood trauma in this house, it was me.”