All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2)

by Forrest, Lindsey

  There, in his inbox, was Francie Abbott. He ignored the message and bored in on the woman at the back of the table in the picture. Her hair was shorter than he remembered, her face a little fuller and more mature. She was wearing gray, a color the Francie of 1988 would never have worn.

  But no mistaking those mischievous eyes, that flirty smile, that joie de vivre that remained a bright memory of that long-ago spring.

  “I can’t believe it.” Lucy sounded dazed. “How – I’ll call you back – I’ve got to call Amy.”

  He put the phone down without a word. His eyes swept through the message, registering facts to pursue later: ER doctor. SeaWest Group. Reciprocal relationship with St. Bride Investments. But they faded in the shock of seeing her again. He had not seen her since his father had said, in utter irritation, “Francie, if you can’t be quiet, go in the other room, and stay there.”

  He’d been right, then. She had not died – or, at least, as of three years ago, she had been alive and still capable of charming the pants off men who ought to know better. Cameron St. Bride had not dropped her from a plane over the Atlantic. Instead, he had shipped her out of his wife’s life and off to – Seattle? And found her a job through his family’s bank, where, true to form, he could control her.

  You must have been damn sure that she was never going to pop up again, like a bad penny.

  For all her faults, he did not think Francie had been bought off. Or that she had consented willingly to a lifelong separation from her twin. How had St. Bride bent her to his will?

  You son of a bitch. You knew, didn’t you? And you punished her. You took her sister away from her. She stayed with you out of guilt, and you played on that guilt to keep her in line, until you finally went too far, and she’d had enough.

  He shut down his fury and went to work. Within minutes, he had established that no variation of “Francesca Abbott” existed anywhere on the Internet, except in a Missing ad Lucy had posted.

  But Francie must have left tracks in the sand. Time to forget that desire to beat the hell out of St. Bride; time to outwit the strategies of eleven years past. And I have the advantage, you bastard, because you thought you’d live forever. Richard pulled a yellow pad toward him and started to make notes.

  “Hey, what’s up? You look like something’s wrong.”

  He glanced up to see Meg standing right in front of him. He hit a key to minimize his inbox. “Nothing. Need something?”

  “Not really.” Meg perched on the side of his desk, ignoring the obvious fact that he was busy. He’d never met anyone more immune to taking a hint. “Hey, did you and my mom have a fight?”

  Running full-tilt, as usual, into someone else’s business. “Excuse me?”

  “Well, at breakfast, she was so quiet, she didn’t seem very – you know,” and her expression caricatured a giddy, love-struck woman so exactly that Richard came close to laughing. “She seemed kind of weirded out.” Her voice turned accusing. “Did you say something bad to her?”

  He was going to laugh. He’d forgotten what a dogged guardian Laura had. He might have twenty-four years and a foot and a half on her, but she was his equal in sheer bloody-minded determination. “That’s none of your business.”

  “You did say something,” said Meg, stiff with outrage. “You promised you’d be good to her! You promised!” She slammed her foot against the side of his desk, and then – unbelievably – she leaned in, right in his face. “Whatever you said, you take it back, you hear? You promised.”

  He stared back into Francie’s eyes, only inches away from his, and thought ruefully that he was getting his just desserts. He’d been spared what must have been truly terrible twos, but he was getting her right in time for her teens. An object lesson for any man tempted to enjoy a few Saturday afternoons with a pretty girl. This is what awaits you, fourteen years down the line.

  He said, “Back off, Margaret Mary. And do not kick this desk again, unless you want to spend the rest of the day in timeout. No headphones, no cell phone, no computer.”

  Inexplicably – no telling with that devious mind – that grabbed her interest. She sat back with an air of curiosity. “Really? You’d punish me?”

  He turned the yellow pad over and put it to one side. He didn’t put it beyond her to read upside down. “You bet.” He matched her tone. “I told you. My house, my rules. Leave that alone!”

  He’d made a mistake. In moving the pad, he’d exposed the envelope with Laura’s documents.

  He made a grab for it, but she had slipped off the desk, just out of reach. She ran off immediately, dancing nimbly, holding the envelope above her head – as if she seriously thought he might not be able to reach it. The arrangement of his desk slowed him down; he lost a couple of seconds coming from behind the desk, and by that time she had sprinted across the room.

  “You’re not my father!” she trilled. “You can’t punish me! Just wait till I tell my mother! She’ll be so mad!”

  The phone rang just as he reached her. She took advantage of his momentary pause to thrust the envelope up under her T-shirt. He said in disgust, “Grow up. It’s only your mother’s birth certificate,” and swung back to his desk, leaving her to her victory dance. He had to catch the call – probably Lucy, calling to report what she’d found out from Amy Stewart – far more important than winning this idiotic skirmish.

  But on his way back to his desk, he glanced over at her laptop, and got the shock of his life.

  For once, he wished he weren’t far-sighted. Coincidence, of course, had to be, that her browser showed search results for “standing stone of Ireland.” Wherever she’d heard that – surely not from Julie, and Laura would have said nothing – she was on the wrong track. Still, he felt the blood rising in his face.

  He shook his head and reached for the phone.

  Meg wandered back to the sofa, not bothering to pretend that she wasn’t eavesdropping.

  “Yes?” She wasn’t going to get anything from him.

  Lucy was speaking so fast, he had to ask her to slow down. “It’s her. It’s her. I know it. Amy says her brother saw a picture of Cat Courtney and recognized this woman. He’s going to talk to us. Today. Not right now, it’s still early there, he was going fishing with his kids, but when they get back,” she ran out of breath, “he’ll call us.” The hard-nosed lawyer who had held his feet to the fire the night before had vanished. “Oh, Richard, it’s her! She’s alive!”

  He hated to quash her. Poor Lucy, she’d wanted nothing more than her family reunited all these years, but there wasn’t going to be any happy family gathering here. Francie had committed a crime. Not the one she’d aimed for, thanks to a flat tire, but she had drugged Laura and left her to die, and that he did not intend to forgive and forget. And if she had truly meant to kill Diana, then she had two crimes to answer for.

  If she had implicated him to Laura, three.

  Maybe she had rebuilt her life, just as he had. Maybe she was happy and contented now, thinking herself safe, forgotten. She was going to find her past hard to outrun.

  “Luce,” he sliced through her very un-Lucy-like excitement. “Calm down.”

  She sobered immediately, recognizing how misplaced her excitement might be. This prodigal wouldn’t come home to open arms. “Oh, I know, but – well, let’s see what happens, okay?”

  They left it finally that they would make the call together. At Ashmore Minor, he decided, not here, where Laura might overhear, where Meg would certainly eavesdrop, where even Julie might listen accidentally.

  He had finished his emails when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Meg flop back down on the sofa, put her feet up on the coffee table, and open the envelope of documents. She started reading through them, blissfully silent, far enough away that she couldn’t see the printout of Francie’s picture.

  “Hey, guess what. My mom got baptized on your birthday.”

  He was searching the private investment banks in Seattle, not paying attention. “Hmmm.”
>
  “Yeah, my grandfather baptized her. It says here it was a conditional baptism. What happened? Do you think he made sure she got baptized before the police dragged him away?” Meg’s eyes sparkled. “Cool. Just think – he’s a wanted killer, the police are breaking down the door, they’re going to lock him up so they can hang him, but he has to make sure my mom won’t go to – where do pagan babies go?—”

  “Perhaps,” but she went on.

  “I got baptized that way too. My mom baptized me in the hospital.”

  That got his attention. “Why?”

  Meg shrugged. “I was real little when I was born. Guess Mom was afraid I wouldn’t make it or something.” She pulled out another document before he could frame the questions: Why were you born in September? How premature were you? “Oh, wow, I never knew this. Mom’s name wasn’t plain Abbott? Dane-Abbott? What the heck kind of name is that?”

  He saw it then, as clearly as if he and Diana had only now applied for their license. Diana Renée Dane-Abbott, she’d written in the space for Bride, at the insistence of the registrar who had told her to put down her legal name. But I’m not anymore, that’s not my name, Diana had protested, and the clerk had said no matter. Her marriage license had to match her birth certificate.

  He remembered his surprise; he had never realized that Lucy and Diana did not have the same last name. He remembered his words: Don’t make a fuss, Di, just do it, and her response: You don’t get it, Richard. I don’t want her name. Not now, not ever.

  Laura in his car, confessing in the dark of the night. I said my name was Laurel Dane.

  He said, “Your grandmother’s name was Dane. I believe they hyphenated the name—” she knew about illegitimacy, no delicate sensibilities to protect there— “because they weren’t married. Some people do that, to make sure the children share both names.”

  But, as he spoke, he pulled the copy of his marriage certificate from the divorce file, and, sure enough, there it was, in black and white: Diana Renée Dane-Abbott. They’d overlooked that – Dominic, the police, everyone – no one had ever thought that the two runaways might use their mother’s name.

  “Oh, wow,” said Meg. “How veddy, veddy British. Like St. Bride, isn’t it?”

  “Very.” Within three mouse clicks, he found Francesca Dane, member of a banking association in Seattle, Washington.

  ~•~

  There was, Lucy saw immediately, trouble in paradise. Laura and Richard were on the outs.

  She detected a definite chill the moment Laura pulled in by the kitchen door and began unloading the entire inventory of the grocery store. Richard called Julie and Meg downstairs to help him carry in more bags than it seemed possible to fit in the Lexus. Laura started putting things away while she, Lucy, sat in lovely, gestating splendor at the kitchen table, taking it easy, sipping a cool lemonade, and observing the dynamics of the Ashmore-St. Bride mix.

  “I feel so bad I can’t help,” she chirped.

  Richard sent her a look. “Sure, you do.”

  What a lovely mood he was in. So we’ll survive didn’t mean we’re getting along swimmingly, thank you very much. Interesting.

  And Julie and Meg – ah, a fascinating combination. The two daughters of Richard Ashmore circled each other warily, sticking knives in each other even as they competed for Daughter of the Year. As unalike as Dominic’s daughters had been, they were peas in a pod compared to these two – the please-don’t-mind-my-existence Julie, the I’m-the-best-thing-since-sliced-bread Meg.

  Meg. Daughter of two sisters. She saw both in Meg, darting back and forth with staples for the butler’s pantry. Like Francie, a ball of energy, the life of the party. But thoughtful, too, and genuinely loving toward her mother. Francie would have never come up, as Meg did, to bestow an impulsive hug before dancing off to her chore. But then Francie had never known the touch of an affectionate parent, touching her hair, giving her a just-us-girls smile.

  A thought there, a wisp of an idea….

  She saw something else, too. Julie watching the short interplay between Meg and Laura, a quickly stifled look of envy on her face. Julie who also hadn’t known a mother’s casual caress, who must thoroughly resent this sparkling girl with her easy confidence.

  Her nieces. Her sisters’ children. Her baby’s cousins. Blood of her blood. And now – if Francie had been pregnant three years ago, somewhere she had another niece or a nephew, as unknown as Meg only a few short weeks ago.

  Let Richard think she was still interested in justice. She no longer cared. She was going to use his money to bring Francie back into the family fold.

  She let the conversation wash over her.

  “Mom, did you get the protein mix? I’m almost out.”

  “Are these grapes seedless?” asked Julie.

  “No chocolate ice cream?” Richard, as bad as his daughters, foraged through the grocery bags. “Peach? Who eats peach?”

  “I do,” said Laura, and Lucy grinned at her sister.

  “Too healthy, Laurie. You know better. The Ashmores and their sweet tooth – Mom used to make us sundaes after school.”

  “That’s the problem with this kitchen.” Laura was stacking half the butcher’s counter in the freezer, and Lucy noticed the sidelong glance she gave Richard, still rummaging through the bags. “It’s a nutritional disaster area.” And then she stopped, her eyes resting on him as he pulled out a register receipt as long as his arm. “What are you doing?”

  Her voice had sharpened. Lucy watched.

  “I’m looking for—” He paused, obviously stunned by the total. “Whoa. Let me get my checkbook. I’ll write you a check.”

  The room came to a standstill.

  Ah, Richard. First in his class, brilliant in his field, dumb as a rock when it came to women, or at least this woman. How could a man be this clueless? Even the girls stopped skirting around each other – after you, Meg – no, after you, Julie – and froze.

  “Touch that checkbook,” said Laura sweetly, “and you are a dead man.”

  So they’d already tussled over money, had they? Had Richard finally realized what everyone else had known for days – that his entire net worth was a drop in the bucket to his lady love?

  For a moment, their eyes locked, their witnesses forgotten. Déjà vu all over again, Lucy thought, Richard wanting to be the one who gave more, Richard resisting the notion that, not only did Laura love more, she could give more too.

  Triple-time clueless.

  The silence dragged out. Neither looked willing to back down, and Richard, Lucy knew, was entirely capable of keeping this going until he won. But Laura wasn’t conceding – not like the Laura of old, who would have rushed to soothe his ruffled feathers, apologize for her defiance, and assure him of her complete acquiescence. Lucy noticed the rapid rise and fall of her blouse, the high color in her cheeks.

  This one Laura wanted to win.

  You are in big trouble, friend. Get out while you can.

  Richard saw that desire too, and irritation gave way to something suspiciously like amusement. Lucy saw him press his mouth in a line to hold back a smile.

  “I know better than to take on a lioness,” he said. “Sheathe your claws.”

  He gave Laura one last look, and turned back to the chore at hand.

  Lucy felt the palpable sense of relief in the room. Laura opened the freezer. Julie broke her paralysis by dropping a can on the floor. Meg immediately said, “Watch it! You almost broke my toe!” Lucy turned back to her drink, her hand shaking.

  She was relieved when Richard suggested that they go to Ashmore Minor to work.

  “What’s with you two?” she asked, after they had walked down the road in complete silence.

  She didn’t really expect him to tell her, and, indeed, he didn’t surprise. “To quote my niece, MYOB,” he said, and led the way into the smaller house where they had lived with Philip and Peggy until his grandfather died. “I’ve got dial-up. Where do you want to start?”

  �
�Let me see what you’ve got first.” Lucy settled down on the sofa and paged through his printouts. “So Francie has been using the Dane name? How in the world did we all overlook that?”

  Richard carried his laptop over to a recliner and booted up. “Because Dominic dropped Dane from the girls’ names after the trial, but he couldn’t do anything about their birth certificates.” He shook his head. “The devil’s in the details.”

  “No kidding.” How blind they all had been. Dominic had so thoroughly eradicated Renée Dane from her sisters’ lives that everyone had forgotten they had a mother. “Francie a banker. If that isn’t one of the stranger twists in life – I guess we can thank Cameron St. Bride for that.” She laid down the web page of the banking association and tapped her cheek. “You know, Laura mentioned Francie worked for the St. Bride bank. Don’t tell me it was as simple as him arranging a job transfer.”

  “Again – details.” Richard hit a few keys, and she heard the high-pitched whine of the modem.

  “Richard—” She hesitated. “I never asked. Did you think she was dead?”

  He took a moment to answer, and she saw it then, unexpected and unwelcome. He might disavow his actions of the past; he might insist that Francie answer for her crime. But, deep down, Richard Ashmore still felt something – maybe nostalgia, maybe gratitude for the warmth and affection she had given him. It hadn’t been all sex with him.

  “I figured she was,” he said finally. “I knew she hadn’t died at Ash Marine, but I did think she might be dead. I never thought Laura was lying about that – she just wasn’t honest about the particulars. I wondered if—” He stopped.

  She said gently, “What did you wonder?”

  “I thought,” he seemed careful, “she might have killed herself.”

  She hadn’t heard him correctly. “Francie? Are you joking?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She couldn’t let this pass. “Francie was nothing if not interested in her self-preservation. That girl would never have done anything to herself.”

  Richard tapped a couple of keys, and he did not look at her. “I don’t agree,” he said. “In fact, I’ll argue that no one bent on self-preservation would have gotten involved with me. You never had much to do with her, Luce – not when she was by herself, away from everyone. She was a different person.”