Laura felt her knees buckle. ‘What?’

‘Right after I convinced David to leave you he drowned. Doesn’t that seem like a strange coincidence to you? I never imagined that my words would make him kill himself.’

Laura felt blows landing on her head. She tried to fend them off but there were too many and they were coming too fast. She felt dizzy, sick. ‘Are you trying to tell me that David was so upset about his father’s indiscretions that he committed suicide?’

‘No. That’s not it at all.’

‘Why couldn’t you have just left us alone?’ Laura ranted, tears flowing freely now. ‘We were happy and in love. Why should your disgusting affair have anything to do with us?’

‘Unfortunately,’ Mary said sadly, ‘it had everything to do with you.’

‘But why?’ Laura demanded. She was on the verge of striking out physically at her mother, of punching and kicking until she dropped from exhaustion. ‘David was an infant when Sinclair Baskin died. He was nothing like his father – you yourself said that. Why was it so important for you to destroy my marriage?’

Mary swallowed. She stood upright, her spine rigid. She turned to face Laura as if she were preparing to receive a terrible blow. Her body trembled. ‘Because,’ she said slowly, ‘you were married to your brother.’

29

‘This way, Miss.’

Estelle followed the president of First National of Hamilton into the bank. It was late, well past closing, but Estelle had managed to get him to come down and open the bank for her. How? Trade secrets. Estelle knew how to network better than anyone. She had taken the simple ritual of talking on the phone and transformed it into an art form. Give her a telephone and a local directory and Estelle could locate anybody or anything – like the truth behind Judy’s mystery key.

‘Please have a seat. May I have the key please?’

Estelle handed him the key.

‘And the notarized letter?’

She passed him the notarized letter Laura’s attorney had drawn up giving Estelle full access to whatever the key might open.

The banker headed down the hallway. He returned a minute later with the box under his arm.

‘Here it is.’

He handed her the box. Estelle opened it and skimmed through the contents. A lot of old bonds. An employment contract from Colgate College. Insurance claims.

On the bottom, Estelle found a diary from 1960. Laura’s words came back to her.

‘What exactly do you expect me to find, Laura?’

‘I don’t really know. Something to do with the past.’

‘The past?’

‘1960 to be more precise. Something happened to my aunt that year and I need to find out what.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘Neither do I. Don’t worry about it. Just keep your eyes open for anything involving 1960.’

Without further delay, Estelle poured everything from the box into a small bag with the other items. She thanked the banker and hurried to the taxi. The chartered jet was fueled and waiting for her at the airport. Estelle looked at her watch. With a little luck, she could be back at Laura’s apartment with the diary in just over two hours.

For more than a full minute, the kitchen remained silent. Only the sounds of Mary’s sobs penetrated the stillness that surrounded the two women. Laura was too stunned to move, too stunned to allow the truth to go any deeper than the periphery of her mind.

‘My brother?’ she was finally able to utter. ‘David was my brother?’

Mary nodded. ‘Sinclair Baskin is your real father.’

‘No,’ Laura said with a dull voice. ‘That can’t be.’

‘It’s true. God, I wish it wasn’t, but it’s true.’

‘But how…’

‘Because I was stupid and careless. During my affair with Sinclair, I became pregnant.’

‘Maybe Dad was the one. Maybe Dad got you preg – ’

Mary shook her head. ‘Your father and I had not slept together for nearly two months.’

‘You became pregnant?’

She nodded.

‘Did you tell Sinclair?’

‘Of course I told him. Like I said before, I was young and confused. I thought we were in love. I was prepared to leave your father and start life anew as Mrs Sinclair Baskin.’

‘So what happened?’

‘When Sinclair found out that I was pregnant, he threw me out.’

‘Just like that?’

Mary nodded. ‘Sinclair said that he didn’t care what I did with the baby as long as I just got out of his life right away. I was so scared, Laura. Terrified. I never felt so alone in all my life. I had nobody to turn to. I never had many girlfriends except on a superficial level. They thought I was pretty and popular but no one ever wanted to know me. I mean, there was no flesh and blood and feelings in pretty Mary. I was just a beautiful painting or landscape for people to stare at and admire. Nothing more. You must know the feeling.’

Laura did. ‘So what did you do?’

Mary went over to the sink, turned on the faucet, and filled a glass. ‘I cried a lot. And then I sat down and tried to think it through. What was I going to do? Abortion was not a real option back then. I mean, you could get one if you had the money but James handled all of our finances. He would know in a second.

‘I considered telling James the truth, but can you imagine what would have happened? He is very possessive. If he had ever learned what had happened, well, I don’t know what he would have done to me.’

‘Probably divorced you.’

‘Probably,’ Mary agreed.

‘So what did you decide to do?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she asked. ‘I pretended the child was his.’

‘How? You just said that you hadn’t slept together in months.’

‘The night after Sinclair threw me out, I started seducing James. Almost every night for months we made love.’

Laura felt sick to her stomach. ‘Seduction was always the answer for you, wasn’t it, Mother?’

‘I wish there had been another solution, but what else could I do? I had to make him think you were his child. It was not easy. You were a very difficult pregnancy. For weeks I was sick as a dog and delirious. I vomited every morning. I was bleeding profusely. I thought I was going to miscarry and, God forgive me, I wanted to so badly. Days went by that I spent in the grips of a fever and could barely remember anything.’

‘But you still managed to seduce him.’

‘I had to, Laura. I had to make him think the baby was his. There were two big obstacles standing in the way of my deception: timing and family resemblance. You see, if everything kept on schedule, you were going to be born nine months after I became pregnant by Sinclair, which would be a month or two too soon if you were really James’s baby.’

‘How did you get around that?’

‘I figured that in the basking light of parenthood, I could gloss it over as an early arrival. But luckily, you were a very late baby anyway. I didn’t need to lie.’

‘And family resemblance?’

‘You ended up looking just like me. No one noticed if there was a similarity between you and James. We moved to Boston a year later. My secret was safe. With Sinclair dead, the only other person who knew the truth was my sister.’

‘You told Judy?’ Laura asked in disbelief.

‘I needed to trust someone, Laura. I couldn’t do this by myself. So I confided in the one person I could always depend on.’

‘Wasn’t she still furious at you for stealing Sinclair from her?’

‘We were sisters, Laura. Just like you and Gloria. Judy could no more turn her back on me in a time of crisis than you could turn yours on Gloria. Without her help, I don’t know what I would have done.’

‘So Aunt Judy knew everything?’

‘Yes.’

‘And she was going to tell me, wasn’t she? That was why she called me the other day.’

‘Yes,’ Mary said slowly. ‘I think she planned on doing just that.’

‘So you killed her too.’