“I’ll let you ask Lillian about her part of this story,” Helen said.

“Perhaps the injury was worse, because she never conceived another child. And there was the possibility, if her husband returned from Europe, that he would ask questions about when and how the pregnancy ended.”

“He was an ass,” was all that Helen would say on that subject.

“Helen liked Lillian, and perhaps she even wondered if Lillian’s child might have been a half brother or half sister of her own. Whatever the case, Helen and Lillian comforted each other, and somewhere in all this time of worry and woe, they came up with a solution. Helen would quit the paper, ostensibly to help Lillian with her new project. They would live in the mountains, away from the prying eyes of local society. Lillian’s name would be on the child’s birth certificate, and she would raise him or her in a life of privilege. She swore, in exchange for Helen’s secrecy-and her child-that she would never deny Helen access to the little girl who was born up in the mountains that winter.”

Max was staring at her, obviously having trouble taking it all in.

“You’d probably like to hate me,” Helen said to him. “Maybe you do. I won’t blame you at all. The promises I made to Lillian were the hardest I’ve ever had to keep. But they were promises.”

He shook his head, saying, “I don’t hate you, but…my God, Helen…”

She began to cry. I wanted to go to her, but Frank put a hand on my shoulder.

Max hesitated only briefly, then embraced her.

“You have questions, I’m sure,” she said, still crying. “I can’t answer all of them, but I’m sure I can get Lillian to see the wisdom of letting some part of these secrets out now.”

“Did Jack Corrigan ever know?” he asked.

“Yes. I think at first he suspected-well, I’ll leave that part of the story to Lillian. One day O’Connor announced that he was marrying a woman he’d only bedded once, because she was pregnant, and Jack was a horse’s ass about it. So I confronted him, and in turn he confronted me, and after calling Lillian and threatening her with all sorts of ridiculous things, he learned the truth from us.”

Max sat silently, then said, “Can we test to make sure, just so we know I’m the child who…”

“Of course.”

“And Lillian-do you think she’ll help me bring this out in public? Some of it, anyway?”

“We’ll work on that together. I think if she realizes that the Yeagers can finally be punished for what they did to Katy, and our lives, then…yes.” She smiled. “She really isn’t one tenth as selfish as she pretends to be.”

We left them to talk together. I went out to check on Ethan again. We arrived just in time to hear a doctor express cautious optimism about his survival. We learned that he was out of surgery and about to be moved to ICU. “No visitors for a while, please-except-is there someone named Irene here?” I came forward. “If you can keep it very brief, I think it would be good for him to see you’re alive.” He smiled. “He thinks we’re lying to him.”

Frank came with me. Ethan was pale, connected to a lot of machinery, obviously full of painkillers. He smiled at us and said, “Thought I’d lost you.”

“No. Rest and recover. We’ll get a room ready for you at home.”

He looked toward Frank. “You sure you want me there?”

“You saved her,” Frank said. “You’re family now, like it or not.”

“Family,” he said. “Sounds good.”

About The Author

JAN BURKE is the recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award® for Best Novel, the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award. She lives in Southern California with her husband, Tim, and her dogs, Cappy and Britches.