“The family?”

“The estate.”

“There it is,” Maxwell said.

Julian’s jaw tightened.

“You can afford contempt because other people protected your interests.”

“By locking up my mother?”

“By preventing a confused woman from dismantling your future.”

Eleanor closed her eyes.

He had said that before.

In this room.

For twelve years.

Maxwell looked at her.

Then at Julian.

“Was that what you told yourself each night you watched her?”

Elena’s grip had become painful around the violin’s neck.

Fourteen years.

The age she had been when Mara died.

Twenty-six years.

Her own age now.

She looked toward Pierce.

He was watching her with an expression she did not want to understand.

“No,” she said.

Nobody had asked her a question.

Maxwell turned.

Elena shook her head.

“No. Don’t.”

Eleanor stared at her.

The room seemed to draw backward.

The violin.

The missing infant.

The dying nurse’s letter.

Mara’s name witnessing the will.

Julian’s voice, a few moments earlier.

A stranger.

Elena took one step away from the piano.

“Mara was my mother.”

Eleanor’s face crumpled.

“Oh.”

It was not a cry of recognition.

It was grief at the possibility of something she hardly dared touch.

Pierce began to speak.

Ortiz stopped him.

“Answer clearly, Doctor. Do you know what happened to Mrs. Anderson’s daughter?”

His eyes moved toward Julian.

Then to Elena.

“Yes.”

Julian had arranged the infant’s disappearance.

Philip had wanted a daughter.

Eleanor’s family trust treated her children equally.

With another child, Maxwell would no longer be sole heir.

Julian had spent nine years watching the boy he had given away become the center of a fortune he could not otherwise reach.

A baby girl threatened that future.

Pierce already owed him money.

The doctor told Eleanor the infant had died.

He told a private placement intermediary that a mother had surrendered a baby confidentially.

Mara Marlowe and her husband had been waiting years to adopt.

They lived in Providence then.

They did not know the Andersons.

They received an infant, documentation, and a story about a birth mother who could not be contacted.

They named the baby Elena.

Elena stared at Pierce.

“My father knew?”

“No. Neither of them knew where you came from.”

“My papers—”

“Some were falsified. Others were issued from the information we provided.”

“We,” Maxwell repeated.

Pierce flinched.

“Yes.”

Elena pressed her lips together.

Her father had died when she was eleven.

Her mother had died when she was fourteen.

She had spent half her life believing one was gone and the other had chosen to leave.

Now strangers were trying to take even the beginning of her life apart.

Eleanor did not reach for her.