"What's wrong?"
"Nothing." Brian came around the desk to kiss her. "I've been grilling
Michael. It seems he has ideas about my daughter."
She smiled, on the verge of believing it before she saw her father's
eyes. "What is it?"
"I've just told you." He put an arm around her shoulders and would have
led her out, but she turned to Michael.
"I won't be lied to."
"I do have ideas about his daughter," Michael countered.
She shrugged off the arm around her shoulder and stood firm. "Will you
let me see the envelope that's in your pocket?"
"Yes, but I'd rather do it later."
"Dad, would you leave us alone a moment."
"Emma' "Please."
Reluctantly he closed the door behind him and left them alone.
"I trust you, Michael," she began. "If you tell me that the only thing
you and Dad talked about in this room was our relationship, I'll believe
you."
He started to. He wanted to. "No, it's not all we talked about. Will
you sit?"
It was going to be bad. She found herself gripping her hands together
in her lap as she had done since her school days when she was afraid to
hear what she had to hear. Instead of speaking, Michael took the
envelope out of his pocket and handed it to her.
Ice prickled along her skin as she saw the name on the back of the
envelope. A message from the dead, she thought, and wished she could
have laughed at the phrase. She opened the letter and sat in silence
reading it.
She was so much like her father, Michael noted. Her expressions, the
way grief came into her eyes, the quiet way she held herself as she
coped with it. Before she spoke, she folded the letter again and gave
it back to him.
"This is why you're here?"
"Yes."
Her eyes were dark and wretched when they met his. "I wanted to think
you couldn't stay away from me."
"i can't."
She lowered her head again. It was so difficult to think when the ache
came this way, marching hard. "Do you believe this letter?"
"It's not up to me to believe," he said carefully. "I'm following it
up."
"I believe it." Emma had a flash of her last clear image of Jane,
standing in the doorway of the dirty house, her face shadowed with
bitterness. "She only wanted to hurt Dad. She wanted to make him
suffer. I still remember the way she looked at him the day he took me
away. I was only a baby really, but I remember."
She took a ragged breath. Tears were useless now. "How is it possible
to love and hate a person as she did? How is it possible to take those
feelings and distort them so completely that you could play a part in
taking a little boy's life? It's been almost twenty years, but she