Spirit (Blackwood Security, #10.5) - Elise Noble Page 0,32
Another family member would be a gift, but I just don’t think there’s anyone close. Mom—your Grandma Beulah—was an only child, and so was Grandpa Enoch. I guess it’s possible that there’s someone farther back. What would that make them? A second cousin? A third cousin? I never really understood all that ‘once removed’ business.”
“If one of Mina’s great-grandparents had children, that would make them Mina’s first cousin twice removed. The ‘removed’ part refers to the generation. Following down the family line to the same generation as Mina, that would be a third cousin.”
“I’m still not sure…”
“Shall I draw a diagram?”
“That’d be mighty helpful.”
Meriah was the one speaking, but I was too busy watching Rhoda to listen. She’d gone absolutely white. And her breathing was funny as well. How long had it been since my last first-aid refresher? I was probably due another one soon.
“Rhoda? Are you okay?”
“I… I…”
“Auntie?”
Rhoda’s voice dropped to a strangled whisper. “No… Nobody was meant to find out.”
“Find out what?” Mina asked.
Were we about to get some answers? Because from the look of Rhoda, I wasn’t sure I wanted them. Valerie had tried to warn us, hadn’t she? But I’d been so focused on whether we could find the truth for Gwendolyn that I’d never properly stopped to consider whether we should. Fuck. We’d started off in a Hallmark Christmas movie and somehow taken a wrong turn into Jurassic Park.
“I-I-I might know who she is. There’s nobody else…” Rhoda closed her eyes and heaved in a breath. “But I thought she was dead. She was meant to be dead.”
“Who? Who was meant to be dead?”
“Your aunt.”
“I have another aunt?”
“No, you only have one aunt. Sarah.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “Sarah and Meriah. Such pretty names. Such pretty girls.”
“But I don’t understand. You’re my aunt. Aren’t you?”
Rhoda shook her head sadly. “I’m so sorry.” Her knuckles turned white where she gripped Meriah’s hand. “Merry, I’m so sorry.”
Meriah glared at us. “Perhaps you should leave.”
If only. This was like watching a slow-motion car crash.
Rhoda sucked in a breath. “Mina, I-I-I’m your grandmother.”
Boom.
Dan’s eyes went wide, and Valerie’s jaw dropped. Shit, shit, shit. Allegedly, this was supposed to be the happiest time of the year, yet here we were, three and a half thousand miles from home and tearing a family apart. I wished with all my black little heart that we could turn back the clock. Bradley had already bought Gwendolyn’s slippers. The only thing I’d needed to do was add a bloody gift tag.
“What?” Meriah gasped. “Then…then…you’re…you’re…”
“I’m your mother, not your sister.” Rhoda was crying freely now, and Valerie fumbled for tissues in her purse. Had she been taking lessons in preparedness from Dan? “This is all such a mess. Such an awful mess. It always has been, but how could I tell you? Mom—my mom—forbade me to.”
“Who’s my father? If you’re my mother, then who’s my father?”
“Your father.”
“Yes! My father!”
“Your father is still your father. And Sarah’s father too.”
No, this wasn’t just a car crash, this was an interstate pile-up.
“But…how…?”
“Enoch, that sick, sick beast, he started molesting me when…when…” Rhoda paused to wipe her eyes. “When I was nine years old. And when I was twelve, I became pregnant with Sarah.”
“What happened to her? What the hell happened?”
Now Meriah was crying too, and if we weren’t careful, we were going to run out of tissues. Me? I just felt sick. Perhaps I could text Bradley? Please bring hankies and a bucket.
Valerie reached out and squeezed Rhoda’s hand. “I understand how difficult this is. You’ve been bottling this up for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Most of my life. I mean, Mom knew. Not at first, but later.”
“You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”
“But I’ve started, so I have to finish, don’t I? The lies, the past… I’ve hurt so many people. But I honestly didn’t think Sarah was still alive. How could she be? Mom said…she said she buried her. Not a day has gone past when I haven’t thought of Sarah, I swear.”
I believed her. This was a woman whose secret had been eating at her from the inside out for nearly six decades, and now the dam was breaking. How much damage would the flood of truth do?
“Enoch said he’d kill me if I told Mom what he’d done. Kill my baby, too. So I pretended it was a boy at school, a boy I refused to name, and said I’d been stupid. Mom was furious. Horrified. Appearances