Page 87 of Deadly Little Scandals
I wasn’t sure if I meanthereas in Two Arrows orhereas in Ellen’s house. I was fishing, and the old woman who sat down in the chair between Sadie-Grace and me was smart enough to know it.
“You tell my sister you met me?” she asked after a moment.
When I’d first moved in with Lillian, I’d viewed my exchanges with her as a form of bartering: I’d answer one of her questions in hopes of her answering mine. We’d progressed past that, these last few months, but Ellen seemed like the type to respect an even trade.
Or better yet, a trade that favored Ellen.Answer the question. Answer any question she asks you.
“I told Lillian about my last visit,” I confirmed. “I told her that I met you.” Then I volunteered the answer to her next question before she could weigh the costs and benefits of asking it. “She said that I shouldn’t come back.”
“Smart girl.” Ellen took a long drink from a mason glass that very clearly did not contain lemonade. “Lil,” she clarified. “Not you.”
I probably should have heard some kind of threat or warning in those words—the implication that not coming back would have been smart—but I couldn’t get past the idea of someone,anyone, referring to the great Lillian Taft, grande dame of society, as agirl.
“You’re going to catch flies with that mouth if you keep gaping at me,” Ellen said mildly.
Nothing about this woman is mild.I had to remind myself of that, and then I circled back around to the point.
“Lillian doesn’t know that I came here today. She doesn’t know that Ana gave birth in Two Arrows.” I waited a fraction of a second to see if that would get me a reaction. It didn’t. “Lillian doesn’t know that you’re the one who arranged for Ana’s baby’s adoption.”
Adoption,a voice in my mind whispered,or sale.
Ellen took her time taking my measure, then allowed herself another healthy drink of the concoction in her jar. “Around here, we’d say that a girl like you, making assumptions like those and talking that kind of talk, was getting a little big for her britches.”
Her accent was still coming in and out. I wasn’t sure what to read into that, but I did have the general sense that this could go badly.
A smarter person would have backed off. “I just want to know what happened to Ana’s baby,” I said.
“That baby is our friend Campbell’s half-sister,” Sadie-Grace chimed in. “Or maybe her half-brother? And there’s this girl Victoria, and she’s the baby’s—”
“Ellen doesn’t care about Victoria,” I told Sadie-Grace.
“There’s a lot of things I don’t care about,” Ellen commented. That, too, was a warning—that I shouldn’t get too comfortable here, just because we were related by blood. “And,” Ellen continued, “there’s a lot of things I do care about. My family. This town.”
Your business,my brain filled in. People asking questions was bad for business. And rich people coming around probably wasn’t great.
“Just tell us about the baby,” I said. “There’s no reason not to. Ana isn’t ever coming back here, and it’s not like whoever ended up with the baby is ever going to be in the market for another one. It’s been nineteen years.”
That earned me a heavy stare. My phrasing—talking aboutthe marketfor babies—was tiptoeing its way closer and closer to the wordsold. It was bad enough, from Ellen’s perspective, that Sadie-Grace and I knew her father had shown his gratitude toward Beth with a healthy check. The woman who ran this town couldn’t be happy about the idea that we knew—or at least suspected—that Audie wasn’t the first child she’d exchanged for a big wad of cash.
“Please,” I said. It would have sounded more earnest coming from Sadie-Grace, but I knew in my bones that she’d take the word better coming from me. There was a long silence—tenser for me than for Sadie-Grace, who didn’t realize that our situation was precarious in the least.
“If I tell you what you want to know, you’ll git?” Ellen asked me finally.
“Immediately and without any further questions,” I confirmed.
Another few seconds ticked by. Each one felt intentional. And then Ellen placed her forearms on the table and leaned toward me.
“Before you go getting high-and-mighty, you should know that with Ana, with that baby? I didn’t take a dime from anyone. That wasn’t business. That was me taking pity on a girl thatyourworld had spit out like she was nothing.”
I wasn’t sure I bought the idea that Ellen had helped Ana out of the goodness of her heart, but I knew better than to say that out loud.
Not when we werethisclose to answers.
“You helped Ana find a home for the baby.” My heart was beating in my chest like there was actually a person in there with a gun, firing it over and over into my rib cage.Thump. Thump. Thump.
“A good home,” Sadie-Grace added.
A certain kind of home,I thought, but what came out of my mouth was: “Did Lillian help you?”
