Page 34 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
I hate that even now, despite everything, I’m curious. “What letter?”
Her smile returns—she’s happy to know something I don’t—but it’s not mocking this time, either. She genuinely lights up as she tells me, and I realize it’s because she’s proud. She’s proud of herself for putting it all together. “I was staying with Grandpa at his penthouse, years ago. He was out doing something—you remember how he was never home—and I was bored, so I started looking through his desk.”
“You went through his desk?” I don’t know why after all she’s done that this feels like such a transgression, but it does. Grandpa Leo’s desk had been sacrosanct, inviolable, a shrine of politics and business that we’d never been allowed near. Even as small children, we’d been swept up in his arms any time we got close to the desk and deposited elsewhere. He always claimed the ecosystem of reports and memos and letters was too delicate to be disturbed.
“Greer, the reason he didn’t want anyone inside his desk is because he had the most incredible things in there. Dossiers on almost every politician you can imagine. Ledgers with money trails that went to all sorts of interesting places. And letters. Letters from so many people…including Penley Luther.”
Something fits together in my mind, and I start to see. “Luther confessed the affair to Grandpa Leo?”
Abilene nods. “He was in agony with guilt during his last days,” she says. “He knew he was dying and knew he’d failed this child, failed his precious dead Imogen. But even though he felt all this guilt, he still couldn’t bring himself to find Maxen. See his son for himself. He still worried about what the press would say.”
God. I’d grown up hearing Luther’s name invoked like some sort of ritual blessing on a politician or a new bill, hearing him talked about as if he were an uncanonized saint. And to learn that this hero was actually so weak is unsettling. My heart twists for Ash and for the long-dead Imogen, who died in order that Ash could live. Two people Penley Luther failed in the most unforgivable ways possible.
Abilene correctly reads my expression. “Exactly. Reprehensible. And Grandpa told him exactly that—that he had a duty to this son and that he wouldn’t die in peace unless he’d found some way to make amends. Luther’s version of making amends was to set aside some money for ‘Imogen Leffey’s youngest child,’ and it was a laughably small amount given the size of his estate.”
“So that’s how you learned Luther had a secret child with Imogen Leffey. But how did you learn that child was Maxen Colchester?”
She smiles like a teacher might smile, as if I’ve asked exactly the right question. “Because Grandpa was named the executor of his will. He knew that Imogen’s youngest child was also Luther’s, and after Luther’s death, he hired a law firm that employed a young Merlin Rhys to find this child. He knew who Maxen was all along. He knew before almost anyone else.”
I sit back in my chair. “Grandpa never uttered a word about any of it…” I say, mostly to myself. I think of all the times we talked leading up to my wedding, of the time we saw Ash in Chicago. Never once had he breathed a word about Ash being Luther’s son.
“Luther swore him to secrecy, and I’d imagine Grandpa felt invested in protecting his legacy.”
“And you knew this years ago?”
“Yes,” she says. “A year or so after Chicago.”
“You never told me.” Until this last year, Abilene had confided everything in me. I’m shocked that she kept something so huge to herself.
“I liked being the only one to know,” she admits, glancing down at her lap. “It felt special, to know something that important, that secret. And so exciting—I could just see the story when it blew up. Handsome War Hero Actually the Son of Revered Leader…I mean, it has this epic feeling, you know? Like something out of a soap opera.”
“Or Thomas Malory,” I murmur. “But then how did you find out about Lyr? Surely Grandpa couldn’t have known about that.”
“He didn’t,” Abilene agrees. “That came later, only a couple of years ago. I finally decided to tell Morgan Leffey, and there was something about her when I told her the truth. Like, something about her face. She just looked so sick, sick and sad and scared. It was not at all what I expected. That she might want to exploit it for political gain, yes, that she might be angry at Penley Luther or at her mother or even me, certainly. But it was none of that. It was like she’d just seen a dead body or something equally horrifying.”
I trace the wooden edge of my desk with a fingertip, that hateful invitation still within sight. I can’t believe I’m sitting here talking with her, letting her explain herself, letting her preen over all her victories. But I still don’t reach for my phone.
Instead, I ask, “So that tipped you off that she must have had a secret child of her own?”
Abilene doesn’t miss the skeptical edge in my tone, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. “That’s what tipped me off that something was strange about her and Maxen. I mean, sure, they’d been political rivals during his campaign and they must have crossed paths a few times because of Embry, but even then, that didn’t explain the existential horror I saw. I tried to ask her about it, get her to talk about Maxen, but she showed me out of her office after that and refused to speak with me again.” A look of anger crosses Abilene’s face. “Like I was some kind of crazy constituent and not Leo Galloway’s granddaughter. Like I should be ashamed of myself, when I was the reason she ever learned something so important in the first place!”
I’m impatient to get back to the story. “But if she didn’t tell you, then how did you find out?”
“Ah.” She looks pleased with herself. “It was actually quite easy once I decided to start tracing timelines back. I started with her, used a cute guy in her father’s lobbying firm to dig up old records, old expenses. And guess who’d taken two visits to Ukraine at the same time Maxen was stationed there?”
“Morgan.” I know this part of the story already, about how Morgan and Ash had met, fucked, and then she’d returned and almost died at Glein. “But the baby?”
“About five months after her second trip to the Ukraine, all her expenses stopped, came to an abrupt halt. Except for a fifteen thousand dollar fee paid to a Manhattan law firm.”
“The same one Merlin worked for?” I guess.
“The very same. Merlin arranged everything for Lyr through them—the guardianship transfers, the burying of hospital records, everything—even I couldn’t get to the truth from there. I had to fly out to Seattle and actually bribe an administrative assistant to get into the old records to see for myself. Found the nurse who’d been in the delivery room. I didn’t think she’d remember anything, but it was worth asking her, and guess what? She did remember something unusual: the mother had wanted the name the baby Maxen after his father, and then she changed her mind after a family friend suggested the name Lyr. Uncommon names, the nurse thought at the time, and the birt
h stuck with her.”
“God,” I say. Even knowing the truth on my own, listening to the story unfold still holds a sordid kind of shock.
“From there, it was pretty easy to track Lyr down, and see him for myself. And once you see him, there’s no doubt.”
