Chapter 4 - WHY CLAIRE BROUGHT LYDIA HOME
Claire did not try to deny it.
She sat in the armchair by the window while Ryan stood over her, too angry to sit himself.
“When I went to the care facility,” she said, “they had her listed as Lydia Carter under a long-standing private guardianship arrangement. The staff knew almost nothing beyond that she’d been there a long time and that the trust paid reliably.”
Ryan felt sick.
“You saw her and still said nothing to me.”
“I wanted proof.”
“You had my mother.”
“I had an elderly woman with cognitive issues who recognized your name and a payment trail connected to your father. That is not the same as proof.”
He hated that she had a point and hated even more that it did not excuse her.
Claire continued carefully. “The second time I visited, she was more lucid. She kept talking about this house. She said there were letters hidden behind the vent in the master bedroom. She said your father used to search drawers, so she hid things where ‘only Ryan and the dust would find them.’”
Ryan frowned. “This used to be my parents’ room.”
Claire nodded. “I know.”
“That vent was here when I was little.”
“I know.”
“You brought her here for letters?”
“Yes.”
“Without telling me?”
“Yes.”
She looked down. “I planned it for today because you were supposed to be at the builder’s conference until dinner. I brought Lydia here just after eleven with a private aide I hired for transport. I thought we’d check the vent area, see if anything was actually there, and get her back before you got home.”
Ryan laughed once, a hard, humorless sound. “And then what? You were going to sit me down over dessert and tell me, ‘By the way, your dead mother is alive and I hid her in the house to retrieve evidence’?”
Claire flinched.
“The chase was open from the closet side. Lydia insisted something had been pushed farther back in there years ago. I let her look.” Claire stopped, then forced herself to keep going. “Then you came home early. I panicked.”
Ryan could barely believe what he was hearing.
“So your solution was to leave a seventy-two-year-old woman inside a service space and tell Ethan not to say anything.”
“I did not tell Ethan there was a woman in there. He saw me near the closet earlier and asked questions. I told him not to come into the room and not to tell you anything until I talked to you.”
“That’s not better.”
“I know.”
It was the first time she said the words without defending herself.
Ryan turned away.
After a moment he asked, “Did you really leave her there from lunch until now?”
Claire shook her head quickly. “No. She was in the room with me at first. When I heard the garage door and realized you were home early, I panicked and asked her to stay in the chase for a few minutes while I thought.”
“Did she understand?”
“No. Not really.”
That was somehow worse.
Ryan stared at the wall.
“How long?”
“Maybe forty minutes before you came upstairs.”
It still felt unforgivable.
“And Ethan?”
“He must have heard her.”
Ryan thought of his small son kneeling on the carpet, feeding torn bread into metal slats because the adults around him had lost their minds.
“God.”
Claire’s voice was shaking now too. “What I did was wrong. I know that. But Ryan, I am not lying about the rest. I think that woman is your mother.”
He looked at her again.
“You think?”
Claire reached into the folder and pulled out a copied intake sheet from the facility, a photograph of a much younger Lydia from an old file, and a note in Claire’s own handwriting.
The younger woman in the photo had Ryan’s eyes.
Not sort of. Not vaguely. Unmistakably.
His throat closed.
Claire spoke softly. “That was the first time I knew this was real.”
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Ryan stared at the picture for so long that when he finally looked up again, he felt like a different person from the man who had walked into the room.
“If there are letters in that wall,” he said, “we’re finding them tonight.”
