Chapter 71 - The Voice in the Vestry
My vision swam in a sickening wave of vertigo. For nine years, I had held Lily against my chest through fevers, through the cold winters when the woodstove failed, through every court hearing where Melissa treated her like an unwanted stray.
*Melissa’s child.*
"She let you raise her because of the trust clause, you fool," Julian’s voice purred through the thin wooden partition. "The diocesan deed only reverts to the firstborn grandchild of Evelyn Van Der Bilt. Melissa couldn't keep her clean with her credit history, so she dropped her on your doorstep with an Easter dress and a forged birth certificate."
The floorboards behind Julian suddenly creaked with a heavy, deliberate step.
Julian froze. "Who's there? Thomas?"
He turned away from the confessional, pointing the revolver toward the center aisle.
The heavy oak doors of the sanctuary had swung wide open. The mist from the ridge rolled into the nave like a white shroud, curling around the bases of the stone pillars.
Emerging from the fog was an elderly woman, leaning heavily upon a polished silver-tipped cane. She wore a tailored black coat, a black veil over her silver hair, and around her neck hung a double strand of salt-water pearls that gleamed against the darkness.
Evelyn.
"Put the gun away, Julian," she said, her voice dry, raspy, but commanding with the absolute authority of an emperor entering a conquered province. "You were always too crude with family matters."
Julian lowered the gun an inch, his shoulders rigid. "You said you'd stay at the inn until the papers were signed."
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"I changed my mind," Evelyn said, stepping past the communion rail, her pale, hawkish eyes looking straight through the wooden lattice of the confessional where I crouched in the dark. "Because Nora needs to understand what happens to the girl if she refuses to sign the transfer."
She raised her left hand. Draped across her gloved fingers was Lily’s bright red school backpack, dripping with wet, black river mud.
