But I had already been wrong about too much.
“Give me everything,” I said.
Gregory pushed the envelope toward me. “There’s one more thing.”
I waited.
“The note was not written by Claire.”
I looked down at it. “How do you know?”
“Claire rarely wrote anything by hand. When she did, it was sharp, neat. This is older handwriting. Formal. See the capital R? The way the T crosses low?”
I stared at the note.
A memory surfaced so suddenly I almost stepped back from it.
Birthday cards with heavy cream envelopes.
Thank-you notes left on silver trays after charity dinners.
A single sentence written across the top of a speech draft years ago: Too sentimental. Cut half.
My mother.
No.
The thought arrived and I rejected it in the same heartbeat.
Evelyn Bellamy had never loved Megan. That was no secret. She had considered Megan too quiet, too stubborn, too unwilling to be molded into the sort of wife suitable for a man who carried our last name. But dislike was one thing. This was something else. This was a blade slipped between ribs while everyone smiled over dinner.
