Chapter 4 - The Will Beneath the Angel
Emergency generators restored power in eleven seconds.
It felt like eleven years.
Police rushed through the clinic. Julia was moved to an ambulance and
taken to a legitimate hospital under guard.
Someone had cut power from an exterior utility box.
Whoever did it escaped into the snow.
By Christmas morning, Graham and I were sitting in a hospital waiting
room beneath a plastic wreath while Julia underwent an emergency
delivery.
“Go home,” he told me.
“I will when I know why somebody knew Lucy’s name.”
He rubbed his face.
“You should hate my family.”
“I don’t know your family.”
“You know enough.”
“No. I know secrets. Families are what people do after the secrets come
out.”
He looked at me strangely.
“My husband used to say something like that.”
“What happened to him?”
“Car accident.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
At 5:32 a.m., a nurse appeared.
Julia had delivered a healthy baby girl.
Graham closed his eyes.
“Can I see her?”
“Julia asked for Natalie first.”
I was stunned.
Inside the room, Julia looked exhausted but alert.
The baby slept beside her.
“She has hair,” Julia whispered.
“Lots of it.”
“My mother said I looked like a peach when I was born.”
“Where is your mother?”
Julia looked toward the door.
“She was trying to expose Charles Vale before he died.”
“Expose what?”
“Your family’s charity.”
The Vale Foundation had funded hospitals, schools and Christmas food
drives for decades.
Julia claimed Charles had used one of its medical programs to hide
illegal adoptions and coercive guardianships involving young women from
poor families.
Mara had discovered records.
“She wanted Graham to know,” Julia said. “But she didn’t trust
Beatrice.”
“Why contact me?”
“Because you aren’t a Vale.”
That answer chilled me.
“What does Lucy have to do with this?”
Julia’s eyes filled.
“I don’t know.”
“You knew her name.”
“I heard Monica say it.”
“When?”
“Two nights ago. She told Dr. Pike the hotel manager’s daughter had seen
too much.”
My stomach dropped.
Julia squeezed my hand.
“Take her somewhere safe.”
Police placed Rachel and Lucy in a protected hotel suite.
Graham’s attorneys began digging through Charles Vale’s estate.
At noon, Harold called.
“We found reference to a sealed codicil.”
“Where?”
“In a letter Charles sent to his old attorney.”
The attorney had died.
His files had been donated to a university archive.
But one note remained:
THE ORIGINAL SHALL REMAIN WHERE THE ANGEL WATCHES CHRISTMAS.
Lucy heard me repeat the phrase.
“The angel?”
“What?”
“At the hotel. The big gold angel over the old ballroom doors.”
The Bellweather had belonged to the Vale family before being sold
twenty-five years earlier.
We returned with police.
The enormous carved angel had hung above the ballroom since 1948.
Maintenance brought a ladder.
Behind the wooden figure was a narrow cavity.
Inside sat a metal document tube.
Graham opened it.
Charles Vale’s original will was dated nineteen years earlier.
The first page looked ordinary.
The fourth did not.
If his daughter Mara Vale or any biological descendants survived him,
forty percent of his personal holdings would transfer to Mara’s line.
Julia was not poor.
She was worth hundreds of millions.
And if the baby was legally recognized as Julia’s child, Evelyn’s
fraudulent trust could never control those assets.
Harold looked sick.
“That gives Monica a motive to make Julia’s baby appear to be Evelyn’s.”
Graham read farther.
Then stopped.
“There’s another beneficiary.”
I looked over his shoulder.
The name was unfamiliar.
ELIZABETH BROOKS.
My last name.
My mother’s first name.
I laughed because the alternative was screaming.
“That’s impossible.”
Graham looked at me.
“Was your mother ever employed by my family?”
“She was a hotel housekeeper.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
Harold turned another page.
A handwritten notation had been added beside Elizabeth’s name.
WITNESS TO ST. AGNES TRANSFER.
My mother had died twelve years ago without ever mentioning the Vales.
I suddenly remembered something she used to say every Christmas.
Never trust a family that needs a locked room for its memories.
I had thought it was one of her odd sayings.
Now I wasn’t sure.
Lucy wandered toward the Christmas tree while adults argued over lawyers
and police jurisdiction.
Then she bent down.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“There’s a present with Grandma’s name.”
My heart stopped.
Beneath the tree sat a small package wrapped in paper that had not been
there before.
The tag read:
FOR ELIZABETH BROOKS.
May you like
Underneath, in fresh ink:
IF SHE IS DEAD, GIVE THIS TO NATALIE.
