فصل 47

CHAPTER 47

Time seemed to slow as they stood, staring at each other. Hal’s throat was dry, and her voice croaked when she finally spoke.

“It’s an album. But—but maybe you knew that.”

She tried to say the words lightly, but they sounded strange in her own mouth, and she realized she was hugging herself defensively, as though to protect herself from some unknown attacker. Think about how you hold yourself, Hal, it’s not just what we read in others—it’s what they read in us.

Her face was stiff, and she forced a smile, widening the corners of her mouth in what felt like a death-mask grimace.

“Well . . . I’m very tired . . .”

Ezra took the album from her hand, but he didn’t move to leave. Instead he put his hand on the wall, leaning casually, blocking Hal’s route to the exit, and he cocked his head and smiled at her as he leafed through the pages.

“Oh . . . this old thing. Gosh, I had no idea Mother had kept hold of so many pictures.” Hal said nothing, only watched as he turned the pages.

“How did you stumble across this old thing?”

“I—” Hal swallowed, hard. She forced her arms to drop to her sides, making her body language open, trying to look relaxed. “I couldn’t sleep. I was looking for a book to read. I went to the study.” “I see. And . . . did you . . . look at the photographs, by the way?” His voice was casual, careless even. But as he said the words, Hal knew—he knew.

She had seen something in him, some change in the way he held himself, some imperceptible difference in his stance. She had seen that flicker of recognition when she hit a nerve too often in her booth to be mistaken.

She saw it now.

“J-just the first ones,” Hal said. She made her breathing slow, steady, listening detachedly to the tremor in her own voice, trying to quiet it, make her voice calm, soothing. “Why?” “No reason,” he said. But there was no pretense now. He was not smiling any longer, and Hal felt her heart quicken.

Get out—while you still can.

“Well . . . I think I’ll go back to bed now, if you don’t mind. . . .” She said the words slowly and carefully, keeping very calm, waiting for him to move aside. But he only shook his head.

“I don’t think so. I think you did look at that album.”

There was a long, long silence. Hal felt her heart beating inside her. And then it was as if something inside her broke open, and the words came tumbling out, full of bitterness.

“Why didn’t you tell me? You knew. You knew. You were Ed. Why did you pretend it was poor Edward?” “Hal—”

“And why did you let me go on thinking that my mother—that my mother—” But she couldn’t finish. She could only sink to the bed, her head in her hands, shaking with tears.

“My whole life has been a lie!”

Ezra said nothing, only looked down at her, motionless, and Hal felt the cold inside her harden into certainty.

“What did you do to her, Ezra?” She said the words softly, but they sounded like what they were: an accusation.

His face was neutral, but he was not able to hide his eyes, and in the stark, bright moonlight Hal saw the pupils, black against dark, dilate suddenly, wildly, with shock, and then contract. And she knew that she had hit the truth.

“You made a mistake,” she said quietly. “Earlier tonight. It niggled at me all evening, something you’d said, I couldn’t pin down what it was that was bothering me. I kept thinking it was something you’d said in the car, and running over our conversations, but it wasn’t. It was something you said in the food court.” “Hal—” Ezra said. His throat was hoarse, and he cleared it, as if he were finding it hard to speak. He took his arm down from the wall, folded his arms. “Hal—” “Mown down outside her own house, you said. You were talking about Maud, Ezra, not Maggie. And how did you know that, about the house?” “I don’t know what—”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” She stood up, facing him, her head barely to his chest, but suddenly she was no longer afraid, she was angry. I am so angry, she remembered him saying. I am angry all the time.

Well, this man was her father, and she could be angry too.

“Stop pretending,” she said. Her voice was quiet, and the trembling had stopped. This was it. This was what she was good at—reading people, reading their body language. Reading between the lines to the truth they did not want to admit, even to themselves. “It wasn’t reported in any of the papers that it was outside our house—in fact, the police deliberately kept it out of the public reports because I didn’t want people doorstepping the flat. You weren’t there. You’ve never been to my flat. Unless . . . you have.” “What are you talking about,” he said, but the words were almost mechanical, as if he knew himself that she had seen through to the truth he had been hiding all this time.

For Hal had seen something. Something in Ezra’s eyes, some flicker of consciousness that she had seen a hundred, a thousand times before. And it told her that she was right.

“You knew,” she said, full of certainty. “You were there. What did you do?” For a long, long moment he said nothing, he simply stood, his back to the door, his arms folded. His face was in shadow, the moonlight only showing Hal his brows, knit in an angry frown, but she was not frightened of him. She could read this man. And he was afraid. She had him cornered, not the other way around.

“Ezra, you’re my—” The word stuck in her throat. “You are my father. Don’t you think I have a right to know?” “Oh, Hal,” he said, and he shook his head, suddenly not angry anymore, but as if he were very sad, or very tired, Hal was not sure. “Hal, why the fuck couldn’t you just leave it.” “Because I have to know. I have a right to know!”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I am so . . . so sorry.”

And then she knew.