Chapter 3

Abigail slapped both cheeks lightly, trying to force some color into her skin, and opened the door.

She moved slowly down the hallway, sneakers silent on the thick carpet. As she passed the master bedroom, a sliver of warm pink light spilled from a door left slightly ajar.

She should have kept walking. She didn't.

She pushed the door open just an inch.

It was a princess room. The walls were covered in framed photographs of a beautiful blonde girl at every age - birthday candles, ski slopes, ballet recitals, beach vacations. A pristine white Steinway sat in the corner. Every surface held something careful and precious and loved.

This was her room. The life that had been lived in her place.

Abigail's chest ached with something she didn't have a name for yet. She stepped inside.

Her eyes landed on a crystal music box resting on the piano lid. She reached out slowly, her calloused fingertip barely grazing the cold surface.

"Don't touch her things!"

The scream hit her like a physical blow.

Abigail spun around. A woman in a silk dressing gown stood in the doorway, her face twisted into something beyond anger - something closer to grief turned inside out. This was what Danita Richmond looked like when she stopped trying to hide it.

She lunged forward and shoved Abigail hard in the shoulder.

Abigail's back hit the wall with a painful thud. She bit down on the inside of her cheek.

Danita snatched the music box, turned it over in her hands, checking every angle for damage. Her fingers were shaking.

Abigail looked at the woman who had given birth to her and felt the temperature in her own blood drop several degrees.

"You do not belong in this room," Danita said. The words were quiet now. Somehow that was worse. "Get out."

No hug. No tears. Not even the performance of welcome.

"I'm sorry," Abigail whispered, and fled.

She found the dining room at the end of the first-floor hall. A mahogany table stretched the length of the room, set with silver that caught the light like small suns. At the head sat an elderly man with a hawk-nosed, severe face and a cane propped against his chair. Warren Richmond, the patriarch.

Hank was already seated, wearing a dry shirt, staring at his silverware as if she didn't exist.

Warren pointed to the chair across from Hank with the rubber tip of his cane. Abigail sat.

Danita arrived last. She didn't look at Abigail once. She sat down and reached for her wine glass.

Warren cleared his throat. "From today forward," he announced, his voice the kind that expected no argument, "Abigail is the only legal heir of this branch of the Richmond family."

The sound of silver screeching against porcelain. Danita had dragged her fork across her plate.

"Blood doesn't mean everything," Danita said, her voice dangerously soft. "I only have one daughter. And her name is Debbra."

Warren's face went purple. He slammed his palm on the table. "Debbra is a fraud! She has been sent away. You will not speak her name in this house!"

Hank moved so fast his chair shrieked across the floor. He was on his feet, his face pale with a fury that looked too big for the room, and then he was gone - out the door, footsteps hammering down the hallway.

The silence he left behind was suffocating.

Danita turned her head. Her eyes found Abigail for the first time all evening.

The look lasted only three seconds. But it was enough. It was the look of someone who had identified the source of everything that had gone wrong in their life and was deciding what to do about it.

Abigail looked down at the Beef Wellington on her plate. Her stomach cramped. She couldn't eat.

Warren's voice cut across the table. "Pick up your knife and fork. You will learn the rules of this house."

Her hands trembled. The silver clinked awkwardly against the porcelain, the sound filling the dead air of the enormous room. She put a piece of tasteless meat in her mouth and chewed.

One tear fell before she could stop it, hitting the expensive plate without a sound.

She thought about the crystal music box, and the photographs on the walls, and the sixteen years that girl had lived inside this house with these people.

She thought: they are not going to forgive me for existing. And there is nothing I can do about that.