Marianne whirled on Andrew. “How dare you!” She scrambled for other words, but her mind went blank at the horrible comment that touched every one of her deepest insecurities.
“Your mother was an opera singer,” Andrew said. “Dad paid her a thousand dollars to disappear, and she gladly took it. You were welcomed into this family even though your mother was little better than a tramp who—”
“Shut up,” she said. “My mother is upstairs. I’ve been looking after her while she has a migraine. I hope you enjoyed yourself at Delia’s garden party.”
“Your mother took a thousand dollars to go away,” Andrew retorted. “If I’d been there, I could have dickered her down to a few hundred.”
She threw the bud vase at him, but he ducked as it smashed against the wall, spattering him with petals and water. He flicked a few droplets from his cuff and smirked.
“Very classy,” he taunted. “Blood will out, won’t it, Marianne?”
Mortification rushed through her. She was becoming exactly what she feared—someone who threw things and yelled and raged.
The noise brought her father storming into the kitchen. “What’s going on in here?” Clyde demanded, his face a thundercloud as he surveyed the broken vase and water trickling down the wall. Jedidiah followed, making the kitchen uncomfortably crowded.
Anger crackled in the air as Andrew lifted his chin and rushed for the moral high ground. “Your daughter couldn’t be bothered to attend Delia’s rose competition,” Andrew said. “Delia has been tending that rosebush for months, but Marianne decided to flit around town playing photographer.”
Clyde turned a stern glance on her. “Marianne, you know that I am proud of your work, but family is important. If your duties at the Department of the Interior interfere with that, perhaps it is time to resign. You don’t need the money.”
Andrew preened at Clyde’s words, and she couldn’t let it go unchallenged. Andrew’s loyalty to their family company came at a huge cost: three people in Philadelphia who drank tainted coffee.
“Is family the most important thing?” she challenged her father, then turned her attention to Andrew. “What about treating people with dignity, even if they don’t share the same blood?”
“Marianne, blood is the only reason we tolerate you,” Andrew said.
“Quiet, boy,” Jedidiah smoldered. “You’ve always run a little hot for my taste, and Marianne is as fine as they come.”
“At least I have my priorities in order,” Andrew said. “I always put this family first. She doesn’t. She waltzes all over town for her own fun, taking pictures. Anyone could take those pictures. Sam could take those pictures. I’ve grown our company and made us plenty of money in the past two years.”
“Is money all that matters to you?” she asked. “Even if it means sacrificing our integrity? Putting other people’s lives at risk, even though they aren’t blood? Do we owe them loyalty?”
Clyde swiveled a look at her. “What are you driving at?”
It was time to confess. It was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done, and so many people were going to be hurt, but it was the right thing to do. This might be the last minute on this earth when she would still have the love and affection of her father.
She drew a heavy breath and looked at Clyde. “Thank you for taking me in when I was a baby,” she said, her voice starting to shake. “Thank you for supporting little Tommy too, even though I know it hasn’t been easy on you or Mama. Your loyalty to me and Tommy means the world to me.”
Clyde stiffened. “But?”
“But I found out some bad things about Magruder Food.” Her voice almost failed her, and she swallowed to try again. “I was the one who revealed those studies to the Modern Century.”
Clyde’s face went white, and he stared at her in shock, but Andrew exploded.
“You did what?” Andrew roared.
“You shouldn’t have buried those studies,” she said, lashing out at Andrew because it was easier to blame him rather than her father or grandfather. “You know the chemicals we use can be dangerous, but you’re using them anyway.”
He pushed her shoulder, shoving her back a few feet, and she retreated. Anything to get away from the rage smoldering on his face. “So you betrayed us,” he spat.
Marianne looked to her grandfather for help.
“That she did,” Jedidiah said, his aging voice rough with fury as he glared at her. “A greater case of disloyalty I’ve never heard. If you had complaints about the way Andrew ran the company, you should have brought them to me, girl.”
She withered beneath her grandfather’s smoldering words. As always, the truth hurt the most.
“Get out of here and go to your room,” Clyde said, refusing to look at her.
“Papa, I’m sorry—”
“Go to your room,” he said again, his voice coldly furious.
She obeyed. She owed him that much. Her body trembled so badly that it was hard to climb the stairs, but she got to the top, where she saw the closed door to Vera’s bedroom.
Mama hadn’t gotten her tea. Vera still didn’t know what had happened downstairs. A piece of her wanted to run to Vera and fling herself on the bed and cry in her mother’s arms.
It would be selfish. Vera would soon learn what she’d done, and she would side with Clyde.
Marianne kept walking to her own bedroom, stepping inside and closing the door.
Twenty minutes later the bedroom door banged open and Clyde strode in. “You didn’t give those studies to Modern Century, you gave them to Luke Delacroix,” he said in a deadly calm voice.
She swallowed hard. “Why do you think that?”
Instead of answering, Clyde strode to the wardrobe and flung the doors open. He grabbed the two boxes in which she stored personal photographs, and dumped them on the bed. There were over a hundred pictures of Mama, Sam when he was a baby, and other family pictures. Clyde riffled through them, but he wasn’t going to find any photographs of Luke. She wouldn’t keep them in such an obvious place.
He grabbed a dresser drawer and dumped the contents on the floor, throwing the drawer to the side, where it banged against the wall. She flinched when he used his feet to kick through her clothes, but he didn’t find anything. He yanked up her mattress, but there was nothing there.
Then he saw the large envelope taped to the underside of her bureau drawer and froze. Her mouth went dry when he reached for it, opening the flap and lifting out a dozen enlarged photographs. Luke holding Bandit fresh out of the ice. Luke gazing at her with all the love in the world as they stood in the treetops.
Clyde tossed the photographs on the bed, his lip curled in disgust. “How long have you been carrying on with him?”
She couldn’t answer.
“How long?” he roared. He grabbed her face and forced her to look at him, his fingers digging into her cheeks.
She still couldn’t talk. Her tongue seemed fused to the roof of her mouth, and it was so hot she might faint. Anything she said could cause Clyde to banish her forever. She’d lose everything. Had it been worth it?
She glanced at the picture on her bed, the one of Luke sopping wet and holding Bandit, an exhausted, happy smile on his face.