“Lorna.”
Maeve closed her eyes.
The store disappeared around us.
The teenage boy who had filmed me.
Coryn.
Customers.
Everything became irrelevant.
Maeve opened her eyes again.
“My mother’s name was Maelis Venn.”
I stopped breathing.
Lorna’s younger sister.
Maelis.
The sister I had not seen in forty-two years.
The sister who vanished from our lives after a family fight so ugly that everyone eventually learned to stop saying her name.
I looked at Ellie.
Then Maeve.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight.”
That was possible.
Painfully possible.
“Who was your father?”
Maeve’s face hardened.
“I don’t know why you’re asking.”
“Because Maelis was my wife’s sister.”
Silence.
Ellie looked at her mother.
“Mom?”
Maeve stared at me.
“You’re Arden Vale?”
“Yes.”
“The Arden Vale?”
I almost laughed.
“I don’t know how many there are.”
“You own this company.”
Coryn looked between us.
Then at me.
Then at the corporate photograph mounted twenty yards away.
His face changed.
The disguise suddenly became irrelevant.
I removed the false beard.
Slowly.
The adhesive pulled at my skin.
Ellie gasped.
Coryn whispered something under his breath.
Maeve stepped backward.
“You’re really him.”
“Yes.”
I looked at Ellie again.
“Was Maelis your grandmother?”
