Chapter 29

Charlotte's POV

Chapter Twenty Nine

I stood on that path and looked at my brother's face and felt the cold move through me in a way that had nothing to do with the weather.

"What did he tell you?" I said.

James started walking again, slowly, like he needed to move to get the words out. I fell into step beside him.

"He said our mother didn't die of cardiac failure," he said. "He said the death certificate was falsified." He kept his eyes on the path ahead. "He said she's alive."

The park continued around us. A dog ran past chasing something. A child laughed somewhere behind us. All of it completely normal and completely irrelevant.

"That's not possible," I said. "Patricia Howe. The estate. The will—"

"I know." He glanced at me. "That's what I thought too. But he was specific, Charlotte. He gave me details that were too particular to be invented." He paused. "He said she's been living under a third name. Different town. Different country."

I stopped walking.

James stopped too and turned to face me.

"He could be lying," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "He is a man who has lied to me my entire life about her. About everything."

"I know that."

"He moved her. He controlled her. He used her as leverage for years. Lying about whether she's alive or dead is exactly the kind of thing he would do to get what he wants."

"You're right," James said. "All of that is true." He looked at me carefully. "But ask yourself what he wants from this. He's in a prison hospital. He has nothing left to protect. No company, no assets, no reputation." He paused. "What does he gain from telling me our mother is alive if she isn't?"

I looked at the bare trees.

That was the part I couldn't answer cleanly.

With my father there was always a reason. Always an angle. A man didn't spend thirty years running a sophisticated financial fraud by doing things without purpose. Everything he did served something.

What did this serve.

"He wants to see me," I said slowly. "He's been asking since he was admitted. Maybe this is just another way of getting me there."

"Maybe," James said. "But what if it isn't."

We stood in the cold and looked at each other, two people who had been strangers a week ago and were now standing in a park trying to work out whether their mother was dead or alive.

The absurdity of it was enormous.

"Did he say where?" I said.

"Portugal." James reached into his coat and took out a folded piece of paper. "He gave me an address."

I looked at the paper in his hand but didn't take it yet.

"How did he even get your contact details?" I said. "He's in a prison hospital."

"That's a good question." James looked at the paper. "One I've been asking myself since he called."

"He has people," I said. "Even now. Lawyers, contacts, people who owe him things. He always had people." I thought about the staff standing in the driveway the day the mansion was confiscated. All those people who had dedicated themselves to serving our family for years. "Getting a phone number wouldn't be difficult for him."

James nodded slowly. He held out the paper.

I took it.

An address in the Algarve. A name I didn't recognise. Three lines of my father's handwriting, shaky but legible, the penmanship of a man who had learned to write carefully and hadn't entirely lost the habit even in a hospital bed.

I folded it and put it in my pocket.

"I have to think about this," I said.

"I know." He put his hands back in his coat pockets. "I've been thinking about nothing else for three days." He looked at the path. "I want to go. I want to find out one way or the other. I can't sit here knowing that address exists and do nothing with it."

I looked at him sideways. "You just met me."

"I know that too." He almost smiled. It suited him, that almost smile. It was our mother's as well, I realised, in the photograph. That same quality of warmth held slightly in reserve. "But she's my mother as well. I never knew her at all. You at least had the story of her, even if the story was wrong." He paused. "I had nothing."

Something tightened in my chest.

He was right. Even a false version of her had been something. A shape to grieve. A name to carry. I had grown up knowing I had a mother who died and that knowledge, as painful as it was, had given me something to hold onto.

James had grown up with a blank space.

"I'll go with you," I said.

He looked at me. "You don't have to—"

"I know I don't have to." I looked at the address in my pocket. "But if she's there, if there's any chance she's actually there, I'm not sending you alone." I looked back at him. "And if it's one of my father's games then you shouldn't be walking into it without someone who knows how he plays."

James was quiet for a moment.

"Alright," he said.

We started walking again.

The park was emptying out as the afternoon light started to thin. That particular winter dusk that comes too early and without warning.

"There's something else," James said after a while.

I waited.

"When your father called me," he said carefully, "he mentioned Frederick Lancaster." He kept his voice even. "He said Lancaster knew about the third name. The Portugal address." A pause. "He said Lancaster has known for over a year."

I kept walking.

My face stayed still.

Inside something went very quiet in a way that felt less like calm and more like the moment before something breaks.

"Charlotte," James said gently.

"I heard you," I said.

And I kept walking with my hands in my pockets and the address pressed against my fingers and the cold settling around us and thought about a man who sat in my kitchen and told me partial truths wrapped in enough honesty to feel like the whole thing.

I thought about everything Frederick had told me.

And everything he hadn't.

And I wondered which list was longer.