The Secret Heiress. Bethany Campbell
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Colette had been repeating herself lately—was this a bad sign? She kept talking about the past as if she were struggling to make it clearer to Marie, although Marie knew it well.
Reynard was Colette’s brother by law, but not by birth. The Lafayettes had first adopted Colette, then four years later, Reynard. But the family had almost been ruined by the 1950 cyclone. The cyclone, unnamed, destroyed the little building where the Lafayettes lived above their pastry shop—everything they had.
Colette’s father, overwhelmed by depression, never recovered. The family began a spiral into near poverty. Neither Colette nor Reynard could finish their schooling.
“I told you I never knew who my birth mother was,” Colette murmured.
Marie nodded; she knew that part of the story by heart. But then Colette surprised her. “But maybe I do know. I didn’t know how to tell you. I started writing to people. A nurse in Queensland answered me—two years ago. This is her letter. Remember that little wooden box I asked you to bring? The letter was in it. But don’t read it here. Read it at home and think about it. Yes, it’s time I put it in your hands. I feel it.”
It was time? She felt it. What did Colette mean? Marie fought down a wave of alarm. She forced a smile, as cheery as she could make it. “You’re being very mysterious.”
With an unsteady hand, Colette picked up an envelope from the bedside stand. “I didn’t know what to believe, what to do, so I did nothing. I just have no idea…”
Colette seemed exhausted. “So I’m passing it on to you. To find out or—I’m so tired,” she said. “I’m sorry. You’ve come all this way, but I think I’m going to fall asleep. It’s all I do lately.”
“Don’t apologize. You need rest. Sweet dreams.” Marie bent and kissed her mother’s cheek again. Already Colette’s eyelids were lowering, but she managed a smile.
Marie studied the envelope, feeling an indefinable uneasiness, and then tucked it into her backpack. She stared at Colette’s face, once smooth and delicate, but now shadowed by illness.
Making her way to the elevators, Marie punched the down button, her stomach queasy with anxiety. She and Colette were not only mother and daughter, but the closest of friends. Colette had to recover. She had to. Life would be empty and loveless without her.
The elevator doors slid open, and Marie blinked in surprise. A cupid, a very tall, chubby cupid, stood inside. At first glance he seemed naked except for a large white diaper and two inadequate wings sprouting from his back. Cupid’s blue eyes widened, and he gave Marie a smile and a leer.
She quickly realized he wasn’t naked, but dressed in flesh tights and a leotard.
A gilded bow hung from one shoulder. Slung over the other was a little gold quiver of darts with pink heart-shaped tips. His mop of curly blond hair was clearly a wig.
“Hello, Dearie,” he said, looking her up and down. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“It’s a bit early for Valentine’s Day,” Marie returned, hardly in a mood for silliness. She noticed he carried two large pink tote bags, each labeled BNC for Bullock News Corporation and showing a jolly, smiling caricature of its founder, Jackson Bullock.
Cupid jiggled one of the bags, which seemed to be empty. “BNC’s sending me to children’s wards to hand out goodies—candies and crackers and balloons.”
“Very admirable,” Marie said between clamped teeth.
“I got a lovely Scallywag biscuit left. Want it?”
“No, thank you,” she said in the same tone.
“Aww,” he said. “Troubled? You look worried. Shame, a pretty thing like you. You need Dan Cupid in your life. All of him you can get. How about a spot of supper tonight?”
She looked at him as if he were a bug. She rolled her eyes and muttered, “Puh-leese.”
“Please pick you up? With pleasure. What time? Where do you live? Do you like the Pizza Shack?”
She flashed him a disgusted glare. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not in the mood. Please just leave me alone.”
“Oh, ho!” he said in a hostile tone. “Aren’t you little Miss Snip? What’s the matter? Don’t you like men?”
She was saved by the door opening into the lobby. She was smaller than he was, but trimmer and faster. She sprinted toward the hospital’s main entrance.
“Hey!” he bellowed. “You shouldn’t run off from Dan Cupid. You’ll be sorry.”
She dashed out the door and toward the bike racks. She glanced over her shoulder in case he was following her, but she could see no trace of him. Thank God, she thought. Could life get any more surreal?
She was sick with forebodings about her mother, and now she’d been harassed by an overweight man in a diaper. Things could not get worse.
Seven seconds later, just as she reached her bike, a flash of lightning nearly blinded her, and a thunderclap almost broke her eardrums. The sky was no longer blue but roiling with storm clouds. She felt the first drops of rain.
A strong, wet wind sprang up, almost flattening the hospital’s flower garden, and the rain began to cascade in earnest. She slipped out of her backpack, got out her heavy weather rain cape, shook it out and started to put it on.
Another gale of wind made her stagger, and it ripped the cape from her hands and sent it flying off like a strange yellow bat over the storm-tossed shrubs. It flapped as high as the trees and disappeared. The whipping rain half blinded her.
She’d have to walk the bike home, as fast as she could. She swore softly, then gritted her teeth and told herself to buck up. She needed to be at her job within three hours.
Marie felt like the proverbial drowned rat when she reached the apartment that she and Colette shared. Curious as she was, she knew there wasn’t time to read the mysterious letter. She laid it atop her dresser, showered and got ready for work.
She put on a plain black skirt and another white shirt, this one with frills and clip-on black bowtie. She studied herself in the mirror and thought that her life was a series of changing uniforms. Even when not in a work uniform, she had a sort of uniform. Bush pants and shirt—sturdy and sensible wear.
Now she fluffed her hair to make it look softer and gave thanks that she had a ride to the Scepter Hotel. Her coworker, Izzy, would pick her up and bring her home. Marie chipped in for petrol and Izzy’s trouble.
When Isabella honked, Marie snatched up her raincoat and dashed for the car. She made small talk with Izzy, but didn’t confess her fear that Colette seemed worse. She couldn’t bring herself to put her anxiety into spoken words. She feigned her usual natural cheer.
That night, distracted as she was, she performed her job with utter professionalism, perfect courtesy and genuine charm, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She spoke Chinese to the Chinese businessmen, Malaysian to the Malay tourists, and Spanish to a traveler from Argentina. She had a gift for languages and had studied them at college. She had a smile for everyone.
Well, almost everyone. Butch Paul, a busboy, had come close to sexually harassing her lately, but if he tried tonight, he’d be extremely sorry.
When other men tried to flirt with her, she acted as if they were only teasing and smiled at them, refusing to get involved. Nobody came to the Scepter to be greeted by a mope. Her business was not hanging her heart on her sleeve, it was hospitality.
Redheaded Mick Makem was a regular customer, and tonight when he joked with her, she made herself banter back as if she were in the best of spirits.
She vaguely noticed that he sat with a dark, lean man who was strikingly handsome, then rebuked herself for paying attention to a good-looking man at a time like this. She’d vowed to keep herself under strict control tonight.
But