Read Online The Last to Know by Wendy Corsi Staub - Free Book Online

head and rubbing his temples with his fingers.
    “But Owen, if you don’t eat—”
    “I’m fine,” he cuts in sharply, silencing her.
    As her thoughts race for something else to say, for something else to offer, he adds, “All I want right now, Margaret, is to be left alone.”
    Stung, yet willing herself not to show it, she nods and retreats from the study.
    In the hallway outside she pulls the door quietly closed, then pauses with her hand still on the knob, uncertain where to go next.
    Schuyler is asleep in her crib in the yellow-and-white second-floor nursery. Mother’s flight from Heathrow doesn’t get in until this evening, and Margaret has already arranged a car service for her rather than drive to the airport to meet the flight herself. She’s not particularly anxious to see her mother under the best of circumstances. Today, she dreads it.
    The house is large enough so that she doesn’t have to share space with Owen’s parents, the housekeeper, or the detectives working on the case. She, too, wants to be alone.
    After a moment, she turns and heads to the kitchen and up the back staircase that leads to the second floor. From here she can go through a large walk-in dressing room and into the master bedroom.
    She shouldn’t be here. On some level, she knows that as she slips through the door into the sprawling room with its crown molding, fireplace, and cozy, gabled nooks.
    She takes in the brocade wallpaper, the rich cranberry-colored draperies that frame floor-to-ceiling windows, the thick carpet with its floral Victorian pattern beneath her feet.
    This is the private quarters her sister shares with Owen, a room Margaret has been in only once before, when Jane first gave her a grand tour of the entire house years ago. Back then this section was empty, awaiting not just delivery of the newly ordered furniture, but also the skills of the professional decorator who would transform it into the sumptuous suite it has become.
    “Don’t you love it?” Jane had asked. “This room—isn’t it beautiful?”
    Margaret nodded. “The whole house is beautiful, Jane.”
    “I’m glad you agree with me,” Jane said in a tone that hinted to Margaret that Owen did not.
    “What does Owen think?”
    “He wanted a new house. He doesn’t like old houses. He grew up in one. He calls it the mausoleum. But he gave in and bought this place for me because I fell in love with it. I adore all the quirks. Old houses are so interesting . . . and they have secrets.”
    She proceeded to show Margaret a few of them and described several others.
    Now, remembering that day, Margaret stands in the middle of the master bedroom. Her gaze falls on the ornately carved king-size bed, the vast built-in armoire along one wall, and the sitting area with its period fainting couch and cheval mirror. She catches her reflection in it, and as always, it takes her by surprise.
    Somehow, in her own mind, in her optimistic heart, she is younger, more attractive than the plain, nearly middle-aged woman in the glass. In her imagination, she belongs in a room like this.
    In reality . . .
    She takes in her own close-set, sparsely lashed black eyes, her lifeless dark hair parted in the middle and drawn severely back from her pale, angular face.
    She has tried on occasion to do something with her appearance. To bring out her eyes with makeup, to give her hair a lift with a different style and some spray.
    But the attempts have been futile. Nothing can transform her. . . .
    Into Jane.
    Isn’t that what you want? she demands of the homely woman in the mirror. You want to be Jane .
    You want to claim what belongs to Jane.
    All of it.
    Slowly she turns away from the mirror to gaze thoughtfully at the bed.
    F letch Gallagher opens the lid of the new red state-of-the-art blender he recently ordered from a Williams-Sonoma catalogue.
    He peers inside, then taps on the glass container. Sturdy. Outrageously expensive, too . . . but worth it. He’ll use