Legacy of Lies Read Free

chattering.
    “And your brothers?”
    “They’re great. Pete, who’s twelve, is into music. Dave’s ten and lives for sports.”
    “And your trip here?”
    “My father’s doing great, too,” I said, though she hadn’t asked about him. “He was honored by the Sonoran Desert Museum for his work with mammals.”
    “Please answer only the questions I ask,” Grandmother told me.
    “Just filling in the details,” I responded cheerfully, though we both knew otherwise. I wasn’t about to let Dad be cut out of the family.
    “How was your trip here?”
    “Fine.”
    She waited a moment, perhaps to see if I’d fill in the details. I didn’t.
    “I had expected you to come here in the summer, Megan.”
    “As Mom explained to you, I go to a year-round school and had already committed myself to workingat a camp for my three-week summer break. October was the next free time.”
    “What is your parentage?”
    The sudden question took me aback. I stared at her for a long moment. “My mother is Carolyn Barnes, my father, Kent Tilby,” I said, as if that were news.
    “You know what I mean, girl.”
    I pressed my lips together.
    “Your coloring is . . . unusual,” she observed.
    I decided not to reply. I have straight black hair, which I keep shoulder length, gray eyes, and skin that refuses to tan. In the bronze land of Arizona, I stand out like a white mushroom, but I didn’t think that was the point of her comment.
    Correctly deducing that she wasn’t going to get any information about my birth parents, Helen Barnes rose from her chair. “1 will show you your room.”
    I followed her into the hall, fuming. I don’t know what I had hoped for from her. An effort to get to know me, a conversation that lasted longer than three minutes and revealed some interest in me, other than genetic? Some shyness or awkwardness that told me that she, too, had intense feelings about this first meeting? There was no such sign. Her eyes could have iced over the Gulf of Mexico.
    “You will see the downstairs first,” she said.
    I nodded. Apparently, “Would you like to?” wasn’t part of her vocabulary.
    She showed me the three other rooms that opened off the center hall. Like the library, each had a highceiling and corner fireplace, but their walls were painted in bolder colors: peacock blue in the front parlor, bright mustard in the music room. The dining room, which was at the back of the main house and across the hall from the library, was blood red. All of the rooms had paintings with heavy gilt frames; the theme in the gory-colored dining room was animals and hunting. I hoped we ate in the kitchen.
    “When was this house built?” I asked, abruptly turning away from an impaled deer.
    “In 1720,” my grandmother answered, “by a family named Winchester.”
    “When did our family move in?”
    “The Scarboroughs bought the house, the land, and the mill in the mid-1800s.”
    “Is that when our family came over from England?”
    “The Scarboroughs”-she said the name clearly, as if to make a distinction between that family and what I called our family-“have been in Maryland since the 1600s. This land was purchased by the seventh generation as a wedding gift for a son.” She led the way back into the hall. “Carry whatever luggage you can,” she told me, resting a thin hand on the curved banister. “Matt will bring up the rest when he gets home from his study session.”
    Study session?
I thought. Better not mention that my cousin had come close to hitting Ginny’s car when he was supposed to be hitting the books. I carried all of my luggage.
    The trim in the upstairs hall was the same blue asthe parlor’s, but the walls were softened by faded wallpaper. A mirror, darkened with age, hung on one wall; on another were several photographs, old tintypes. My grandmother grew impatient as I looked at them.
    “Megan.” She waited by the door at the top of the stairs, the only one open in the hall.
    I entered and set