Vanished

“I don't know. I'm not sure. But I must tell you what I do know.” She took a breath and went on, unaware of how beautiful she was. “My father told his closest friends that I had had a youthful flirtation and gone a little mad when I was eighteen and we were on the Grand Tour. And then he told everyone that I'd decided to stay on and study in Paris. Well, some of that was true but very little. I had much more than a flirtation. I ran away, I eloped, with Charles Delauney. I'm sure you must know his father.” Malcolm nodded. He had known him, better than he had known her own. He was a crusty old man, but a smart one, with a huge fortune. But he had never met the son. They said he was a renegade of the worst sort, a writer. And he'd run off to the war when he was fourteen or fifteen, and after that he'd stayed in Europe. Old man Delauney said he was no good, and that was all he'd heard, but now he looked stunned at Marielle's confession. “I married him when I was eighteen, and by the time we came back from our honeymoon and my parents wanted to have the marriage annulled, I was pregnant. So they went home, and I stayed. The marriage was never annulled. And we had a little boy …” She had to fight back tears as she said it. After all these years, to tell the story twice in one day was almost more than she could bear. But she knew she had to tell him. Teddy's disappearance made it all different. “His name was Andre,” she gulped again, “and he looked a little like Teddy, except that he had very black hair, instead of blond hair like you.' She tried to smile, but Malcolm said nothing. He was not finding the recital amusing. And she knew that, for Malcolm, she had to keep it to the facts. He didn't have to know how much she loved him, or how desperately she had loved Charles, or how terrible it had been when Andre died. He just had to know that he did, and that Charles had seen Teddy and gone crazy. He had to hear this from her so he didn't think she was protecting Charles. The only one she wanted to protect now was Teddy. And Malcolm had to hear everything if they were going to find him.

“He died when he was two … in Switzerland. I was pregnant with another child, and that baby died too.”

Malcolm looked desperately uncomfortable for a moment.

“How did they die?”