Split Second - Catherine Coulter [131]
“When I found out you turned up his skeleton in Aunt Helen’s attic, we all realized the supposed walkabout was a big whomping lie. Aunt Helen hadn’t driven him away, she’d murdered him, and your father must have helped her hide his body. They lied about all of it. I wonder what else was a lie? Aunt Helen told me your grandfather had stolen the ring and taken it with him when he left. All those years I thought I had lost the ring forever, and then suddenly anything was possible.
“I started searching your grandmother’s house for the ring as soon as the police left, and whenever I saw you leave for work. Father told me you’d been looking around in her study, and that’s where I found Uncle Milton’s letter to you, his precious granddaughter, in one of Aunt Helen’s books.”
“Miranda, you took the letter?”
“Of course. Who did you think did? My father? Court? They never had a clue about the ring—Mom, either. When I read the letter, I knew for sure you had the ring and that you’d never give it up, not after you discovered what it could do, and that’s when I hired those idiot felons to take it from you. Congratulations, Lucy, either you’re very lucky or you’re very good. You got away, and you even killed one of them. I knew then the FBI would identify him and it was only a matter of time before you traced him back to me. I got everything ready to run, but I wasn’t going anywhere without this ring.”
“Miranda, how much do you know about the ring?”
“I know everything.”
Lucy said slowly, “But how?”
Miranda laughed. “Your mother’s death broke Aunt Helen’s heart. She was always secretive, at least that’s what I heard my father say, but after Claudine’s death she got really depressed; she’d stare off into space, saying nothing, looking at nothing in particular. You were too young to notice, only two. I’ll never forget the day she took me into her study and we huddled together. I had just turned twelve. She took out the ring and told me it was a special ring meant for only one girl in each generation of our family—one girl, not a boy—and I was her niece, and it would be mine someday, when she thought the time was right. At first she didn’t tell me any more than that, but every time I visited, she would show me the ring and tell me stories about it, stories passed down that her own mother had told her, stories about how she’d used the ring, and all the while she was speaking, she was darting glances around the room to be sure no one was near.
“Aunt Helen said now she was passing all the stories down to me. She said it had to be our secret, that no one was to know or she couldn’t imagine what would happen. Maybe the ring would disappear, maybe it would even stop working. That was a lie and at first, I didn’t understand. I thought she was crazy. She scared me, but the ring didn’t ever, even when she showed me what happened when she held the ring and said the word. She could always tell me if something strange was about to happen, things she had no way of knowing otherwise. It was a game she played with me. But she wouldn’t let me use the ring myself; she said I wasn’t ready for it.
“I felt such power, and I was only twelve years old. I knew it would belong to me, no one else, only me. I asked her over and over when that would be, and she smiled at me and said we’d have to see.
“And four years later, Uncle Milton was gone and so was the ring. We felt such anger, such despair, both of us together, an unbreakable bond between an old woman and a teenager.”
Lucy said slowly, “I am my grandmother’s direct heir, not you. I think if she hadn’t been so distraught when my mother died, if she hadn’t lost her bearings, she would never have spoken to you