The Vanishing (Wendy Webb) by Wendy Webb

Author:Wendy Webb
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2014-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

You knew about this?” I asked Mrs. Sinclair, finally finding my voice. “About how much I resembled this woman in the painting?”

“Of course I knew about it,” she said gently, recognizing, I supposed, the fear welling up in my eyes.

“So, you realized it that first day when you saw me at breakfast?”

She shook her head. “Long before that. The news reports on television, dear. Adrian spotted the resemblance right away.”

I felt a chill, from the inside out. I thought back to the day Adrian appeared on my doorstep. Was this, finally, the reason they had sought me out? This resemblance was the ulterior motive?

Amaris Sinclair sighed, crossing the room to take a seat on one of the sofas.

“I knew this all was going to come out,” she said, shaking her head. “But I didn’t think it would happen so quickly.”

That same cold breeze whooshed around me. And then it was gone.

“So, you saw me on the news and realized I look like this lady in the painting, Seraphina, and that’s why you asked me to come here?”

“Now, Julia,” Adrian said, crossing the room to take my hand. “Don’t make too much of this. You’re getting worked up over something very small.”

I could feel the calmness he was trying to exude. And when I thought about it rationally, what he said made sense. “It’s just a resemblance to somebody who lived and died more than one hundred years ago,” I said, looking from one to the other of them. I wasn’t sure whom I was trying to convince. “It doesn’t mean anything more than that. It’s just an odd coincidence that doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

Mrs. Sinclair smiled. “Oh, but it does, my dear,” she said. “It does.”

“Mother—” Adrian began.

She waved a hand at him. “I think it’s time she was told.”

She was looking at me but not focusing on me, not really. Her eyes seemed to be seeing something that wasn’t there. I noticed her hands were shaking, and remembered the letter from the psychiatrist I had seen before dinner. I followed her across the room and sat next to her, taking those shaking hands into my own. My skin tingled.

“Please,” I said. “If you have something to tell me, just say it. Whatever it is, it’ll be all right.”

“Your resemblance to her is no coincidence, Julia,” she said. “Seraphina was your great-great-grandmother.”

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