The Other Daughter Read Online Free Page B

any of it? The words tore out of her, unbidden. “She was my mother. I ought to have been here.”
    Alice put out a hand to her, heedless of the streaks of soot. “Oh, my dear.”
    Rachel felt tears stinging the backs of her eyes and hastily blinked them away. “The funeral—I’ll need to see to the arrangements. The undertaker—”
    Alice’s eyes shifted away. “The funeral was yesterday.”
    The floor tilted, the low ceiling rushing down at her. Rachel grabbed for the banister, feeling the room heave like the deck of the Channel ferry, the sitting room veiled by a gray haze. “What?”
    â€œRachel! I ought to have made you sit down first—and you’re still in your coat! When was the last time you ate anything?”
    Rachel breathed deeply, in and out. “Sometime around Calais, I think. No, there were biscuits just past London.” The sick feeling was subsiding a bit, although she still felt clammy. She forced herself to focus. “The funeral was yesterday ?”
    Alice ducked her head guiltily, although Rachel couldn’t imagine why she should feel guilty. It was Rachel, Rachel who hadn’t attended her own mother’s funeral. “We couldn’t reach you. We tried, really, we did.” She added, hesitantly, “We didn’t want to leave it too long.”
    And wasn’t that a charming image. Rachel concentrated on her breathing. No. No—she just. No.
    â€œIt was all just as your mother would have wanted,” Alice hurried on, just as she had once rattled through recitations at school, faster and faster the more nervous she was. “Your cousin—the one from Oxford—he came up to see to the arrangements. It was a lovely ceremony, really, it was, and there were violets on the casket—your cousin said that your mother liked violets—and Mrs. Trotter had hysterics right in the middle of the twenty-third psalm.”
    â€œOf course she did.” Despite herself, Rachel almost smiled. Mrs. Trotter’s hysterics were the stuff of village legend. Rachel’s mother always said—
    Rachel’s hands closed tight around the buttons of her coat. “It—it sounds just as it ought to have been. Thank you for seeing to everything.”
    There had been no funeral for her father. He had died so very far away. And now her mother …
    Rachel thought she understood, now, why custom demanded the formality of a funeral. Without the casket, without the thump of clods on the coffin, none of it seemed real.
    â€œWe waited for you to choose the stone,” Alice offered, as if that might somehow make it better.
    Rachel laughed and found that she couldn’t stop laughing. She put her hands to the sides of her face. “Oh, Lord. I’m sorry. Thank you. Thank you for everything.”
    Alice was looking at her with concern. “Please, can’t I make you a cup of tea? Something? You look ready to drop on your feet.”
    â€œI’ve been traveling since last night. When I received the telegram.” She was still in her coat.
    It struck her, dimly, that these were the same clothes, the same coat, the same shoes she had scrambled into in her bedroom in the Ch â teau de Brillac a century ago. It was warm enough in the sitting room, with the fire Alice had made, but Rachel found she was loath to remove the protective shell of her coat.
    Impatient with herself, Rachel shrugged out of the coat, dumping it over the banister. “I could murder a cup of tea.”
    Alice let out a deep breath of relief, turning hastily to the kitchen door. “I’ve got the kettle on. There isn’t any milk, I’m afraid—”
    â€œThat’s fine.” Rachel followed Alice into the kitchen. She felt like a guest in her own home, out of place and off-balance. “I haven’t had a proper cup of tea in months.”
    The kettle was already hissing gently on the hob. Alice