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“Selma,” Sam and Remi said at the same time, laughing.
“Selma?” Albert echoed.
“A woman who works for us,” Remi explained. “No matter how many times we ask her to use our first names, she insists on being formal. We’ve learned to live with it.”
His expression turned cloudy, as though he’d already forgotten what they were talking about. By the time they were nearly finished with their meal, Remi was convinced the man wasn’t acting. When Mrs. Beckett returned, he looked up at her and smiled. “A shame Oliver couldn’t be here. Guests for dinner.”
“He’ll be ’round for breakfast.” She handed him a thin brown leather photo album about the size of a paperback novel.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“You asked me to bring it.”
“Did I? Whatever for?” He opened it, turning through the handful of pages until he reached the last photo. “Don’t remember putting these in here.”
“Oliver went through your pictures,” she said, clearing their dishes. “Put it together for you for the visit.”
He stared at the last photo, then looked at Sam. “I remember. Your mother used to bring you here when you were just a lad. You and Oliver used to love banging on that old piano,” he said, nodding toward the parlor. “Horrible racket, that.”
“Do you play?” Remi asked.
“No. Not sure why we still have it. Belonged to . . . Well, I don’t recall who.”
“May I?” Sam asked.
He handed the album, still turned to the last page, to Sam.
Remi leaned over to see a photo of Sam, just a toddler, sitting on the piano bench with another boy about the same age, each wearing a suit and tie. “Oliver?” Remi asked.
Albert’s smile was bittersweet. “At my son’s funeral. He was just a few years older than the two of you.”
Sam peered at the photo. “I don’t recall any of this.”
“Neither do I, most days.”
Sam turned the pages, working toward the front of the book, stopping at a photo of his mother, in her late teens or early twenties, blond and dark-eyed like Sam, standing next to a dark-haired man about the same age. Judging from the hairstyle of Sam’s mother, Remi guessed the photo was taken in the late 1960s or early ’70s. “Is that you?” Remi asked Albert.
He looked at the photo and smiled. “My brother, Oliver’s father,” he said, reaching out, turning to the front of the book. “This one is my favorite. Thick as thieves, those two. Always going on about that car. Something they wanted . . . For the life of me, I can’t remember.”
Sam and Remi stared. The photo was of his mother and Albert’s brother—both sitting in the front seat of what was most definitely the Gray Ghost.
7
You still doubt him?” Remi asked, once they were alone in their room.
“No one’s that good of an actor.” Albert had let Sam borrow the photo album and he was studying the photo of his mom and Oliver’s father in the car. “How is it she never told me about this side of our family?”
“Maybe she didn’t want the fact you’re connected to royalty to go to your head?” She sat next to him on the bed, taking his phone from the nightstand and scrolling down to his mother’s number. “I’m sure there’s a good reason. Call.”
He pressed the number.
His mother answered on the second ring. “Everything okay?” she asked. “How’s Albert?”
“Fine, for the most part. Is there some reason you kept this branch of the family secret?”
She laughed. “What secret? We used to visit all the time when you were little.”
“When?”