Page 122 of Dying to Meet You

My skin crawls, and surprise makes me slow to reply. “Um, sure.”

“How mad is Beatrice?”

“What?” I barely process the question, because his palm is still on my knee.

“I told her she wasn’t a good candidate.” He rests his head drunkenly against the seat’s back.

“Oh, the director job.” In what I hope is an unobtrusive maneuver, I cross my legs, and his hand slides off. “She’s... not happy,” I say brilliantly. “Because she knows she’s got a lot of skills that the job needs.”

“It’s not a matter of skills,” he says.

Tell me something I don’t know. “That doesn’t make her feel better,” I point out, “when she clearly cares so much about the mission.”

“She’s very loyal to the family.” His careful diction makes me wonder if he’s had a lot of practice trying to sound sober. “But loyalty only goes so far. You’ve also got to have the connections. You have to make it rain money.”

“Right,” I agree. “But maybe you’ll find something else for Beatrice. Director of Programming? You could lose her, you know.”

“Lose her?” He laughs. “Never.”

God, the arrogance in this family.

“I’m sorry my brother was a tool to you,” Hank says, as if reading my mind. “He’s like that to everyone, in case that helps.”

“Can I ask what his issue is? Does he hate the mansion?”

Hank goes silent, and as the moment stretches out, I wonder if I should have kept my mouth closed. “He likes to play the martyr,” he says eventually. “Any bad PR for the family makes him cranky.”

Cranky is an understatement.

“He thinks it’s bad taste to draw any kind of attention. That we shouldn’t show off our family’s two hundred years of history in Portland. It might make it harder to fly under the radar when he’s laying off American factory workers or whatever he’s up to this week.”

“But you think it’s worth it,” I press. “To burnish the family name? Maybe for political reasons?” My pulse kicks into a higher gear as I wait to hear what he’ll say. I’d really like to know which of the Wincotts thinks the family has the most to hide, especially where the mansion is concerned.

“Yeah, sometimes it’s useful to remind the people of our fine state that Maine was built on the shipping industry, and that my family did a lot of the building.” He chuckles to himself. “I’m saddled with my shitty family, so I might as well get a few perks of the legacy.”

“Right,” I say slowly. “The mansion is a jewel, and you wouldn’t be the first Wincott to show it off.”

“Did you know that Maine was a dry state when Amos built the house?” he asks. “And did you also notice the big wine cellar in the basement? There’s a reason his parties were popular. The Wincotts have always been hypocrites.”

“Have they?” I ask carefully. “Until Marcus Wincott painted over the wine-swilling gods on the walls. Did you know your uncle well?”

“Mygreat-uncle,” he corrects. “And no, I don’t remember much about him. He was the bachelor uncle at the Thanksgiving table. Liked his scotch. As if I should talk, right?” He laughs.

“It’s funny,” I say, although nothing seems funny. “But your uncle really took the place in a new direction. Most old mansions don’t have a birthing table. And an incubator and forceps and graffiti on the wall, saying,Help me. I want out.”

His head swings in my direction. “Graffiti? Where?”

“It’s in a closet. The conservator found it.”

“Weird.” Hank shrugs but doesn’t say anything more.

If Hank knows what happened at the Magdalene Home, he isn’t going to confide in me.

The driver pulls up in front of my house and kills the engine. “Spruce Street,” he announces.

“Thank you,” I say, popping open the door before anyone can consider helping me out.

It doesn’t work. Hank exits his side of the car at the same time I exit mine.