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Several minutes later, after Millie and Lola had sat down on the cream-colored sofa with wooden arms, which Millie remembered being in the parlor, not in here, her sister stopped.
“Lola, leave us.”
Millie laid a hand on the woman’s knee. “No, Lola is staying,” she said. “What did you want?”
“I said—” Rosemary started.
“What did you want, Rosemary?” Millie interrupted. It was as if a fist gripped her spine, filled her very bones with ire, reinforcing the fact that she was done playing her sister’s games.
“Fine, she can be the witness,” Rosemary said, flipping her nose in the air. “I have some papers I need you to sign, and Mr. Wells said someone had to prove it was you that signed them.”
“Why? Because you already tried to forge my name?” Millie asked, and answered her own question.
Rosemary didn’t reply, just handed over a stack of papers. “You have to initial by each paragraph, to prove you read them.”
Too fuddle-headed, still thinking of all she’d lost, Millie didn’t understand what she was reading until the third or fourth paragraph, at which point she started over. Needles were stabbing her again, especially when she read the last page. Disgusted, she looked up at her sister. “I’m not signing this.”
“And why not?”
“Because it says here that Papa didn’t leave everything to you. Money was split fifty-fifty and the house, this house, is in my name. I’m not giving all that to you.”
“Yes, you are,” Rosemary insisted. “I shared my half with you. Now you need to share your half with me.”
“When?”
“All the money and things you needed to travel to Indian Territory.” Pulling her face into a nasty scowl, Rosemary added, “And then you stab me in the back by telling Seth everything.”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” Millie answered. Nothing he hadn’t known, anyway, and thinking of him had her spine stiffening. Living with him the past weeks had left many lasting impressions on her, and the one she recalled right now was how he dealt with people. His self-assuredness and inner power. “The amount of money I took is a mere pittance compared with what this says.”
“I’ve kept you fed and clothed since Father died,” Rosemary said.
“No, you haven’t,” Millie said, completely sickened that she’d let all this escape her before. “It states a third account was created for household needs. If you’ve spent all your money, that’s your problem, not mine.”
“You either sign those papers or—”
“Or what?” Millie stood, gestured toward Lola. “I think I need some more tea. Would you care to join me?”
Looking somewhat startled, the housekeeper stood, and then after a long hard stare, she started to smile. “Tea?” She nodded, smiling more broadly.
They were almost to the door when Rosemary shouted, “If you don’t sign those papers I’ll kill myself.”
The statement stabbed Millie between the shoulder blades. Spinning to look at her sister—a long examination of just who Rosemary St. Clair was—Millie was saddened by what she saw. “Well, clean up any mess you make. Lola and I will be having tea.”
Lola made a choking noise as she slapped a hand over her mouth.
Whereas Rosemary started screaming, “I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I’m not kidding.”
Millie stepped closer, challenged her sister with a stare she’d seen Seth use, and was amazed at how strong it made her. “No, you won’t. You don’t have the courage. You’ve never had the courage to face anything you’ve done. You’ve just used a tragic act—what our mother did—to get what you want.”
Her sister gasped.
“I know why our mother did what she did. It wasn’t because I was a fussy baby or because I was a girl and not a boy, or any of the dozen other reasons you’ve claimed over the years. She was distraught that Father had been captured. That he was a prisoner of war. She couldn’t imagine living without him.”
As if thoroughly startled, Rosemary glanced around the room. “How do you know that?”
The long talks with Ilene Ketchum came to mind, how Millie had wished her mother had lived so she could have taught her all the things Mrs. Ketchum had. But she wasn’t about to tell her sister any of that. “Our family secret wasn’t much of a secret. When you’re an army man, you have no secrets.” That bit of truth jabbed her heart. Seth’s secrets, especially what she and Rosemary had done to him, would follow him forever. That realization struck home, and sickened, Millie glared at her sister. “Do whatever you have to do, Rosemary. You always do. Just know I’m not going to clean it up. I have my own life to see to.”
