"I was so happy at Templeton House, and I would think that I wouldn't be there with you, with everyone, if the roads hadn't been icy that night, if we hadn't gone out, and the car hadn't skidded and crashed. If my parents hadn't died."
She lifted her eyes to Susan's. "And I wanted to be there, and as the years passed, I loved you so much more than I could remember loving them. And it seemed horrible to be glad I was with you instead of them."
"And you've nurtured that ugly little seed all these years." Susan shook her head. She wondered if parents and their children ever really understood each other. "You were a child, barely eight years old. You had nightmares for months, and you grieved more than any child should have to. Why should you go on paying for something over which you had no control? Kate." Her fingers stroked gently
over Kate's temples. "Why shouldn't you have been happy? Would you have been better off clinging to the pain and the grief and the misery?"
"No."
"So you chose guilt instead?"
"It seemed that the best thing that had ever happened in my life had grown out of the worst. I could never make sense of it. It was as if my life began the night they died. I knew if a miracle had happened and my parents had come to the door of Templeton House, I would have run to you and begged you to keep me."
"Kate." Susan shook her head, smoothed Kate's hair back from her face. "If God Almighty had come to the door, I'd have fought Him tooth and nail to keep you with me. And I don't feel the least bit guilty about it. What happened wasn't your fault or mine. It doesn't make sense. It just is."
Nearly believing it, Kate nodded. "Please say you'll forgive me."
Susan stepped back, eyed her. Her child, she thought. A gift given to her out of tragedy. So complicated, so layered. So precious. "If you feel you have to owe me for—how did you put it—making you part of the unit, the payment is that you accept who you are, what you've made yourself. We'll be even then."
"I'll work on it, but in the meantime…"
"You're forgiven. But," she continued as Kate sniffled, "we're going to work on the rest of this together. Together, Kate. When Bittle deals with one Templeton, he'll deal with all of them."
"Okay." Kate knuckled a tear away. "I feel better."
"I'm sure you do." Susan's lips curved. "So do I."
Eyes wide and a little wild, Margo burst into the kitchen. "Let me see that coin," she demanded, and thrust a hand into Kate's pocket before Kate could move.
"Hey!"
"Oh, my God." Margo goggled at it, then goggled at the matching doubloon she held in her other hand. "I checked my purse. I really thought you were playing some sort of idiotic joke on me. They're the same."
And the world somehow settled neatly back into place. "I was trying to tell you," Kate began, then grunted when Margo grabbed her and squeezed.
"They're the same!" Margo shouted and held the coins in front of Susan's face. "Look, Mrs. T! Seraphina."
"They're certainly from the right place and the right time."
Struggling to switch gears, Susan frowned over the coins. "You just found this one, Kate."
"No, this one." In a proprietary move, Kate snatched the coin from Margo's left hand. "Mine," she stated.
"I can't believe it. All these months since I found the first one. All these months we've been searching and scraping and hauling that silly metal detector around. And you just stumble over it."
"It was just there."
"Exactly." Margo crowed in triumph. "Just like the first one was just there. It's a sign."
Kate rolled her eyes. "It's not magic, Margo. It's luck. There's a difference. I just happened to be there after the coin got kicked up or washed up or whatever."
"Hah," was all Margo had to say to that. "We've got to tell Laura. Oh, who the hell can remember where she is with that insane schedule of hers?"
"If you'd bother to look at the weekly schedule I've posted in the office, you'd know exactly where she is." Feeling superior, Kate glanced at her watch. "If memory serves, she's at the hotel for the next thirty minutes, then she has a meeting with Ali's teacher. After that—"
"We don't need after that. We'll just—" Margo stopped short. "Hell, we can't just close the shop in the middle of the afternoon."
"Go ahead," Susan told her. "Tommy and I can mind the store for an hour."