"About what he did. About the charges against him." Sick and terrified, Kate watched her aunt's brow crease, then slowly clear.
"Oh." She let out a long, long sigh. "God, I'd forgotten."
"You—you'd forgott
en?" Stunned, Kate ran a hand through her hair. "You'd forgotten he was a thief? You'd forgotten that he stole, was charged, that you paid off his debts and took his daughter into your home? The daughter of a—"
"Stop it." It was a sharp order rather than the sympathy Susan would have preferred. But she knew her Kate. "You're in no position to judge what a man did twenty years ago, what was in his mind or heart."
"He stole," Kate insisted. "He embezzled funds. You knew all of it when you took me in. You knew what he'd done, what he was. Now I'm under suspicion for essentially the same thing."
"And it becomes clear why you sat back and took it, and made yourself ill. Oh, you poor, foolish child." Susan stepped forward, cupped Kate's face in her hands. "Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you let us know what you were thinking, feeling? We would have helped you through it."
"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me what he had done?"
"To what purpose? A grief-stricken child has burden enough. He made a mistake, and he would have paid for it."
"You paid for it." She tried to swallow, couldn't. "You took your own money and made restitution for him. For me."
"Do you think that matters, that Tommy or I gave that part of it even a moment's thought? You mattered, Kate. Only you mattered." She smoothed back Kate's hair. "How did you find out?"
"A man, a client who came in. He was a friend of my father's. He thought I knew."
"I'm sorry you found out that way." Susan dropped her hands, stepped back. "Maybe we should have told you when you were older, but after a while, it just passed away. What timing," she murmured, heartsick. "You found this out shortly before the business at Bittle?"
"A couple of months before. I looked into it, found articles from newspapers, hired a detective."
"Kate." Susan wearily pressed her fingers to her eyes. "Why? If you'd needed to know, to understand, we would have explained. You had only to ask."
"If you'd wanted to talk about it, you would have."
After a moment Susan nodded. "All right. All right, that's true."
"I just needed to know, for certain. Then I tried to put it aside. I tried, Aunt Susie, to forget it, to bury it. Maybe I could have, I don't know. But then, all of a sudden, I was in the middle of this. The discrepancy of funds from my clients' accounts, what was my explanation, internal investigations, suspension." Her voice broke like glass, but she made herself go on. "It was a nightmare, like an echo of what must have happened to my father. I just couldn't seem to function or fight back or even think. I've been so afraid."
Kate pressed her lips together. "I didn't think I could tell you. I was ashamed to tell you, and afraid that you might think—even for just a second you might think that I could have done it. Because he'd done it. I could stand anything but that."
"I can't be angry with you again, even for such foolishness. You've had a rough time of it, Kate." Susan gathered her close.
"It'll come out," Kate murmured. "I know it will, and people will talk. Some will assume I took money because my father took money. I didn't think I could stand that. But I can." She sat back, scrubbed away her tears. "I can stand it, but I'm sorry. I'm so sorry it touches you."
"I raised my children to stand on their own feet and to understand that family stands together. I think you forgot the second part of that for a while."
"Maybe. Aunt Susie…" She had to finish, finish all of it. "You never made me feel like an outsider, not from the first moment you brought me home. You never treated me like a debt or an obligation. But I felt the debt, the obligation, and wanted, always, to be the best. I never wanted you to question whether you'd done the right thing by taking me, by loving me."
With her own heart still aching, Susan folded her arms. "Do you think we measure our love by the accomplishments of the people we care for?"
"No. But I did—do. It's my failing, Aunt Susie, not yours. At first, I'd go to bed at night wondering if you'd change your mind about me in the morning, send me away."
"Oh, Kate."
"Then I knew you wouldn't. I knew you wouldn't," she repeated. "You'd made me part of the unit, part of the whole. And I'm sorry if it makes you angry or hurts you, but I owe you for that. I owe you and Uncle Tommy for being who and what you are. I'd have been lost without you."
"Did you ever consider, Kate, what you did to complete our lives?"
"I considered what I could do to make you proud of me. I couldn't be as beautiful as Margo, as innately kind as Laura, but I could be smart. I could work hard, plan things out, be sensible and successful. That's what I wanted for myself, and for you. And… there's something else you should know."
Susan turned to switch off the spurting kettle, but didn't pour the hot water over the waiting tea. "What, Kate?"