Betrayals

Carla Neggers

Betrayals

Carla Neggers writing as A

To George Maxwell and Rebecca Martin

One

The French Riviera

1959

A

She refused to let Thomas Blackburn get to her. He and his four-year-old granddaughter had come down for the weekend from Paris, a typical presumptuousness on Thomas’s part. A

He was at the breakfast table overlooking the rose garden, with a mug of black coffee at his elbow and the Paris Le Monde opened up in front of him so that A

This time they weren’t just blowing smoke. A

Thomas hadn’t said a word beyond a simple good-morning. He had come to the Riviera just to visit her, he’d told A

She sighed, frantically mincing one half of the onion. Her eyes had begun to tear, and if she didn’t slow down and be careful, she’d likely chop off the end of a finger. Thomas wouldn’t keep quiet for long. It wasn’t a Blackburn trait.

The newspaper rustled as he turned a page, and she heard him take a small sip of coffee.

“All right, Thomas, you win,” she said, whirling around with her paring knife. “What do you want to tell me that you’re trying so hard not to tell me? You might as well spit it out, because you know you’ll get around to it sooner or later.”

Looking slightly miffed at her sharp-sighted observation, Thomas folded the newspaper and laid it on the table. Like all Blackburns, he was a man of impeccable moral and intellectual respectability-the kind of highbrow Bostonian that A

A

He regarded her with a calm that only accentuated her own nervousness. “A

“Don’t be ridiculous. How would I know him?”

Her mouth went dry, her heartbeat quickened and she felt curiously light-headed. She’d never fainted in all her thirty years; now wasn’t the time to start. Trying to hide her trembling hands, she set down the paring knife and leaned against the counter. She was dressed casually in baggy men’s khaki trousers and an oversize white cotton shirt, her ash-brown hair pulled up in a hasty knot. If she worked at it, she could look rather stu

“A

It was the same tone he’d used on her when he’d caught her crossing Beacon Street alone at six years old. Nineteen years her senior, he was already a widower then, with a two-year-old son. Emily Blackburn, so quietly beautiful and intelligent, had died of postpartum complications, the first person A

She was no longer six years old.

“I promised the children I’d take them out to pick flowers,” she said, pulling herself up straight. “They’re waiting.”

She was at the kitchen door when Thomas spoke again. “A

A

Shaking his head, Thomas rose to his feet. He was a tall, lean man with sharp features and straight, fine hair that was a mixture of dark brown, he