Chapter 44: Too Much, Too Late

Rachel’s life was great. She had a job promotion and a new boyfriend. It had been a long time since any little thing would send her running away with tears in her eyes or trying to be brave on the outside when inside she was terrified. She had conquered a new land, job, and people. She was even content to love her father from a distance and read about not be a part of Kurt’s life in the tabloids with a different group of women each week. This new phase of living in Clovelly for her was perfect, peaceful, and hers to enjoy without interruption and with no reason, to her recollection, to end. For her, she was living the good life.

Beatrice walked into the bakery. “Hello, Dear,” she said, kissing Rachel on the cheek as she came forward to greet her. “You are the very person I wanted to see today.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I wanted to talk with you about a private matter. Can you see if Faye can cover things for a few minutes while we sit outside in the cafe section?”

“Sure. That should be no problem.”

While Rachel confirmed, Beatrice made her way to the sidewalk cafe covered seating area, one of the new ideas that Rachel had implemented to make the bakery look more “continental”.

“Okay, Beatrice. You have my full attention. What did you want to talk to me about?”

Beatrice was noticeably nervous. She crossed and uncrossed her legs under the table in a vain attempt to get comfortable before she got to the heart of the matter. “It’s about something of yours that I found. Goodness, I am so nervous about this. Well, I guess the best way is just to say it. I found your letter on your desk. The letter that you wrote to your father about not returning to New York and choosing to stay in Clovelly.”

“What?” Rachel shrieked so loudly, bringing several cars on the road to a full stop. “I am shocked and disappointed. Oh my God. Oh my God. How. Dare. You? So, not only did you find it, but you read it, too?”

“Yes. I’m sorry to say it, but yes, I did read it.”

Rachel lowered her head, then took a deep breath. The hour of reckoning she had dreaded for so long had come. In the midst of all of her happiness and success, this one small thing with a huge impact was facing her right now.

“Okay. I didn’t know that you came into the room I rented when I wasn’t there and looked at my private things. Why did you take it? How could you read it? When were you going to tell me about it? What were you thinking when you saw me frantically searching for it?”

A million thoughts raced through her head.

“Dear, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I opened it or why I even thought it was okay to be up there nosing around in the first place. But now that I read it, I’m glad I did...for Arthur’s sake.”

“Arthur’s sake? You looked at my private thoughts and kept it to yourself for weeks, and now you’re coming forward...because of your grandson?”

“Sadly, yes. I am.”

“Beatrice, I don’t know what you must be thinking, but I wrote that note when I was experiencing my own moment of truth. It was a snapshot in time. Nothing more. I just did not want him to worry.”

“And by ‘him’ you mean your multi-billion dollar father?”
“Is that why you left the tabloid lying around...were you trying to find out what kind of lies there were about me?”

“Well, those articles might have reported lies about you, but you based your entire relationship with all of us on lies ever since the beginning of your stay in Clovelly. Your omissions about who you were and where you came from were all lies. How can he or any of us trust you again?”

“Choosing to keep a part of my life private was my private business for my own personal reasons. I don’t recall listing information about my father as a pre-requisite for renting the room to an adult woman. How could you?” Rachel cried out in a mixture of anger and pain.

“How could YOU?” Beatrice responded, feeling Rachel’s separation from her over all of this exactly as she thought she would. “I had to protect my grandson. He trusts and loves you. I just want you to come clean and tell him yourself and your way, or else...”

“Or else what?”

“Or else I’ll present him with the letter and let him draw his own conclusions.”

“You took my private documents and now YOU are issuing ME an ultimatum.”

“YOU based everything you told us on lies,” Beatrice reminded Rachel, sounding upset and hurt.

“Based on my desire to keep my past my business. There’s a difference.”

“I’d be curious to know if Arthur feels that way or sees things similarly. The woman he loves has been omitting a significant part of her background. He was already suspicious of you. But now...with this...it will push him over the edge in anger. You need to make this right.”

“I need to make it right? What about YOU? You took it from me. Why didn’t you just tell him yourself or give him the letter?”

“I care for you, Rachel, and I wanted you to have the opportunity to tell him yourself. But I love my grandson. And I will not sit idly by and have you build an entire relationship and a future based on LIES, young lady. Well, there you have it. Yes, I could have given it to him, leaving you out of the picture. But I feel that you need to be up front with him before things get any more serious.”

She continued after allowing a brief pause for Rachel to process everything she just heard, “Arthur tells me you two are looking for a house together. What if you got married and had children, then he found out years later...that would destroy him even more. I owe my allegiance to him as my blood. You owe him the truth before it’s too late. Heed my warning, Rachel.”

After that, Beatrice and Rachel stood up and went their separate ways with Beatrice heading home and Rachel returning to work, wishing she had the past to do over again. Telling Arthur would be the open and honest way in the spirit of full disclosure, but it would never make things right.

He would probably never be able to see her the same way again, let alone trust her. And a future together with him in addition to her desire to stay in Clovelly would be out of the question. Telling the full truth now was already too late.

She reluctantly went back inside, bracing for the worst that was sure to come from him no matter how she tried to tell him. She realized that it was getting harder and harder to hide from who she was before the lies. It was a challenge to keep the lies and the truth that she revealed separate and straight. By taking, reading, and keeping the letter, Beatrice took away Rachel’s choice.

Her initial reasons for lying seemed immaterial now; that was certainly how Arthur would probably see it. Blood was thicker than water in this case. She could only imagine the negative fallout with him that would happen after the full truth about herself was revealed.