Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1925

U nease threaded through Lauren as soon as she saw Dr. Breasted's return address poking out from the stack of mail. She'd asked him about the feud between her father and Theodore Clarke, but now she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Oh, how she hated conflict. She hated to have her view of either man altered by what lay inside. As Joe would say, confrontation was not her style. But truth was, aside from Joe, there was no man she trusted more than James Breasted.

Steeling herself, she dropped onto the sofa, pulled a blanket over her lap, and dove in, skimming past the opening pleasantries until she reached the part she both dreaded and needed to read.

When the tomb in KV 55 was discovered, both men claimed the credit. This type of argument was common between them. What was unusual, though, was that the clearing of the tomb was absolutely botched, and priceless treasures were the casualty.

Right away, we all saw that the condition of the artifacts within was extremely fragile. A few hours after exposure to the air, the gold inscriptions and scenes on the shrine were falling to pieces. Gold leaf peeled away and lay in drifts on the floor. Every slight disturbance in the air made it worse. Flake by flake, the inscrip tions disappeared before our eyes. Someone sneezed in the tomb, and his handkerchief caught six pieces of ancient gold leaf. Think of it!

Theodore hired illustrators and photographers to document everything before any attempts were made to move them. But someone touched a wooden throne, and it instantly crumbled. The sarcophagus lid suffered the same fate.

Tempers ran hot. Theodore blamed Lawrence, and Lawrence blamed a dragoman, but none of the laborers had been allowed inside—a double force of guards saw to that. Theodore and I both saw bits of the ruined pieces on Lawrence's hands and clothes, suggesting his guilt, but he denied it. Theodore suffered damage to his reputation for gross negligence in the management of the tomb. He claims that was Lawrence's goal all along. Revenge, as it were, for taking credit for the discovery. But would any Egyptologist stoop so low? That, my dear, I cannot say. If that was Lawrence's plan, it surely backfired, for Theodore fired him. Your father had a dickens of a time convincing another team to work with him after Theodore's side of the story got out.

Lauren put the letter down, lifting her gaze to the Christmas tree in the corner of her apartment. She had no idea what to make of this. There had been no proof that Dad had destroyed the throne and sarcophagus, not really. Maybe he had been sifting through the rubble after it had shattered, looking for salvageable pieces.

Then again, could he simply have made a mistake by touching those artifacts and lied to spare himself humiliation?

Worse still, could years of bitterness really have driven him to do such a thing on purpose?

In any case, no wonder the two men couldn't stand each other. Mr. Clarke had been kind to Lauren at the Met for her mother's sake alone. Why?

Lauren blew out a frustrated sigh. She'd come to realize lately how little she really knew her parents. But since Dad had warned her against looking into this piece of his past, she wasn't about to bring it up to him.

Though the rest of Dr. Breasted's letter was far more pleasant, the knots in her middle barely loosened. She reached for the rest of the mail, unfolding a thin magazine that had been stuffed into their narrow mailbox.

Her breath hitched. Napoleon Herald : News from the Napoleon Society. Bordering the cover were Egyptian hieroglyphs, perfect translations of the title and subtitle. The masthead was written in a scrolly font with a classic French flair, followed by the names of the board members. Lawrence Westlake's name came before the others: Daniel DeVries, Evan Aldrich, and Luke Reston. Somehow, it gave her comfort to see Dad's name with three others. Clearly, they didn't mind working with him, despite the problems with Clarke.

Her attention caught on a teaser for her article listed on the cover. Lauren flipped the newsletter open to locate it.

Reading between the Lines: Mistakes in Hieroglyphs Prove Artifact a Fake . That wasn't the headline she'd submitted with the article, but she knew editors changed things like that. Then, in smaller italicized text below the headline, First in a series of articles written by expert archaeologist and Egyptologist Lawrence A. Westlake .

No.

Could he have written his own article and sent it in before she had? She skimmed the body of the text for her answer. This was her work, line for line. Her pulse picked up. Had it been a mistake? Her name and her father's were so similar, a copyeditor or proofreader might have changed it without realizing the error. After all, Lawrence Westlake was already a known name in the Napoleon Society. Lauren Westlake was not.

She might have been willing to believe this were it not for the boxed text at the end of the article. Mr. Lawrence A. Westlake is a founding board member of the Napoleon Society with thirty years of excavation field work to his credit . A few more lines finished a miniature version of his biography. There was his picture beside it.

This was no typographical error. This was her father stealing her article and claiming the credit for his own before he passed it on to the editor.

How could he?

Had this been his plan all along?

Suddenly everything Theodore Clarke believed about her father felt like it could be true.

Anger ripping through her, Lauren covered her face and groaned. Her thoughts were too hateful to entertain, but she couldn't silence them. What he wanted all along was to make himself look better. Maybe he hadn't recovered from the incident Dr. Breasted wrote about. Maybe that was why he was so desperate for the Napoleon Society to succeed. Was he truly only interested in her knowledge of Egyptology? And if so, was he only interested in it because of what it could do for him?

If she was honest with herself, she'd already known the answers to both questions could be yes. She'd tried to make her peace with that. But never had it occurred to her that her father would steal her work and pass it off as his own.

Cleo leapt onto the fireplace mantel and picked her way between evergreen branches, candlesticks, and picture frames until she came to the bright blue shabti figures her father had given Lauren for her birthday.

With one dainty paw, Cleo knocked over the two pieces, then delicately nudged the male figure closer and closer to the edge. Part of Lauren wanted to watch it fall, this symbol of her father. This symbol of their restored relationship. If it fell and broke to pieces, it wouldn't be her doing but his.

But she wasn't willing to sacrifice these beautiful antiquities just because her feelings were hurt. Rising, she crossed to the fireplace and picked Cleopatra up off the mantel. "Go on," she said, setting her on the floor again. "You're not supposed to be up there." Lauren scooped up the two shabti figures and deposited them on top of a bookcase she doubted Cleo could reach.

Turning back to the mantel, Lauren neared the black-and-white photograph Ivy had framed of her and her father, the one taken when she was five years old. Was she as na?ve now as she had been in that picture? Was her longing for her father's approval as naked? Had it made her blind?

Embarrassed, she flipped the frame onto its face and walked to the telephone. She stared at it, searching for words that could possibly contain what she felt.

Though Mother had forgiven Dad at the end, she'd had problems with him for years. Aunt Beryl couldn't stand him. Neither could Mr. Clarke. Even Dr. Breasted had seen that he didn't work well with people.

They were on to something.

Lauren locked her arms over her waist. She was too agitated to sit but too stunned, it seemed, to move. In the end, it was the Christmas tree in the corner of the room that deflated her. She had taken more care than usual decorating it this year, knowing that she'd be hosting the holiday here with her father. She hadn't even minded Elsa's precise method of evenly spaced and color-coordinated ornaments because Lauren wanted it to be perfect. Magical.

The sparkle had gone.

Lauren slumped into the armchair. The only thing magical about this Christmas was the way the spell she'd been under had broken. However her father had enchanted her, it wouldn't happen again.

Her fingers were cold as she picked up the telephone and asked for her father's exchange.

"It's Lauren," she announced when he answered, her tone as flat as she felt. This wasn't like her. It had taken every ounce of starch she had to talk to him about her brothers. Burying hurts was what she did best. After all, she'd been practicing since she was a child.

But she was full to overflowing, at last.

"Is anything wrong?" he asked. "Has something happened?"

"You gave the byline for my article to yourself. That's what happened." She curled her fingers into a fist to warm them, then rubbed them on her skirt.

"What?"

"You know what I'm talking about. The Napoleon Herald hit mailboxes today."

"Wait a minute." The sound of shuffling papers suggested he was riffling through his mail. "Oh!" He dared to laugh. "That's what you're upset about?"

His attitude only stoked the fire that burned inside her. It flared and leapt, and for once, she gave vent to the pain. "Why wouldn't I be upset? You hounded me for weeks to prove myself to your board, and then you sabotaged my attempt in order to make yourself look better instead. Are you so insecure after that fire that you would do this?"

"Steady, Lauren. You're way off base. I had nothing to do with this."

"I should have known better than to pass my article to you instead of sending it directly to the editor myself."

"I hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but if you hadn't gone through me, the editor may never have even seen it in time for the printing. You have no idea how busy that man is—nor can you guess how disorganized."

"You used me."

"I told you, I never intended for this to happen. I'd never take from you what's rightfully yours. Don't you know me at all?"

"If I don't, there's only one person to blame for that, and it isn't me." Lauren squeezed her eyes shut and rolled her lips between her teeth to end her outburst. She was hurt. She was angry. But she didn't feel any better for lashing out.

His sigh came through the telephone, and she could picture him easing into a chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. She imagined the crimp of his lips, a mannerism that matched her own.

"Look," he said at last, weariness fraying his voice. "I'd much rather speak in person about this, and I'd like to clear the air between us before Christmas. But I've got to dash up to Newport in the morning, and it's going to be a push to make the last train home again."

Of course. Of course he was leaving again, never mind what day it was. Dad ran. That's what he did. Mother was right about that.

If Lauren's expectations hadn't already unraveled for this holiday, she'd be painfully disappointed that she'd be alone on Christmas Eve instead of sipping eggnog by the fire with Dad, reading aloud Dickens's A Christmas Carol or listening to Tchaikovsky on the Victrola. Something.

Anything.

Now she was only painfully resentful. Lauren considered that her reaction to this byline was out of proportion to the incident itself, that she ought to hear him out. But he was leaving town again, exactly when she needed him to stay. She wasn't reacting only to the byline, but to what Dr. Breasted had written, and what Mother had been through, and what she herself had excused for years. For all she knew, he could have been lying to her about Mother keeping him in the dark about her baby brother's birth.

"Don't bother catching the late train," she said. "I wouldn't want you to rush back. Take all the time you need."

"Are you telling me not to join you for Christmas?"

"Do whatever is best for you," she told him, "as usual. I've learned not to wait."

"If that's the way you want it..."

Of course that wasn't the way she wanted it! What she wanted was for her father to keep his word, to see past the sharp words she'd hurled at him, to see the hurting daughter behind them. She wanted him to insist on coming for Christmas, or to postpone his Christmas Eve errand, or to come over right now, since it was only six o'clock. She wanted him to prove that she was his priority, even when she was prickly as a porcupine.

Lauren hung up the phone and cradled her head in her hands. Skipping dinner, she waited for him to call back or to surprise her by arriving in person. He didn't make a move.

And since she was apparently as prideful as her father, neither did she.