6 - Pages of Sin

few months after Elaine wrote her letter to Byron and left for Africa.
    “Whoa.” I stared at Mom. “So Marjorie was involved with Byron while he was dating Elaine.”
    “That’s what it looks like,” she said, frowning as she chewed on an ice cube.
    “But somewhere in the middle of all that, he married Wanda.” I handed the document back to her. “You’re right. That’s one bizarre family. And Elaine didn’t say a word about it. Do you think she knows about the baby?”
    With a slow shake of her head, Mom admitted, “I haven’t got a clue.”
    My eyes widened as something else occurred to me. “Do you think Wanda knew?”
    Mom gripped my hand. “The real question is, does Byron know?”
     
     
    The next morning, in an abundance of caution, Mom and I went back to Byron’s house to examine every volume in Wanda’s massive wall of stacked books. We lucked out and arrived while Byron was away, so there was no need to fabricate a story about why we were looking through all those books again.
    I was good at a lot of things, but I wouldn’t have been able to bring a poker face to a confrontation with Byron Frawley. Come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure I owned a poker face.
    While Mom tackled the books in the shorter stacks, I went straight for the Jane Austens. It only took a few minutes to gather up the four remaining volumes, and the documents we found tucked inside them were doozies.
    “Mom, look at this,” I said after scanning the document I’d found inside Persuasion.
    Mom stared in amazement at the faded paper. It was a Certificate of Adoption from the State of Texas dated within weeks of the birth certificate we’d found the day before. So now we knew the child’s name. Elizabeth.
    And inside the copy of Emma was a faded photograph of a little girl wearing a frilly white dress. We both assumed this was Elizabeth. In the photo, she looked about four or five years old, but by now she was probably in college.
    There were other photographs as well, each slipped inside one or another of the dark green leather bound books that made up the six-volume set of Jane Austen classics. If only I had taken more care to bundle up the entire set in the first place, we might have had some answers sooner.
    “Let’s get out of here,” Mom muttered.
    “Good idea.” As I drove back to her house, I happened to glance down and saw that I was filthy. I longed to take another bath, but first, Mom and I had some logistics to work out and a few decisions to make.
    “What should we do?” Mom asked, twisting her hands together “Who shall we call? Wait. Maybe we should just leave it alone. We could shut these items away in our safe deposit box and never say a word about them again. Or should we confront the people involved? Which ones? This is so upsetting. I just don’t know what to do.”
    “Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll think of something.”
    She shifted in her seat to look at me. “You’ve had to deal with stranger situations than this, Brooklyn. What do you think we should do?”
    True, lately I’d had plenty of experience with murderers and their victims and suspects, but Mom was usually so much better at dealing with people than I was. The fact that she was turning to me for advice made it clear how completely distressed she was by what we’d found today.
    There was only one person I could think of who could make sense of all this intrigue and could deal with the various family members in a nonjudgmental way. “We need Guru Bob.”
     
     
    That night, Mom, Dad, and I arrived at Robson’s elegant home an hour and a half before Wanda’s memorial service was scheduled to begin at the town hall.
    Guru Bob ushered us into his stylish sitting room and asked us to amuse ourselves until the other guests arrived. Five minutes later he walked in with Elaine, the two chatting like they were old friends. “It has been too long since we last saw you in Dharma,” Guru Bob told Elaine.
    “Thank you, Robson,” she said, nervously smoothing the hem of her subdued but pretty sage jacket. “It’s lovely of you to invite me here.”
    “The others will arrive shortly,” Guru Bob told her, then indicated an array of wines and finger foods laid out on the sideboard. “Jim will pour you a glass of wine or a soft drink if you wish one.”
    Dad had already poured half glasses of wine for Mom and me. Strangely enough, I wasn’t in the mood for anything strong tonight, but the glass gave me something to