“Thank you, Magdalene.”
Sam felt a bit of whiplash watching two people who had had nothing but contempt for each other just weeks ago now be on a first name basis and act like buddies.
“Magdalene, could I ask you to…” Alden sheepishly motioned with his chin as though saying the words ‘Headmistress, please vacate the room’ would pain him.
“If she wants to speak with you, certainly. Sam?” The protectiveness was touching, but Sam was still very much confused.
“Yeah, sure.”
Magdalene gave her shoulders one last squeeze and whispered, “I’ll be right outside,” before stepping out with a long, thoughtful look at Alden.
The man himself took a deep breath and opened his mouth to say something, before closing it again, reconsidering whatever it was he had been about to say and walking to the window and then turning back to Sam. Reminiscent of their discussion in her classroom, he paced the length of the small space, like an old, sickly, caged animal, and with every turn he took, Sam was getting more weirded out by the situation. They had to stop having conversations like these, Sam thought. They inevitably upset both of them. Finally, the silence stretched past a level Sam was even remotely comfortable with.
“Mr. Alden, is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know, Samantha. I just don’t know where to start. Perhaps with a ‘forgive me’?”
The day was just getting stranger and stranger.
“I’m sorry?”
“No, I am. So very sorry, Samantha. I am.” Alden stopped pacing and was looking at Sam with watery, pleading eyes.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m bungling this, aren’t I?”
Sam simply nodded, and he turned away from her, once again staring silently out the window. Finally, he drew another long breath and spoke.
“They picked up Orla Fenway fifteen minutes ago at Joel Tullinger’s mansion in Marblehead. She traveled there on a private boat owned by one of the townspeople to inform him about Magdalene’s affair with you.”
Sam’s jaw dropped, but Alden simply shrugged, and the hairs on the nape of her neck suddenly rose, on alert. Something was happening, something important, and she kept being left in the dust by her intellect, if not by her own intuition.
“You don’t have to be afraid, Samantha. I will not allow anything to happen to you or to her. And if Joel tries, I will simply surrender my authority as trustee to my last heir and retire early. As such, my heir will have as much say on the Board as Joel—as any trustee—and thus the present conflict of interest will become moot.”
The feeling of intense confusion, but also premonition, intensified. And as Alden shrugged his shoulder again and raised his pale grey eyes to her once more, Sam’s heart simply stopped. Her mouth was so dry, she had difficulty swallowing, otherwise she was fairly certain her gulp would’ve been audible.
“Your last heir…”
“My daughter, Samantha. You.”
They looked at each other then, and not for the first time, Sam felt that she had probably been one hell of a fool all these years. No, they didn’t look even remotely alike. Nothing but the eyes, and his had gotten paler with age, losing their sparkle and the sharpness of the grey that hers still held. But that gesture, that shrug, was something she knew all too well. It was her own. Should she have seen it all along? That her absentee guardian was her missing-in-action father?
“I don’t know what to say.” In fact, Sam thought, she was fucking lying through her teeth just then, because she had way too many things to say.
“You don’t have questions?” Alden stood stiff and still, as if a convicted prisoner being escorted to the scaffold for his execution. He was hanging on her every gesture, every breath. Waiting, waiting, waiting… Was he waiting for her to embrace him? To curse him out? Both were equally possible outcomes, but instead, Sam felt something deflate inside her. Just shrivel and lay down, tired, spent, apathetic. What a totally flat apotheosis to her life’s drama.
She had searched for her father her whole life. The records on her mother were so scant. An orphan herself, Amelia Threadneedle had not left much of a trail in the world. Foster homes, menial jobs, a waitress on the island at Rowena’s pub. Nobody knew her well, nobody had any idea who Sam’s father was, and she had simply been brought to Dragons and left there after her mother died during childbirth. A small tote held a note with her name, Samantha Anne Threadneedle, and her mother’s meager possessions, such as they were.
And now it turned out her father had been around her whole life. When she’d been scared at night. When she had nobody to hold her when she was sick and Joanne and Orla were too busy with the other girls. When she cried herself to sleep after being thrown out of Tullinger’s Christmas party. This man had escorted her home and left her alone in the massive, empty dormitory for the holidays.
It dawned on her that, in his earlier proclamation about how he’d make everything all right, he had given away a pretty big tell. She was his last heir. As she had recently found out, in the past several years, he had lost his three sons, one after another. Her brothers. Accidents and disease had taken them all. And, Sam realized, she had also been robbed of knowing them. Knowing people who could have been her family, if they had only been given a chance.
And yet here Stanton Alden was, suddenly concerned about the perpetuation of his illustrious line. How simple. How sad. How pathetic. Still, questions started bubbling up in her mind, and soon her stupor gave way to a feeling of deep disgust.
“Thirty years ago you threw a kid out of Dragons. You told everyone it was for her being illegitimate, and yet you had yourself abastardjust the same? How positively rich and white of you, Mr. Alden.”
“Ah, that’s not exactly what happened, Samantha. But yes. We referred Ms. Nox to another school for breach of the school admission policy and concealing her family status. When the teachers protested, Freddy Tullinger—knowing about my impending predicament—thought that it was time to abolish the antiquated rule about all Dragons students being of legitimate birth from the charter.”