“Elizabeth?” Her eyebrows pinch together for a second.
“Elizabeth Pryce-Reed,” I clarify.
Her face closes. “I’m sorry, but I don’t gossip about my customers. You’ll have to go somewhere else if you aren’t here to get clothes altered.” She stares pointedly at my empty hands.
“I’m not here to gossip. I heard you used to work for Shirley Pryce. I only want to know what happened to Elizabeth ten years ago.”
“Ten years ago? I’m not sure what you mean. A lot of things happened ten years ago.”
“My name is Dominic King. Elizabeth and I used to date, a decade ago, but things fell apart.” The understatement of the century. “I have reason to believe that…events back then didn’t go as I thought. I’m only trying to find out the truth.”
“Dominic King?” She bites her lower lip for a moment, studying me, then finally asks, “What were you doing ten years ago?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your job. I need to make sure. There are a lot of rude and obnoxious people out there, digging for gossip to sell.”
“I was a bartender at a place near UCLA. I met Elizabeth there.”
“Ah, yes. That boy. I’m surprised it took you this long.”
“What do you mean?”
“Elizabeth seemed to believe that you were in love with her. And I think she loved you, too.”
She sits down, then very reluctantly offers me a seat, which I take. I have the feeling she only did it because she’s too polite not to.
“Were you very close to her?” I ask.
“Not really, not back then. But, you know… The staff hears everything. Shirley was very hard on her. She hated the idea of Elizabeth becoming an artist. She wanted Elizabeth to take over the foundation. And she found a way to contro
l her when a friend ratted her out.”
“A friend?”
“Some girl. She had brown hair. I don’t remember her name.”
Marcella. It had to be.
But again, something doesn’t add up. If Yu-Jin knew about Marcella’s betrayal, Elizabeth must have, too. But when we ran into her outside of La Mer, Elizabeth behaved as though she had no bad feelings whatsoever.
“I know Shirley wanted to toss me in jail,” I say.
“Yes. She thought you were beneath Elizabeth. You weren’t rich and you weren’t from the right family. But Elizabeth didn’t want you to pay for her mistake. She said as much to Shirley many times, you know.”
“But what could she have done to stop her grandmother?” I say. Tolyan merely hinted at it, toying with me. But I have a feeling that Yu-Jin doesn’t play that kind of game.
“At first she begged her grandmother. I don’t know why she tried because Shirley wasn’t the type to forgive. And I think Elizabeth realized that, after an hour of pleading. So she stood outside her grandmother’s mansion in a show of protest. She didn’t move from the spot, not even to eat or drink. If she needed to use the bathroom…” Yu-Jin shakes her head. “She must’ve just held it because the gardener and the housekeeper and I saw her out there the whole time. I don’t even think she slept during that time because she just stood there, not moving at all, you know?”
My throat grows thick. “Yes,” I say only because Yu-Jin is staring at me expectantly.
“Four days later, she collapsed. I think it scared Shirley. She probably didn’t expect Elizabeth to be so stubborn. But she finally gave in and sent Elizabeth to the hospital to be treated for dehydration and exhaustion.”
I clench my shaking hands. So that explains what happened. It wasn’t my grandfather’s influence or Dorothy’s failure to find a DA willing to prosecute the case. It was Elizabeth, fighting for me, despite the vicious things I said that night.
Yu-Jin isn’t finished. “After Elizabeth came back from the hospital, she threw out all her art supplies and sketchbooks and decided not to go to Europe to study with her grandfather. I’m not sure about the exact details of the deal between her and Shirley, but giving that dream up was one. That poor child. To her grandmother, having a woman from the family leading the foundation was more important than Elizabeth’s happiness. And her mother wasn’t much better.”
“What did her mother do?”