Enid took a deep breath and shook her head. “I never hated her. I tried to be a mother to her, but she wanted nothing to do with me. I won’t lie to you, Kate. There’s no love lost between us. But I did love her father. And I promised when I married him to do my best to take care of his child. I tried to keep up with her over the years, but she cut me off after her father died. I had put money in a trust for her.” She shrugged. “But by the time it matured, she didn’t need it anymore and told me where I could put it. I’ve sent her emails through her author website, but she never answered. I’m just glad her lawyer was able to get in touch when this happened.”

Kate shook her head. “Blaire always acted as though you didn’t want her around.”

“I wanted to try and help her. It was her father’s decision to send her away. Once we married, she was merciless in her campaign to get me out. She’d hide my blood pressure medicine. Or sneak outside and put my car windows down in the rain. Once, she went through my closet and threw half my clothes in a dumpster down the street.”

Kate was shocked. Blaire had never mentioned any of this to her.

Enid put her hands up. “She did a lot of angry things. We had her evaluated, but she was only twelve, so they wouldn’t label her with a personality disorder. But I could read between the lines. Shaina was a narcissist and had borderline personality disorder. Even if they didn’t share a gene pool, she raised Blaire in those formative years.”

“What did the doctors who evaluated her say?”

Enid shrugged. “To make her feel loved. Try and undo the damage done by her adoptive mother’s abandonment. I never agreed with Ed about keeping the adoption a secret, but he wouldn’t budge. He was afraid she’d never forgive him for lying in the first place.” She sighed. “We took her to therapy for over a year, and she hated every minute of it. Wouldn’t open up to the doctor. She had a hole in her heart that was too big to fill.”

Kate turned to Enid. “How could I not have seen it? She was my best friend. She even lived with us, and I thought she was happy. She was always so much fun.”

Enid gave Kate a sad look. “She puts on a good front. She always had a bit of the actress in her.”

“I didn’t realize how much she needed my family.”

“When she came home, all she talked about was how much better Lily and Harrison were than her father and me. It about killed Ed.”