Chương 3
Richard looked at Sophie.
“I was mistaken,” he said.
Sophie buried her face against Daniel’s shoulder.
“That is not an apology,” Claire said.
Richard’s expression hardened again, relieved to find somewhere else to place his anger. “I said I was mistaken.”
“You accused a child. You ordered her to empty her bag. You chased her across a lawn with a belt.”
“She ran from me.”
“She is seven.”
“I wasn’t going to hit her.”
Claire touched the place between her own shoulder blades where she had felt the belt pass.
“You didn’t know I would get there.”
Eleanor fastened the bracelet around her wrist. Her fingers trembled, though she tried to hide it by turning away.
“The important thing is that no one was hurt,” she said.
Sophie lifted her face.
“I was hurt.”
Eleanor went still.
Children sometimes said what adults had spent a lifetime training themselves not to hear. Sophie did not say it accusingly. She said it as a correction.
Daniel’s hand tightened once at her back.
Eleanor looked at her granddaughter, then at the guests, then at Richard. Claire could almost see the choices moving behind her eyes. Defend the child. Defend the husband. Defend the gathering. Defend herself.
She chose the gathering.
“This party is over,” she said to the relatives.
No one argued.
Claire watched them collect handbags and abandoned cups. Some moved quickly. Others approached Thomas and spoke in low voices. The server returned for the tray he had never delivered. A balloon shaped like the number seven had become tangled in the branch of a dogwood tree and tugged against its ribbon.
Claire had ordered that balloon.
The party was not for Sophie. It was for Lydia’s granddaughter, Caroline, who had turned sixteen. Sophie had been invited because Eleanor said a family photograph looked better with all generations present.
Claire wondered how long it would be before someone asked where Caroline had gone. She had disappeared inside before Richard raised the belt. Perhaps she had been smarter than all of them.
Daniel handed Sophie to Claire and faced Richard.
“I’m going to ask one question,” he said. “I need a direct answer. Did you intend to strike her?”
Richard’s nostrils flared. “No.”
Thomas lowered his phone. “You said, ‘I’ll teach you what happens to thieves.’”
“That was anger.”
“That doesn’t answer him,” Claire said.
Richard turned on her. “You have never liked me.”
The accusation was so irrelevant that it briefly stripped the scene of drama. Claire almost admired the instinct behind it. Faced with evidence of his own conduct, Richard had located an old grievance and offered it as defense.
“No,” she said. “I haven’t.”
Eleanor’s head snapped toward her.
Claire continued. “I tried. For my mother’s sake, I tried. But you confuse being obeyed with being respected, and you punish people when they remind you those are different things.”
Richard’s face darkened.
Daniel stepped between them before Richard moved.
One of the security agents spoke quietly into a cuff microphone. The first SUV’s rear door opened.
Daniel looked at Claire. “Take Sophie to the car.”
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure we leave with the recording and the names of everyone who saw it.”
“We can do that from the car.”
His gaze remained on Richard. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Claire knew that tone. It was not calm. It was rage forced through a narrow opening.
She touched his wrist. “Come with us now.”
He looked at her.
She did not want Sophie to learn that protection meant men standing close enough to hurt each other. She did not want the last image of the lawn to be her father becoming another frightening adult.
“Now,” Claire said.
Daniel’s mouth tightened, but he nodded.
They walked toward the SUV together. Sophie held Claire’s hand and Daniel’s, forcing them into an awkward three-person line. Halfway across the lawn, she stopped.
“My backpack.”
Claire had forgotten it beside the cooler.
One of the security agents retrieved it. He held it carefully by the top handle and gave it to Sophie without opening it.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He nodded. “You’re welcome, Miss Miller.”
Sophie looked startled by the formality. Under other circumstances, she might have laughed.
The three SUVs left the estate in the same order they had arrived. Claire sat in the back of the lead vehicle with Sophie pressed against her. Daniel sat across from them in the rear-facing seat, his knees angled aside in the limited space.
No one spoke until the mansion disappeared behind the trees.
Then Sophie asked, “Am I in trouble?”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Claire felt something inside her tear with such precision that it seemed almost clean.
“No,” she said. “You did nothing wrong.”
“But everybody thought I did.”
“Not everybody.”
Sophie looked at her.
Claire corrected herself. “Too many people.”
“Grandma thought it.”
“Yes.”
“Grandpa Richard hates me.”
Daniel leaned forward. “What he did was wrong. That doesn’t mean you have to decide what he feels.”
“He called me a thief.”
“I know.”
“He had a belt.”
“I know.”
She looked down at the yellow backpack between her sandals. “I didn’t want him to see Bunny.”
Claire put an arm around her.
Daniel looked toward the tinted window.
His phone had begun vibrating before they reached the main road. He ignored the first two calls. On the third, he glanced at the screen.
“Thomas,” he said.
“Answer it,” Claire told him.
Daniel put the call on speaker.
Thomas sounded as though he were speaking from inside a closet. “I sent the recording to both of you. Full file. I also backed it up.”
“Thank you,” Daniel said.
“There’s more.”
Claire looked at him.
May you like
Thomas took a breath. “I started recording before Richard took off the belt. About forty seconds before. He was asking Sophie where she put the bracelet. Eleanor told him to check the backpack. Sophie said no. Richard grabbed the strap, and she pulled away. Then she ran.”
“Did he touch her?” Claire asked.
