Chương 7
“That might be good.”
“And a police report.”
“That’s not the same category.”
“No.”
Sophie carried her plate to the sink, leaving a trail of crumbs. “What’s a police report?”
Claire and Daniel exchanged a look.
“It’s when people tell the police something happened,” Claire said.
“Are we telling?”
“We haven’t decided.”
“Will they arrest Grandpa Richard?”
“We don’t know.”
Sophie considered that with the solemnity she usually reserved for math problems.
“I don’t want him to go to jail.”
Daniel’s face changed.
Claire sat beside her. “Why not?”
“Because Grandma will be alone.”
The compassion of children could feel like an accusation, though Sophie did not intend one.
“Those are adult consequences,” Claire said. “You don’t have to protect them from what happened.”
“Did I make it happen?”
“No.”
“If I opened my backpack, he wouldn’t get the belt.”
Claire’s throat closed.
Daniel crouched in front of the chair. “Listen to me. You are allowed to say no when someone tries to take your private things. You did not make him remove his belt. You did not make him follow you. Adults are responsible for what they do with their anger.”
Sophie watched him.
“Even grandpas?”
“Especially adults who are supposed to protect you.”
She picked at a crumb on the table. “He isn’t my real grandpa.”
Daniel glanced at Claire.
“That doesn’t change what he was supposed to do,” he said.
Sophie nodded slowly, then asked for chocolate milk.
The ordinary request released all three of them for a few minutes. Claire poured too much syrup. Daniel complained that the drink had become “a dairy-based dessert,” and Sophie almost smiled.
At nine thirty, the doorbell rang.
The security agent at the drive called Daniel first. Lydia was at the gate.
Claire wanted to refuse her. Sophie, hearing the name, went upstairs without being asked.
That decided it.
“Let her in,” Claire said.
Lydia entered carrying a paper grocery bag. Her linen jacket was wrinkled, and she had removed the makeup she wore at the party. Without it, she looked older than Eleanor despite being three years younger.
“I brought muffins,” she said.
“No one wants muffins,” Daniel replied.
Claire touched his arm. “Come in.”
Lydia placed the bag on the kitchen counter. “I didn’t know what else to bring.”
“You could have brought the truth yesterday,” Daniel said.
“I’m trying to now.”
He folded his arms.
Claire asked, “What happened before I came outside?”
Lydia told them much of what the recording showed. She added details the camera had missed. Eleanor had discovered the bracelet absent during photographs. Richard suggested checking purses. Eleanor refused because asking adult guests would be insulting. Then Sophie emerged from behind the table with her backpack, where she had been collecting fallen flower petals for an art project.
“She was the easiest person to accuse,” Claire said.
Lydia looked at the floor. “Yes.”
“Did you believe she took it?”
“For perhaps a minute.”
“Why?”
Lydia rubbed at a faint lipstick mark on one thumb. “Because Eleanor sounded certain. She said Sophie had been watching the bracelet during lunch.”
“Sophie watches everything that sparkles.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it yesterday.”
Lydia accepted the correction with a small nod.
Daniel remained near the window. “Why didn’t you intervene when he took off the belt?”
“I told him to stop.”
“You stayed twenty feet away.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Lydia’s eyes filled, though her voice did not change. “Because when I was seventeen, Richard shoved me into a cabinet during an argument at my father’s house.”
Claire stared at her.
Daniel unfolded his arms.
“What?” he asked.
“It was before he and Eleanor were married. We had all known him through business circles. He was dating someone else then. He got drunk. I told him he shouldn’t drive. He grabbed my arm, and when I pulled away, he shoved me.”
“Did my mother know?”
“I told her years later, before their wedding.”
“And she married him.”
“She said people change.”
Daniel turned toward the window again.
Lydia continued, “Yesterday, when he took off the belt, I was seventeen for a second. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t move.”
Claire understood the paralysis. She did not absolve it.
“Did he ever apologize to you?”
“No.”
“Did Eleanor ask him about it?”
“She said she did. He remembered it differently.”
“What does that mean?”
“He said I tripped.”
Daniel made a low sound in his throat.
Lydia looked toward the stairs. “I want to apologize to Sophie.”
“Not today,” Claire said.
“Of course.”
“Maybe not for a long time.”
Lydia nodded.
She opened her handbag and removed a folded piece of paper. “I wrote down everything I remember. Times as closely as I could estimate them. Where people were. What was said.”
Daniel accepted it.
“There’s something else,” she said. “Richard has done this before.”
Claire felt the air shift.
“To a child?” Daniel asked.
“No. Not with a belt. But he accused one of the housekeepers of stealing a watch last year. They found it in his travel bag.”
“What happened to the housekeeper?”
“He had already fired her.”
“Was she rehired?”
“No.”
“Was she paid?”
Lydia looked ashamed. “I don’t know.”
“What’s her name?”
“Marisol Vega.”
Daniel wrote it down.
Claire thought of Eleanor’s message blaming the bracelet clasp. “Did he apologize?”
“Eleanor gave Marisol a check and asked her to sign something.”
Daniel’s pen stopped. “What did she sign?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why are you telling us now?”
Lydia looked at him. “Because yesterday wasn’t new. It was only the first time the person he chose had enough power around her to make everyone call it what it was.”
No one spoke.
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.
Sophie stood at the end of the hallway looking down between the railings. She had changed into leggings and a sweatshirt. Her curls were tied back unevenly.
“Are those blueberry muffins?” she asked.
Lydia turned.
“Yes.”
May you like
“Do they have the sugar rocks on top?”
“I think so.”
