Part 7
“I’m supposed to fly to New York on Wednesday,” he said.
“That’s not what I asked.”
A faint, pained smile touched his face. “No. It isn’t.”
He crouched.
“I’m not leaving tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Would you like me to take you upstairs?”
She looked at Graham.
“Can Grandpa come?”
“Yes.”
Nathan stood and faced Margaret.
“Do not leave the lodge.”
“I won’t.”
“Do not delete anything.”
“I won’t.”
He turned to Victoria.
“The same applies to you.”
She gave him a look he had not seen coming. It was not anger. It was contempt so complete that for a moment it seemed to relieve her of every other emotion.
“You think you can freeze my life because you finally decided to come home.”
Nathan flinched as if she had touched him.
Graham saw the truth inside the cruelty. Nathan had stayed away too often. Work had become the one place where every failure could be measured in numbers and corrected by doing more. At home, Laura had died despite the best doctors. Emma had grieved without a schedule. Victoria had arrived later with a polished capacity for order, and Nathan had confused order with healing.
Being absent did not make him responsible for Victoria’s choices.
It did make those choices easier.
“I think,” he said, “that no one is leaving with records, devices, or files until we know what happened.”
“You cannot hold me here.”
“No.”
Victoria waited.
Nathan’s voice softened.
“But if you leave tonight, I will call the foundation’s attorney before you reach the highway and request an emergency suspension of every account you control.”
“On what evidence?”
“Seven unauthorized payments, a shell vendor, a missing original, and an accusation against my daughter that collapsed under one photograph.”
Victoria’s expression tightened at the word daughter.
Nathan saw it.
“So stay,” he said. “Or don’t.”
For the first time that evening, Victoria looked uncertain about which direction still belonged to her.
Graham guided Emma toward the stairs with Nathan beside them. The girl moved slowly, black tights whispering against the velvet hem of her dress. At the first step, she stopped and looked back.
The open jewelry box remained beside Victoria’s plate.
“Dad?”
Nathan turned.
“She put it there.”
Victoria’s face went blank.
Emma pointed at the box.
“When she came out of the library. She opened it before dinner because it squeaked, and she looked at me when it did.”
Nathan looked at the hinge.
Graham remembered Emma flinching at the sound while she sat beside him, though he had assumed she was frightened by Victoria’s accusation.
“Why didn’t you say that before?” Nathan asked.
Emma’s eyes filled again.
“Because she said you would believe her.”
Nathan stood without moving for several seconds.
Then he held out his hand.
Emma took it.
Upstairs, the lodge felt removed from the dining room, though the voices below sometimes rose through the old heating vents in fragments. Victoria’s sharper tones traveled best. Margaret’s almost never did.
Emma’s bedroom was at the end of the west hall. It had a sloped ceiling, a narrow window seat, and pale wallpaper covered with pinecones that Graham’s mother had chosen in 1982. Victoria had offered to redecorate twice. Emma had refused both times.
Nathan turned on the bedside lamp.
The girl remained near the door.
“You can change,” he said.
She looked down at her velvet dress as if she had forgotten she was wearing it.
“Do I have to go back downstairs?”
“No.”
“Are you going back?”
“Yes.”
Her face tightened.
Nathan glanced at Graham.
Graham sat on the window seat and unwound his gray plaid scarf. “I’ll stay until you’re asleep.”
Emma took off her shoes without unbuckling them, pressing one heel against the other until they slipped free. Laura used to do the same thing. Nathan watched the small act with a look Graham recognized: memory arriving before a person had time to protect himself.
Emma pulled pajamas from the lower dresser drawer and went into the bathroom.
Nathan stood in the middle of the room.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked.
Graham looked at him.
“When?”
“Before tonight. If Victoria was treating her like this.”
“I didn’t know it had reached this.”
“You heard her say this isn’t Emma’s home.”
“Tonight.”
“That sentence didn’t appear from nowhere.”
“No.”
Nathan rubbed both hands over his face.
Graham waited.
The bathroom door stayed closed. Water ran briefly in the sink, stopped, then ran again.
“I should have seen it,” Nathan said.
“Yes.”
Nathan lowered his hands.
“You could let me have five minutes before you agree.”
“I have given you years.”
The words hurt his son. Graham regretted their shape, but not their truth.
Nathan crossed to the window. Snow had thickened beyond the glass, covering the ridge road and softening the black lines of the trees.
“I thought she was strict,” he said.
“She is strict with people she cannot charm.”
“That sounds like something you’ve been saving.”
“It is something I was too polite to say.”
“Polite.”
“Yes.”
Nathan turned.
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
Graham looked toward the bathroom door.
“No,” he said. “Cowardly might be closer.”
Nathan’s anger lost its target.
Graham folded the scarf over his knee.
“I saw things I did not like. The way Emma checked Victoria’s face before taking a second piece of bread. The way Margaret stopped speaking whenever Victoria entered. The way every discussion about the foundation ended with someone apologizing to her for asking a question.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because when I did, you said I had never accepted your marriage.”
“That was three years ago.”
“I allowed the answer to last three years.”
Nathan returned to the window.
The bathroom door opened. Emma wore flannel pajamas printed with small silver stars. She had washed her face but missed a line of mascara-like shadow beneath one eye where her tears had carried dust from the fireplace.
May you like
Nathan reached toward it, then stopped before touching her.
“You missed a little soap,” he said.
