Chương 2
Then color left her face.
Only a little.
Elizabeth noticed because she had spent seven years noticing things in this house that people with money assumed employees did not see.
Andrew looked at his mother.
Lucinda recovered first.
“That is absurd.”
Andrew said nothing.
“He is five years old.”
Still nothing.
“He has been traumatized.”
Andrew lowered his eyes to the ribbon.
He crouched slowly and picked it up between two fingers.
The severed edge was clean.
A few green threads clung to the polished floor where it had fallen.
He turned the ribbon once in his hand.
Alex watched him.
Andrew’s jaw tightened.
“Dad.”
The second word came more easily, which somehow made Elizabeth’s eyes sting worse than the first.
Andrew looked up immediately.
Alex pointed at Lucinda.
Not at the scissors.
At her.
Lucinda stepped back.
Her heel clicked against the marble.
“What exactly have you been telling him?”
Elizabeth stared at her.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Lucinda raised the scissors.
The movement was abrupt enough that Alex ducked against Elizabeth.
Andrew stood.
Lucinda pointed the closed blades toward Elizabeth’s chest.
“The maid taught him that lie.”
Andrew’s attention went to the scissors.
“Lower them.”
“She has had months alone with him.”
“Lower the scissors.”
“She feeds him, bathes him, puts him to bed, takes him to appointments.”
Lucinda’s breathing had become audible.
“You think she couldn’t put words in his head?”
Elizabeth’s mouth went dry.
She had imagined being fired from the Whitmore house often enough to know exactly what she would take with her.
Her mother’s chipped ceramic mug was in the staff kitchen.
Two blouses were hanging downstairs.
There were thirty-eight dollars in cash inside her locker and a photograph of her younger sister taped behind the door.
She had never imagined leaving while being accused of teaching a grieving child to name his grandmother as a murderer.
“I never told him anything about Mrs. Whitmore’s death,” she said.
Lucinda gave a short laugh without humor.
“Of course you’d say that.”
Andrew remained between the scissors and his son.
“Elizabeth.”
She looked at him.
“Has Alex ever said anything like this to you?”
“No.”
“Has he tried?”
She hesitated.
Lucinda seized on it.
“There.”
Andrew lifted one hand without looking at his mother.
Elizabeth swallowed.
“He draws the same thing.”
Andrew’s eyes narrowed.
“What thing?”
“A staircase.”
Lucinda’s face became perfectly still.
Elizabeth noticed that too.
“Which staircase?” Andrew asked.
“The west stairs.”
The house seemed to contract around them.
Those stairs had been closed after Caroline’s death.
Andrew had ordered the doors locked because Alex would stand at the bottom and stare upward for hours.
He had assumed grief had attached itself to the place where his mother had fallen.
Everyone had assumed that.
Assumptions had been one of the few things the house never lacked.
Andrew looked down at his son.
Alex’s eyes were fixed on the green ribbon in his father’s hand.
“Alex.”
The boy did not answer.
Andrew crouched again, leaving several feet between them.
“Did you see Grandma hurt Mommy?”
Alex’s face tightened.
Elizabeth felt him begin to retreat into himself.
She touched Andrew’s shoulder before she could reconsider whether an employee should.
“Don’t.”
Andrew looked back at her.
“He just spoke.”
“I know.”
“I need to know what he saw.”
“And he needs you not to turn him into an interview.”
Andrew stared at her hand.
Elizabeth removed it.
For one uncomfortable second, embarrassment entered the room alongside everything worse.
Then Alex whispered, “Rabbit knows.”
Andrew turned toward him.
Lucinda made a sound that was almost a scoff.
Alex pointed at the toy on the floor.
Andrew followed his finger.
The worn white rabbit had belonged to Caroline before it belonged to Alex.
One of its glass eyes had been replaced years ago with a dark plastic button that never quite matched.
Its left ear had been restitched twice.
Caroline used to complain that Alex loved the ugliest object in the house more faithfully than he loved most people.
Andrew had not thought about that joke since the funeral.
He crossed to the rabbit and picked it up.
Something inside the toy shifted.
Not stuffing.
Something hard.
Lucinda lowered the scissors at last.
Andrew squeezed the rabbit’s body once.
A faint rectangular edge pressed beneath the worn fabric along its back.
Elizabeth saw his expression change.
So did Lucinda.
“That toy has been repaired a dozen times,” Lucinda said.
Andrew ran his thumb over the seam.
One section of stitching was newer than the rest.
The thread was white, almost invisible against the fur.
His mother’s sewing scissors gleamed in her hand.
Andrew looked at them.
Then at the seam.
Lucinda’s composure finally cracked.
“Andrew, don’t be ridiculous.”
He held the rabbit against his palm.
For the first time since entering the hall, he looked afraid.
“Elizabeth,” he said quietly, “take Alex upstairs.”
Alex clung to her before she could answer.
Lucinda stepped toward them.
“No one is going anywhere.”
Andrew moved between his mother and his son.
The severed ribbon remained wrapped around two fingers of his left hand while Caroline’s old rabbit rested in his right.
“You’re not giving orders in my house tonight,” he said.
Lucinda stared at him.
Behind Andrew, Alex lifted his face from Elizabeth’s blouse.
His voice was barely audible now.
“She knows you found it.”
Andrew did not turn around.
The warning in Alex’s voice was too quiet for panic, which made it worse.
Lucinda’s fingers closed around the scissors until her knuckles blanched.
“What does that mean?”
Alex buried his face against Elizabeth again.
Andrew looked at his mother.
“You heard him.”
“I heard a frightened child repeating nonsense.”
“You were the one frightening him.”
Lucinda’s mouth tightened.
“Do not reduce this to a ribbon.”
Andrew glanced at the scissors.
May you like
“I’m trying very hard not to reduce it to anything.”
He crossed toward a narrow console table beneath a piece of abstract blue glass and placed the rabbit on its polished surface.
