Chương 3
Lucy placed the crown on the table.
“Did I really spoil it?” she asked.
“No.”
“They said I was making a face.”
“Were you?”
She considered the question with painful seriousness. “Maybe.”
“What kind?”
She pulled her mouth sideways and narrowed one eye.
Daniel almost smiled. “That is a significant face.”
“I was trying not to cry.”
The almost-smile disappeared.
The microwave sounded. Mara flinched at the beep, then opened it too quickly and burned her fingers on the plate.
“Damn,” she whispered.
Lucy looked surprised.
Mara set down the plate. “I apologize.”
“It’s okay,” Lucy said. “Uncle Daniel says worse things in traffic.”
Daniel looked at her. “That is privileged information.”
For one second, Lucy smiled.
Mara did too, though uneasily. She placed a clean napkin beside the plate and turned to leave.
“Mara,” Daniel said.
She stopped.
“Were you here when they told Lucy to sit behind the bench?”
Her eyes went to the doorway.
Lucy lowered her fork.
Daniel regretted asking in front of her.
“You don’t have to answer now,” he said. “I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”
Mara’s throat moved. “I was here.”
Lucy watched her.
“What did you do?” Daniel asked, still gentle.
Mara pressed her fingers together. “I brought the plate.”
The room remained quiet except for the radiator knocking once behind the wall.
“Why?” Daniel asked.
Evelyn’s voice came from the doorway.
“Because I instructed her to.”
She stood with one hand on the doorframe, her pearl necklace bright against the cream fabric at her throat. She had not brought her wineglass, which meant she had come to argue rather than stay long.
Mara stepped aside.
Daniel pulled out the chair next to Lucy. “Eat while it’s warm.”
Lucy obeyed, but slowly.
Evelyn looked at her granddaughter. “Lucy, your uncle and I need a private conversation.”
“No,” Daniel said.
“This is not appropriate for a child.”
“Neither was the floor.”
Evelyn closed her eyes briefly. “You have always believed repetition improves an argument.”
“It helps when people pretend not to hear it.”
Mara moved toward the hall.
“Stay,” Evelyn said.
Mara stopped.
Daniel looked at his mother. “Why?”
“Because if she leaves, you’ll accuse me of silencing a witness.”
“I hadn’t planned to use that word.”
“You’ve planned a great deal in the past ten minutes.”
Lucy’s fork scraped the plate.
Daniel sat beside her. “Tell me what happened.”
Evelyn’s gaze remained on him. “Celeste arranged the photograph as a gift for Jonathan. A formal family portrait.”
“With Lucy excluded.”
“With the immediate household.”
Daniel looked at her.
Evelyn continued. “Jonathan, Celeste, and their son.”
“And you.”
“I was asked to join.”
“Then it wasn’t the immediate household.”
“It was a composition, Daniel, not a census.”
Lucy put down her fork.
Evelyn’s voice softened slightly. “Your dress was lovely, sweetheart. The cardigan was not the issue.”
Lucy stared at her plate.
“What was the issue?” Daniel asked.
“She became agitated when Celeste suggested we take a few photographs with Milo before photographing her separately.”
“That isn’t what she told me.”
“She is nine. She heard criticism where none was intended.”
Lucy whispered, “She said my face looked wrong.”
Evelyn’s eyes sharpened. “Celeste said your expression looked unhappy.”
“She said I looked like my mom.”
The room changed.
Mara looked toward Daniel.
Daniel’s hand rested flat on the table, but the muscles in his forearm tightened.
Lucy’s mother, Rebecca, had been dead for six years. She had been Jonathan’s first wife, though the marriage had ended before her death. Lucy remembered almost nothing of the divorce and too much of the final year of Rebecca’s life. There were photographs in Daniel’s study of Rebecca laughing with Anne on the back steps, both women barefoot, each holding a glass of wine they had been told not to bring outside.
Celeste had married Jonathan eighteen months after Rebecca’s funeral.
“What exactly did Celeste say?” Daniel asked.
Lucy looked at Evelyn, then at him.
“She said, ‘Not that look again. You look exactly like your mother when you do that.’ Then Grandma said I should calm down somewhere people couldn’t see me.”
Evelyn’s controlled expression did not break, but color rose beneath the powder along her cheeks.
“I said she needed privacy.”
“Behind furniture?” Daniel asked.
“The other rooms were occupied by catering staff.”
“This house has twenty-six rooms.”
“You are being theatrical.”
Mara said quietly, “I offered to take her upstairs.”
Evelyn turned. “You offered to abandon your station during dinner.”
“I could have walked her to her room and come back.”
“And I told you she would be fine for five minutes.”
“How long was she there?” Daniel asked.
Mara hesitated.
Lucy answered. “I counted the songs.”
“How many?”
“Seven.”
Daniel pictured the instrumental playlist Celeste favored at dinners, each piece three or four minutes long.
Evelyn said, “She may have started counting before she sat down.”
Daniel turned to Mara.
“Twenty-three minutes,” Mara said.
Evelyn stared at her.
“I looked at the clock,” Mara added.
Lucy pushed her plate away. She had eaten four bites.
Daniel wanted to send her upstairs, but that felt too much like finishing what the others had begun: removing her so adults could control the meaning of what had happened.
He reached for the crown instead.
“May I fix this?”
Lucy nodded.
He pressed the crushed point between his fingers, smoothing the thick paper carefully. The fold remained visible.
From the garden hall came the faint sound of Milo laughing, followed by Jonathan’s low voice.
Evelyn sat across from Daniel without being invited.
“You cannot turn every mistake into a moral emergency,” she said.
“I don’t.”
“You do when grief is involved.”
Mara looked down again.
Daniel continued smoothing the paper.
Evelyn folded her hands. “You see Anne in every vulnerable person. It clouds you.”
He stopped.
May you like
Lucy’s eyes moved between them.
Daniel’s first instinct was anger. His second was to protect Anne’s name from being used as leverage. The two impulses met somewhere behind his ribs and stayed there.
