Chương 2
“It wasn’t Aunt Rachel.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
Just for a moment.
Richard did not move.
Ethan felt something inside him go very still.
His anger had been pointed in one direction. Rachel. The bracelet. Her lie. Her initials. Her strange refusal to look at Lily.
Now the anger disappeared, leaving something colder behind.
He turned his head slowly toward his father.
“Then who put you in that room, Lily?”
Lily’s fingers tightened in his shirt.
“Grandpa said—”
“Lily.”
Rachel’s voice cut across the room.
Not sharp this time.
Afraid.
Lily flinched.
Ethan turned on his sister.
“Don’t.”
Rachel’s lips parted.
Diane took a step forward.
“Ethan, she has had a long day. We are not going to interrogate a child in front of twenty people.”
“No,” Ethan said. “We’re not.”
He adjusted Lily against his chest.
Her bare foot was cold against his hand.
He looked at his father.
Richard’s face had changed very little.
That bothered Ethan.
“What room?”
Richard sighed.
It was not the response Ethan expected.
Not outrage.
Not confusion.
A sigh.
“The study.”
Someone behind them whispered, “Jesus.”
Richard looked toward the voice with irritation.
That bothered Ethan too.
“You put my daughter in your study?”
“She was upset.”
“She was locked in.”
“She was not locked in.”
Lily pulled back from Ethan’s shoulder.
“Yes, I was.”
Richard’s jaw hardened.
Diane said, “Sweetheart, sometimes doors stick.”
Lily looked at her grandmother.
“I turned it.”
“What?”
“The thing.”
She made a twisting motion with her hand.
“The knob?”
Lily nodded.
“It wouldn’t open.”
Richard rubbed his thumb against the side of his index finger.
A tiny habit.
Ethan had watched him do it during negotiations, arguments, tax meetings, every conversation in which Richard believed another person had become inconvenient.
Rachel backed into the edge of the kitchen island.
A champagne flute behind her rocked.
She caught it before it fell.
Her hand was trembling.
Ethan looked at her.
“What did Dad say?”
“Don’t.”
Rachel’s voice had become almost soundless.
“Rachel.”
“Take Lily home.”
“What did he say?”
“I said take her home.”
Richard spoke over her.
“Your sister is right.”
Lily was staring at Rachel now.
“Aunt Rachel told me not to tell.”
Rachel’s breath caught.
There it was.
The sentence that had begun everything.
Ethan looked from his daughter to his sister.
“Why?”
Rachel shook her head.
Lily answered for her.
“She said it gets worse when people tell.”
The room changed.
Not dramatically.
No one gasped this time.
The silence simply became different.
Diane’s face seemed to age in front of him.
Rachel stared at the floor.
Richard picked up his glass.
Ethan slapped his hand down over it before he could lift it.
Richard looked at him.
“Don’t,” Ethan said.
“Get your hand off my drink.”
“Why did she say that?”
Richard pulled the glass free.
“You’re allowing a frightened child to repeat nonsense she doesn’t understand.”
“A frightened child.”
Ethan repeated the words slowly.
“You keep using that part as if it helps you.”
“Ethan,” Diane said.
He did not look at her.
Richard drank.
The ice clicked against his teeth.
Ethan’s attention dropped to the amber liquid.
He could smell bourbon now.
He tried to remember whether his father had been drinking when he arrived.
He remembered a glass.
Maybe the same one.
Maybe not.
He had been helping Lily untangle ribbon from a gift bag. Rachel had been opening a bottle of sparkling cider. Diane had been irritated because the bakery wrote “Lilly” on the backup cupcakes.
Normal things.
Pointless things.
Twenty minutes earlier they had mattered.
Now Ethan could not understand how he had failed to notice his daughter leave the room.
The thought hit him hard enough that he tightened his hold on her.
“When did you go upstairs?”
Lily whispered, “When you went outside.”
Ethan closed his eyes briefly.
The call.
His office had called about a commercial renovation in Arlington. A subcontractor had misread a drawing, and Ethan had stepped onto the back patio because he could not hear over the children.
Nine minutes.
He had checked afterward.
Nine minutes and forty-three seconds.
“You followed Grandpa?”
Lily shook her head.
Richard said, “This stops now.”
Ethan ignored him.
“Did Grandpa take you upstairs?”
Lily hesitated.
Rachel looked sick.
Ethan stopped.
He heard himself.
Question after question.
His daughter squeezed between adults who were all staring at her.
He was doing exactly what Diane had accused him of, even if Diane had said it for the wrong reason.
He pressed his mouth to Lily’s hair.
“You don’t have to tell me anything else right now.”
Lily began crying again.
Not loudly.
That made it worse.
“I’m sorry.”
Ethan felt his stomach turn.
“For what?”
“I made everybody mad.”
“No.”
“I broke Aunt Rachel’s present.”
“No.”
He crouched enough to bring her face level with his.
Her arms remained locked around his neck.
“You do not apologize for the bracelet.”
Rachel made a small sound.
Ethan looked up.
His sister had one hand across her stomach now.
Diane touched her elbow.
Rachel pulled away from her.
That was the second movement Ethan could not explain.
He noticed, at last, the purplish mark above Rachel’s wrist.
It was partly hidden under the champagne satin cuff.
A thumb-shaped bruise.
Rachel saw him see it.
She tugged down her sleeve.
Richard said, “Get out.”
Ethan stood.
“All right.”
The answer seemed to surprise everybody.
He shifted Lily onto his left arm and took out his phone.
Richard’s expression hardened.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“You don’t need the phone for that.”
Ethan looked at him.
“I’m documenting the bracelet.”
Diane stepped toward him.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
He photographed it where it lay beside Richard’s glass.
Then he picked it up with a clean cloth napkin, wrapped it, and placed it in the chest pocket of his shirt.
Maybe the napkin mattered.
Maybe it did not.
He did not know.
May you like
He was a contractor, not a detective.
But some instinct told him not to hand the bracelet back to anyone in that house.
