Part 4
Sylvie blinked.
“What does that mean?”
Margot’s gaze went toward the phone again.
Helena moved.
Not much.
Only one step down.
But the movement was enough to pull the warmth out of Sylvie’s body.
“Margot,” Helena said.
The name was quiet.
Margot looked at her mother.
For an instant, the two women stood beneath the chandelier’s gold light, one in navy and one in burgundy, both composed in different ways. Helena’s face was hard with warning. Margot’s was hard with the effort of not saying something irreversible.
Sylvie watched them and understood something else.
This was not a disagreement that had begun with her pregnancy.
This was older.
Older than the night Margot first called her from the foyer after midnight because she could not sleep. Older than the first dinner when Helena had complimented Sylvie’s dress and asked where she had bought it in a tone that made the question feel like an insult. Older than every strange little rule that had seemed merely eccentric until she began to see them as borders.
Sylvie was not the origin of their fear.
She was merely where it had found a place to land.
“What choice did I have?” Sylvie asked.
Margot looked back at her.
The answer came out barely above a whisper.
“You could have left when I told you to.”
Sylvie felt the room tilt.
She remembered the night.
Not a different room. Not a different house. The same foyer. The same staircase. The same dark railings rising behind Margot like bars.
It had been late. The chandelier had been dimmed. The warm lights were softer then, almost amber. Margot had stood halfway up the steps, barefoot, with her hair loose around her shoulders.
You need to go, she had said.
Sylvie had laughed because she thought Margot was afraid of an argument.
Then Margot had repeated it.
You need to leave before my mother gets back.
Sylvie had asked where Helena had gone.
Margot had said it did not matter.
Sylvie had asked why.
Margot had looked down toward the floor and said, Because I don’t know how to protect you if you stay.
At the time, Sylvie had heard only the fear.
She had not heard the warning.
“I didn’t know what you meant,” Sylvie said.
Margot closed her eyes.
“I know.”
“You could have told me.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You could have tried.”
“I did try.”
“No.” Sylvie’s voice rose. “You tried to make me leave without telling me why. You tried to scare me without admitting what you were scared of. You let me think you were ashamed of me.”
Margot’s eyes opened.
“I was ashamed.”
The sentence landed harder than anything Helena had said.
Sylvie’s breath caught.
Margot’s face folded inward, then steadied again.
“I was ashamed that I was afraid of her,” she said. “I was ashamed that I wanted you to go because I thought it would make things easier. I was ashamed that I knew she had plans and I still kept pretending I could fix it by waiting.”
Helena’s expression changed.
“Margot.”
But Margot did not stop.
The words seemed to be coming from somewhere she had kept closed for too long.
“You were right,” she said to Sylvie. “I knew she had been asking questions. I knew she was trying to find out things about you. I knew she wanted you gone before anyone could make a claim.”
Sylvie’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“Who?”
Margot looked at the ground.
“People.”
“There are no people here.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No,” Sylvie said. “I don’t. Not anymore.”
Helena’s voice cut through them.
“This is enough.”
Margot flinched.
Sylvie did not.
“No,” Sylvie said. “It isn’t.”
Helena’s eyes hardened.
“You have no idea what you are involving yourself in.”
“I am standing in front of you.”
“That is precisely the problem.”
The older woman descended another step.
Now there was only a small distance between her and Sylvie.
Helena smelled faintly of powder, perfume, and the cold metal of jewelry warmed by skin. She had always carried herself as though the world made room for her automatically. Even now, when the recording light on Sylvie’s phone threatened to turn this foyer into something Helena could not control, she seemed to believe her posture alone might restore order.
“You came into a family already carrying wounds you could not understand,” Helena said. “You saw weakness and mistook it for invitation.”
Sylvie stared at her.
“You think I used Margot?”
“I think you needed a place to belong.”
The cruelty of it was not in the accusation.
It was in the fact that Helena was partly right.
May you like
Sylvie had needed a place to belong.
She had wanted the long dinners, the warm hallways, the old house that seemed to promise permanence. She had wanted Margot’s careful hands, the softness Margot showed when no one else was looking, the possibility that love could make a person part of something bigger than their own fear.
