Chương 6
“You entered his study, stole confidential material, and threatened his livelihood. You frightened him.”
Sienna laughed once, without humor. “I frightened him.”
“Men like Garrick are trained to respond to threats.”
“He isn’t a dog.”
“No. He is the chief executive of a company responsible for twelve thousand employees. People depend on him.”
“Then perhaps he should be able to walk past his wife without pushing her down stairs.”
Miriam’s breath sharpened.
“You always did enjoy sounding morally clean,” she said. “It is one of the luxuries of people who have never built anything.”
Sienna sat on the edge of the bed.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to correct the public record. Say you were injured during an argument and spoke while distressed. Garrick will arrange private treatment. You may live separately for a time. No one needs to suffer more than they already have.”
“You mean no one named Ashford.”
“I mean the employees whose retirement accounts lost six percent today.”
Sienna had not known the stock price had moved.
Miriam heard the silence.
“You see?” she said more softly. “Actions have edges. Your mother should have taught you that.”
“My mother taught me to recognize a threat.”
“This is not a threat.”
“No. It’s a bill.”
Miriam waited.
“Think before you make everyone else pay it,” she said, then ended the call.
Sienna sat with the phone against her ear until Catherine appeared in the doorway.
“Who was it?”
Sienna told her.
Catherine’s face changed. “The order covers third-party contact intended to influence you.”
“She didn’t say Garrick asked her to call.”
“She didn’t need to.”
“Not everything is evidence.”
“No. But some things are.”
Catherine reached for the phone.
Sienna pulled it away.
“There,” she said. “That. You do that every time.”
“Do what?”
“Turn me into a witness before I’ve finished being a person.”
Catherine lowered her hand.
The next morning, Officer Bell and another officer accompanied Sienna to the mansion.
The house looked different in daylight. Less golden. The stone façade rose behind clipped hedges and wet lawns. A delivery truck idled near the service entrance while a security guard checked paperwork, proof that groceries and flowers still arrived even when a family was collapsing.
Nina came with them. Catherine was not allowed inside because Garrick’s attorneys had objected to her presence as potentially inflammatory.
Garrick was gone, temporarily staying at a downtown hotel.
Miriam remained.
She stood in the entrance hall wearing a pale gray suit, one hand resting on the console table where Catherine’s handbag had been placed two nights earlier. The dining-room doors were closed.
“You have thirty minutes,” she said.
Officer Bell glanced at the written order. “Mrs. Ashford may retrieve essential personal belongings. We will determine what is reasonable.”
“This is still my home.”
“It is also hers.”
Miriam looked at Sienna. “For now.”
Sienna walked upstairs.
Every step felt stolen.
The bedroom she shared with Garrick was immaculate. The bed had been made. Her blood had been cleaned from the cuff of the robe she wore after the hospital, and the robe itself was gone. The bedside table held Garrick’s watch tray, two books, and a framed wedding photograph.
Her side had been emptied.
“Where are my things?” Sienna asked.
Miriam remained in the doorway. “Packed.”
“By whom?”
“The staff.”
Sienna opened the closet. Garrick’s suits hung in orderly rows. Her dresses were missing, along with her shoes and handbags.
“Where are they?”
“Storage.”
Nina stepped forward. “The order permits retrieval. Provide access.”
“I don’t know which facility.”
“You had her belongings removed overnight and don’t know where they went?”
“I do not manage household labor.”
Sienna looked toward Officer Bell. The officer was already documenting the empty space.
In the bathroom, Sienna found her medication but not the prescription bottles. In the desk drawer, she found old receipts, a dried fountain pen, and the silver bracelet her father had given her at sixteen. She slipped it over her good wrist.
Her passport was gone.
So was her laptop.
The phone Garrick had taken was not in the bedroom.
They moved to the small studio at the end of the hall. Sienna had once used it for paper restoration, repairing water-damaged letters and old prints for private collectors. After marrying Garrick, she accepted fewer commissions. He disliked the solvents. Then he disliked strangers entering the house. Eventually, the room became storage for charity-auction items.
Dust lay across the worktable.
A half-restored map waited beneath protective tissue where Sienna had left it eight months earlier.
She touched the edge of the paper.
“You don’t need that,” Miriam said from the hall.
Sienna turned. “I decide what I need.”
Miriam’s expression flickered. It was not fear. Not yet. But the old certainty had encountered resistance and did not know where to place it.
Sienna gathered her tools, the map, two boxes of documents, and a chipped ceramic mug filled with brushes. On the bottom shelf of the cabinet, behind rolls of archival paper, she found a small black notebook.
She opened it.
The first pages contained measurements for framing. The later pages held dates.
March 8—grip bruising, left wrist.
April 21—bedroom door, split lip.
June 3—threatened to call Dr. Harlan.
She had begun the record eleven months earlier, after Garrick told her she imagined the frequency of their arguments.
For weeks she had written every incident. Then he found her crying in the studio and asked why. She stopped recording because the notebook itself felt dangerous.
Nina saw her face. “What is it?”
Sienna handed it over.
Miriam entered the room. “That is private.”
“Yes,” Sienna said. “It is.”
Miriam reached toward the notebook.
Officer Bell stepped between them.
“No one touches it.”
May you like
The older woman’s composure cracked for the first time. “You have no idea what she was like. She provoked him, disappeared for hours, accused people of following her. She stopped eating properly. She lived on coffee and suspicion.”
Sienna felt each sentence land because pieces of them were true.
