Chương 4
“Was Theo with her?” Nia asked.
“No. He was in the breakfast room.”
“Doing what?”
“Drawing.”
“Was he upset?”
Mara’s gaze returned to Evelyn. “He’d been told he couldn’t come downstairs during the dinner.”
The attorney stepped closer. “Ms. Cole, my client is cooperating, but I’m going to advise that any further questions occur with counsel present.”
Nia closed her legal pad. “That is her right.”
Evelyn looked at Julian. “You should follow the same advice.”
“He’s seven.”
“Yes.”
“He was locked in the dark.”
“I understand what was found.”
“No, you understand what can be said about it.”
Claire stood. “Julian.”
He realized he had moved toward his mother. Not quickly, not threateningly, but enough for Richard Voss to shift his weight.
Julian stepped back.
Evelyn smoothed one cuff. “You are frightened. I won’t hold that against you. But if you turn this into a performance before we know what happened, the state will ask why you left your legal ward in someone else’s care for nineteen months.”
The words entered him cleanly because they were true.
She saw that too.
Her voice softened. “Think before you make Theo pay for your guilt.”
A nurse opened the double doors and called Julian’s name.
Theo lay propped against two pillows, smaller in the hospital bed than he had seemed in the hidden room. Clear tubing ran beneath his nose. His sweater had been replaced by a pale blue gown. The stuffed elephant rested under his left arm.
Mara sat in the chair beside him.
Julian stopped at the foot of the bed. “Do you want me here?”
Theo nodded.
Julian moved to the other chair. He leaned forward, then changed his mind and sat back so the child would not feel crowded.
For several minutes, Theo watched a muted cartoon mounted high on the wall. A bear attempted to build a canoe and repeatedly sat in a bucket. Theo did not smile. He rubbed the stuffed elephant’s bent ear between his fingers.
“Does your chest hurt?” Julian asked.
“A little.”
“Do you want me to get the doctor?”
“No.”
“Water?”
Theo pointed to the cup beside him. “It tastes like the refrigerator.”
Julian tested it. The water did taste faintly of plastic.
“I can find better water.”
“It’s okay.”
They watched the bear step into wet cement.
Mara’s ice pack had melted. Water ran along her wrist and darkened the cuff of her uniform. She placed it on the windowsill.
Julian asked, “How long were you in the room?”
Theo’s fingers stopped moving.
Mara looked at Julian sharply.
“You don’t have to answer,” he said. “I’m sorry. That was too soon.”
The boy stared at the television.
After a while he said, “The clock rang twice.”
“The library clock?”
A nod.
It rang every half hour and struck the full hour with a deeper bell. Julian tried to calculate backward and could not trust himself.
“Was it dark when you went in?” Mara asked gently.
“No.”
“Did someone take you there?”
Theo’s breath shortened.
Mara lifted a hand. “All right. We’re done.”
Julian saw a small red mark around Theo’s wrist. He looked at Mara.
She had seen it.
Theo pulled the blanket higher.
“The elephant was thirsty,” he whispered.
Julian did not know what to say.
Mara did. “He looks like he could drink a lake.”
Theo considered the toy. “He doesn’t like lakes.”
“No?”
“He fell in one.”
“That was a bath.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
Mara gave a solemn nod. “Fair enough.”
The corner of Theo’s mouth moved.
It was the first ordinary thing that had happened since the library, and Julian nearly broke beneath it.
He spent the night in the chair. Claire returned to Hawthorn House with police permission to collect clothes and Theo’s medication. She called twice, once to say the library had been sealed and once to say reporters had gathered outside the gate after a catering employee posted that an ambulance had removed a child from the estate.
The post did not name Theo, but Hawthorn House was supposed to host Julian and Claire’s engagement dinner. By midnight, two local news sites had connected the ambulance to the Harrow family. One used an old photograph of Julian leaving federal court after a business dispute. Another used Claire’s professional headshot.
The comments filled in facts no one had given them.
An overdose. A servant beaten. A secret child. A kidnapping. An allergic reaction staged for attention.
Julian turned off his phone.
At two in the morning, Theo woke disoriented and tried to climb out of bed. Julian stood too quickly. The boy recoiled against the rails.
“It’s me,” Julian said. “You’re in the hospital.”
Theo stared at him, breathing through his mouth.
Julian crouched so they were level. “I’m staying here. I won’t touch you unless you ask.”
The night nurse came in, checked the monitor, and spoke to Theo in the same calm voice she might have used to discuss cereal. She offered him a warmed blanket. He chose yellow.
When she left, Julian returned to the chair.
“Jules?”
“Yes.”
“Are you mad?”
The question had the careful quality of something rehearsed.
“Not at you.”
“At Mara?”
“No.”
“At Grandma?”
Julian felt the room contract around the name.
“I don’t know enough yet,” he said.
Theo studied him. “That means yes.”
“It means I don’t want to lie to you.”
“You lie when you say you’ll come Friday.”
Julian lowered his eyes.
“I have,” he said.
The monitor counted Theo’s heartbeat between them.
“You said work,” Theo continued.
“I was working.”
“You still lied.”
“Yes.”
The boy lay back. The yellow blanket rose and fell over his chest.
Julian could have explained flight delays, contracts, a lender who had threatened to withdraw financing, an emergency meeting in Toronto, the machinery of a life that had seemed impossible to pause. None of it belonged in the room.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
May you like
Theo turned his face toward the window.
In the morning, Detective Lena Ortiz arrived with a child-interview specialist. She told Julian that Theo would not be questioned in detail until medically cleared and rested. She asked for permission to retrieve his phone and tablet from Hawthorn House, along with records relevant to his care.
