Part 2
Camille found her voice.
“This is absurd. It was one of his supplements.”
Margaret replaced the receiver. “Which supplement?”
“The red one.”
“He doesn’t take a red capsule.”
“He does now.”
“Who prescribed it?”
“Dr. Shaw knows.”
Margaret watched her daughter-in-law’s face. She had always been good at silence. At charity dinners, silence encouraged nervous donors to add another zero. In family arguments, it made other people hear the weakness in their own explanations.
Camille bent to retrieve the capsule.
Margaret moved faster than Lena had seen her move in years.
“Do not touch it.”
Camille froze with her hand extended. “You’re making this look worse than it is.”
“I am looking at what it is.”
“You don’t know what it is.”
“Neither do you, apparently.”
Camille straightened. Her eyes had filled, though no tears had fallen. “Grant asked me to take Dad his drink. That’s all I was doing.”
“Where is Grant?”
“At the club.”
“At eight in the morning?”
“He had a meeting.”
The bell sounded again upstairs.
Lena shifted her weight and pain traveled from her elbow to her wrist. She bit the inside of her cheek before the sound could escape. Margaret saw it.
“Paul will help you.”
“I should go to Mr. Wexler.”
“No.”
“He’ll try to get up by himself if no one answers.”
Margaret glanced at Camille, then at the stairs. “I’ll go.”
Camille stepped into her path. “Margaret, please. Don’t go upstairs thinking I was trying to hurt him.”
“What should I think?”
“That Lena misunderstood.”
From the floor, Lena said, “I saw you open it.”
Camille looked down at her. Fear sharpened into something else.
“You saw me add what his nutritionist told me to add.”
“There is no nutritionist.”
“You manage linens and schedules. You don’t manage his doctors.”
The words struck an old place in Lena, one Camille could not have known existed. Nineteen years of being trusted with keys, medications, funerals, grandchildren, ruined Christmases, flooded basements, and Arthur’s private shame after his first minor stroke, only to be reduced in a sentence to linens and schedules.
Lena almost answered in anger.
Instead she looked at the capsule.
“You told me to be quiet.”
Camille’s nostrils flared. She turned back to Margaret. “I panicked. She grabbed me.”
“You pushed her down.”
“She wouldn’t let go.”
“Because she believed you had put something into Arthur’s drink.”
“She believes whatever makes her important.”
The library clock struck a quarter past eight. The sound crossed the foyer in eight measured notes.
Margaret’s face changed on the sixth.
It was not the broken glass or Lena’s accusation that did it. It was Camille’s certainty that Margaret would understand the insult being offered and accept it as a useful explanation.
Margaret stepped around her.
“Do not leave this room.”
Camille gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “You cannot order me to stay in a room.”
“No,” Margaret said. “But I can tell you that if you leave before we understand what happened, I will assume you have chosen the worst possible explanation.”
She went upstairs.
Camille stood with her arms held tightly against her waist. Lena could hear her breathing. Slow at first, then uneven.
The kitchen door opened, and Paul Kim entered carrying jars, folded towels, and a box of disposable gloves. He was the estate chef, though his work had expanded over twelve years to include everything from menu planning to mediating arguments about where the family should spend Thanksgiving. He stopped when he saw Lena.
“What happened?”
“She fell,” Camille said.
Lena answered at the same time. “She pushed me.”
Paul looked between them. His expression became carefully blank.
Margaret called down from the landing. “Paul, help Lena into the library. Preserve the capsule and as much liquid as you can. Use separate jars. Take photographs before you touch anything.”
Camille stared upward. “You’re collecting evidence now?”
Margaret did not answer.
Paul put on gloves. He took out his phone and photographed the floor from several angles. His hands shook slightly when he crouched. Lena noticed because Paul’s hands never shook, not even when carrying a wedding cake through a summer thunderstorm after the generator failed.
Camille backed toward the front door.
Paul looked up.
She stopped.
“Are you going somewhere?” he asked.
“I need shoes.”
“Your shoes can wait.”
She gave him a look that would once have made him apologize. Paul returned to photographing the capsule.
Lena tried to rise. Pain caught beneath her shoulder blade and forced her down again.
Paul set the phone aside. “Don’t be heroic.”
“I’m not.”
“You have a very specific face when you’re being heroic.”
“What face?”
“Annoyed.”
Despite herself, Lena almost smiled.
Paul helped her sit. He avoided pulling her left arm and placed one folded towel beneath her elbow. The quiet competence of it made the morning briefly ordinary. There were broken things in the foyer. Someone was upstairs waiting for breakfast. Someone else had put too much salt in the poached pears, and Paul would complain about it later, because the pears had arrived underripe and then softened all at once.
Camille watched them.
“I should call Grant,” she said.
Margaret returned to the landing. “Arthur is eating toast. He knows there was an accident. That is all he knows.”
“You lied to him?”
“I postponed frightening a sick man until I know why he should be frightened.”
Margaret descended one stair at a time, her hand resting lightly on the banister. “You may call Grant. Use the library. Put the call on speaker.”
Camille’s mouth trembled. “That is humiliating.”
Lena looked at the red cloud thinning in the tonic.
Margaret said, “So is being found on the floor in your employer’s house.”
May you like
The emergency room physician called Lena’s injuries uncomplicated: a bruised hip, a sprained wrist, and a small fracture at the tip of her elbow that would heal with a sling and patience. Lena did not have much patience, but she accepted the sling.
Margaret had driven her to the hospital herself.
