Chương 4
Her mouth moved.
Nothing came out.
Grant said, “Claire, tell them.”
Damian turned.
“Don’t speak to her.”
“This is absurd.”
Police lights appeared through the tall front windows, washing blue and red across the marble.
Guests who had been leaving stopped.
Someone near the stairs asked what was happening.
Grant looked toward the foyer.
Social exposure did what Damian’s authority had not.
It frightened him.
“No one needs to make a spectacle out of this,” Grant said.
Claire laughed.
It was a tiny, broken sound from behind the door.
Damian looked back at her.
“What?”
She shook her head.
“Nothing.”
The police entered through the foyer.
Two officers first, then a third a minute later. Michael met them before they reached the hall, gave them the essential facts, and pointed out Grant without dramatizing anything.
The guests were asked to leave.
Some did.
Some pretended they had not heard.
Damian watched three people put on their coats at the speed of geological change while looking over their shoulders.
Human curiosity survived wealth remarkably well.
One officer, a woman in her thirties named Alvarez, approached the cream-and-gold door.
She spoke to Claire through the gap.
The chain, it turned out, was not the problem.
A steel security bar had been mounted on the room side of the frame. Claire could remove it herself.
She simply had not.
“Claire,” Officer Alvarez said, “if you can lift the bar, I’d like you to come out.”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay.”
“I just want everyone to leave.”
“We can work on that.”
“I mean everyone.”
Her visible eye moved to Damian.
He understood.
He stepped back.
Sophie did not.
“Mommy?”
Claire’s face crumpled.
“Baby, I’m okay.”
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
“You said—”
“Sophie.”
Claire’s voice changed.
Not angry.
Afraid.
“Please.”
The child stopped.
Officer Alvarez turned slightly.
“Mr. Cross, would you take Sophie farther down the hall?”
Sophie grabbed Damian’s hand.
“No.”
Alvarez crouched.
“Do you know me?”
Sophie shook her head.
“My name is Elena. I’m a police officer. Your mom and I need to talk without everybody hearing. You’re not in trouble.”
Sophie looked at Damian.
He did not tell her what to do.
Finally she let him lead her toward the library.
As they walked away, Grant called after them.
“Sophie.”
She did not turn.
The library smelled faintly of leather, old paper, and the wood polish the housekeeper used every Thursday. Damian knew the schedule because he had once complained that the smell lingered before breakfast.
He felt ashamed of remembering that.
Sophie sat on the edge of a sofa.
Damian poured water from a glass carafe and handed it to her.
She held it with both hands but did not drink.
“Are they going to arrest him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You own the house.”
“That doesn’t mean I decide who gets arrested.”
“You decide everything else.”
The observation irritated him because it was close enough to true.
“Not everything.”
Sophie looked around the room.
“My stepfather says you could buy this whole neighborhood if you wanted.”
“I already own too much furniture.”
She blinked.
Then laughed once.
A small unwilling laugh.
Damian sat in the chair opposite her.
His knees hurt slightly from crouching so many times. He wondered when that had started.
Sophie put the water down.
“He makes her say she likes the room.”
Damian did not move.
“Who?”
“Grant.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything right now.”
“I want to.”
“All right.”
“He says she gets overwhelmed. That’s the word. Overwhelmed.”
She pronounced it carefully.
“He says she asks him to put her somewhere quiet.”
“Does she?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she told me not to believe him.”
“When?”
“Tuesday.”
“What happened Tuesday?”
Sophie rubbed one thumb against the side of the other.
“She was crying in the laundry room. She said if anything weird happened I should find somebody who wasn’t scared of Grant.”
Damian leaned back.
“And you chose me?”
She nodded.
He almost asked why.
Then he remembered the way Grant had looked at him.
Because Grant was scared of Damian.
Sophie had not chosen him because she trusted him.
She had chosen him because she understood power.
The distinction made him feel ill.
“Why tonight?” he asked.
“Because he was mad.”
“What about?”
“Mommy told him she was leaving.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
Damian’s phone vibrated.
Mara again.
He answered.
“I’m outside,” she said. “Your driveway looks like a convention of people pretending not to stare at police cars.”
“Come in.”
“You sound angry.”
“I am.”
“Then don’t make decisions for five minutes.”
“I’ll make bad decisions in six.”
“Progress.”
He ended the call.
Sophie watched him.
“Is she your wife?”
“No.”
“Girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Mom?”
Damian looked at her.
“Mara would be deeply insulted.”
Another tiny smile.
Then it vanished.
“My mom doesn’t have friends.”
The sentence came so plainly that Damian had no answer.
Mara entered the library two minutes later in a navy coat over jeans and a sweater. She had left a Sunday dinner with her brother’s family, judging by the streak of something that looked like frosting near one cuff.
She saw Sophie and changed immediately from lawyer to adult woman in a room with a frightened child.
Not falsely sweet.
Just slower.
“Hi. I’m Mara.”
“Sophie.”
“I heard.”
Sophie looked at the white frosting.
“You have cake on you.”
Mara looked down.
“Occupational hazard.”
“What occupation?”
“Aunt.”
Sophie considered this and nodded.
Mara sat beside Damian rather than beside the girl.
“What happened?”
Damian told her quietly.
When he finished, Mara looked toward the hallway.
“Has Claire come out?”
“Not yet.”
“Grant?”
“With police.”
“You touched anything inside the room?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Sophie said, “I touched the key.”
Mara looked at her.
“That’s okay.”
“I took it.”
“That’s something the police may ask you about. You can tell them exactly what happened.”
Sophie nodded.
“Do I get arrested?”
Damian closed his eyes briefly.
May you like
Mara did not.
“No,” she said. “You are seven years old and you took a key because you were worried about your mother. No one here thinks you’re a criminal.”
