Chương 5
“There’s something else.”
Adrian’s patience broke at the edges. “What?”
“The video of you at the party is online.”
“I know.”
“It’s been edited.”
“I know.”
“Mother’s office says they didn’t release it.”
“Do you believe them?”
Camille looked toward the black car.
“I believe Mother didn’t have to.”
The car pulled away with her inside.
Mila remained behind Adrian’s leg after the door closed.
“Are the otters over?” he asked.
“They found a crab.”
“Good for them.”
“It pinched one.”
“Less good.”
She leaned her forehead against his hip.
“Camille said sorry.”
“She did.”
“Do I have to say it’s okay?”
“No.”
“Is she bad?”
Adrian looked down at the top of her head.
He wanted to say yes. He wanted the world divided cleanly enough that Mila could avoid every person who had failed her.
“She did a bad thing,” he said.
“Like when I broke the blue plate?”
“Bigger than the plate.”
“You said the plate was an accident.”
“Camille made a choice.”
Mila thought about this.
“Nana made the video.”
“Yes.”
“I said no thank you first.”
Adrian crouched so they were level.
“You said no thank you?”
“Then no. Then stop.”
Her lower lip trembled, but she did not cry.
“Who touched you?”
“No one.”
“Did anyone hurt your body?”
She shook her head.
“Did anyone keep you from leaving?”
“Camille stood there.”
“At the door?”
A nod.
“And Nana?”
“She said Mommy would be sad if I didn’t help.”
Adrian’s vision blurred for an instant. He looked down at the rabbit rather than let Mila see.
“What did you do?”
“I called you.”
“On whose phone?”
“My watch.”
The watch.
Lydia had bought the child-sized calling watch three weeks before the accident, despite Adrian’s complaint that five-year-olds did not need technology strapped to them. Mila rarely wore it. Eleanor had insisted she wear it to the party because the yellow band clashed less with her cardigan than the purple one.
“Where is it now?”
“Nana took it.”
“Why?”
“She said it made the speaker buzz.”
Adrian stood.
The anger returned so quickly that Mila stepped back.
He softened his hands.
“I’m not angry at you.”
“You have the face.”
“I know.”
He went to the kitchen and called Eleanor.
She answered before the first ring completed.
“Adrian.”
“Where is Mila’s watch?”
A pause.
“Here.”
“You took it from her.”
“It was interfering with the audio equipment.”
“She used it to call me.”
“She was repeatedly pressing buttons because she was anxious.”
“She was asking for her father.”
“I intended to return it.”
“Send it with Mara.”
“We should discuss this in person.”
“No.”
“We are both reacting emotionally.”
“No, Eleanor. Mila reacted emotionally. You made a plan.”
“I planned a tribute to my daughter.”
“You wrote words for my child to say about her dead mother.”
“I wrote words she has expressed before.”
“When?”
“At Thanksgiving, she said Lydia wanted peace.”
“She said Mommy liked quiet.”
“They are related ideas.”
“No, they are not.”
Eleanor drew a breath slowly. Adrian pictured her in the cream morning room with coffee she would not drink, Warren Pike seated nearby with a legal pad, two assistants already preparing the respectable version of events.
“You entered my home in a threatening manner,” she said.
“I carried my daughter out.”
“You pointed at guests.”
“I pointed once at the room.”
“Several people felt unsafe.”
“Mila was unsafe.”
“No one harmed her.”
“You took away her watch after she called me.”
“To prevent disruption.”
“She was the disruption?”
“That is not what I said.”
“It’s what you did.”
Silence spread between them.
Eleanor broke it first.
“You cannot erase Lydia’s family from Mila’s life because you disliked an event.”
Adrian laughed once.
The sound made Mila look toward him from the living room.
He turned away.
“This wasn’t an event she disliked.”
“You are framing it in the most hostile possible terms.”
“She said no. You kept going.”
“I believed gentle encouragement would help her overcome a moment of stage fright.”
“She wasn’t on a stage until you put her there.”
“Children sometimes resist things that are good for them.”
“Not this.”
“You decide that alone?”
“I’m her father.”
“And I am her grandmother.”
“Then act like one.”
Eleanor’s voice changed. The polished calm thinned.
“Do not speak to me as if I have not spent eighteen months trying to hold this family together.”
“You weren’t holding us together. You were holding us still.”
“I lost my daughter.”
“So did Mila.”
“And I have been expected to accept every boundary you impose, every canceled dinner, every unanswered invitation, while you behave as though your grief is the only grief in the room.”
Adrian pressed his thumb against the edge of the counter.
There it was: something true enough to injure him.
He had canceled dinners. He had refused a weekend visit because Eleanor planned a photographer for a family foundation brochure, then another because he had not slept and could not tolerate her house. He had ignored messages for days. Sometimes he had said Mila was tired when Mila had asked to visit the Voss spaniel.
His reasons had not always been Mila’s.
That did not make Eleanor right.
“Send the watch,” he said.
“We are not finished.”
“We are for today.”
“If you prevent me from seeing her—”
“Send the watch.”
He ended the call.
By afternoon, the edited party video had been viewed more than two hundred thousand times.
Adrian learned this because one of his employees sent him a link with the message:
Boss, you okay?
The caption read: FATHER STORMS CHILDREN’S CHARITY CELEBRATION AND THREATENS ELDERLY HOST.
There had been no children’s charity celebration, only an engagement party where Eleanor intended to announce the renaming of a program. There had been no threat. Eleanor, at sixty-eight, was technically elderly by some definitions and would have fired any employee who described her that way.
Comments multiplied below the clip.
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Some called Adrian abusive.
Some admired him for protecting his daughter, though there was no visible evidence in the video that she required protection.
