Chương 2
Noah pushed the cereal away. Milk sloshed over the rim and spread across the table. Elena reached for a towel, but Adrian caught it first. He pressed the cloth into the puddle with more force than necessary.
“We’ll talk later,” he said.
Noah slid down from his chair. “You always say later.”
He left the kitchen barefoot, his pajama cuffs brushing the floor. Elena took one step after him before stopping herself. Adrian saw the correction. He also saw how naturally the first step had come.
“Go,” he said.
Elena hesitated.
“He’ll listen to you.”
“That may be the problem.”
It was the first unguarded thing she had said to him. Beatrice looked down at her tablet.
Adrian folded the wet towel into a square. “Please check on him.”
Elena went.
Beatrice waited until the sound of her footsteps had disappeared up the back stairs. “We should discuss last night.”
Adrian poured the cold coffee into the sink. “Elena told you?”
“I found the night-light on in the primary bedroom at five-thirty and assumed either there had been an emergency or the house had developed a sense of humor.”
“Nothing happened.”
“I did not suggest it had.”
“She stayed because Noah was crying.”
“That is childcare.”
“She comforted a five-year-old.”
“In a bed, overnight, without authorization. I am not questioning her intention. I am reminding you that intentions do not define employment.”
Adrian turned off the faucet. “What would you have had her do?”
“Wake you.”
“I wasn’t here.”
“Call you.”
He had silenced his phone during dinner with three investors and left it facedown in the hotel suite afterward. There had been six missed calls from the house. He had noticed them in the car at dawn and assumed Beatrice had handled whatever had happened. For eighteen months, the entire household had handled whatever happened.
“Then she should have called me,” Beatrice said. “Or Noah’s grandmother. Or the pediatrician if the child was inconsolable. Elena is employed as a housekeeper. She has no written authority to supervise him overnight, no training listed in her file, and no protection if something goes wrong.”
“She protected him.”
“Perhaps. Who protects her?”
Adrian leaned against the counter.
Beatrice rarely asked questions that did not already have answers.
“She cannot be both staff and family whenever it is convenient for this household,” Beatrice continued. “Families forgive mistakes. Employers document them. Family members are allowed to say no. Staff learn not to.”
“I didn’t ask her to stay.”
“No. You merely created a house where a frightened child could not reach his father and a junior employee believed she had to solve it.”
The kitchen seemed suddenly too bright. Adrian looked toward the doorway through which Noah and Elena had gone.
“What do you recommend?”
“First, pay Elena for the overnight hours. Second, establish what happened. Third, arrange appropriate care. Fourth, decide whether selling this house is a fact, a possibility, or another subject no one is permitted to mention in front of your son.”
“I never said no one could mention it.”
“You told me to remove the broker’s materials before Noah came downstairs and instructed the staff not to discuss the anniversary of Mrs. Mercer’s death.”
“That was different.”
Beatrice lifted one eyebrow.
Adrian turned away. In the garden beyond the windows, a sprinkler clicked across a hedge that had not needed watering in three days.
He found Noah in the dressing room adjoining the bedroom. The boy sat on the floor beside an open drawer, surrounded by Claire’s scarves. Adrian had ordered most of her clothes boxed after the funeral but had stopped when he reached the drawer. For months, he had told himself he left it because Noah sometimes touched the silk. The truth was less considerate. He had not been able to decide what to do, so he had called indecision preservation.
Elena sat across from Noah with her legs folded beneath her apron. She held a red scarf in both hands.
“This one smells wrong,” Noah said.
“It’s been in a drawer a long time.”
“It used to smell like Mommy.”
Elena looked at Adrian. Her expression held no accusation, which made him feel accused.
Noah pressed the scarf to his face. “If we move, she won’t know where we went.”
Adrian entered and lowered himself carefully to the floor. His trousers pulled at the knees.
“Mom doesn’t need the house to know where you are.”
“How do you know?”
The answer should have come quickly. Parents were supposed to possess a private supply of certainty and distribute it in usable portions. Adrian had numbers, contracts, expert opinions, and a habit of speaking until hesitation belonged to someone else. None of it helped.
“I don’t,” he said.
Noah looked at him.
Elena’s fingers relaxed around the edge of her apron.
“I don’t know exactly how it works,” Adrian continued. “I wish I did.”
“Then she might come here.”
“She might.”
“And we’ll be gone.”
“We haven’t sold the house.”
“But the picture people are coming.”
“They’re taking photographs so we understand our choices.”
“That’s selling.”
“It isn’t the same.”
Noah’s mouth tightened. Claire used to do the same thing before crying, as though refusing her own face permission.
Adrian reached for the red scarf. Noah pulled it against his chest.
“All right,” Adrian said, withdrawing his hand. “Keep it.”
“I was keeping it.”
Another simple statement that found a place to hurt.
Elena stood. “I should change before I go.”
“No,” Noah said.
“I’m only going downstairs.”
“You’ll leave.”
“I’ll tell you before I do.”
“You said you stayed.”
“I stayed last night.”
“Stay today.”
Adrian expected her to reassure him. Instead she looked at Adrian and waited, placing the decision where it belonged.
“I’m taking the morning off,” he said. “We can have lunch together.”
Noah stared at him with the weary skepticism of a much older person. “At home?”
“At home.”
“You won’t take a call?”
May you like
Adrian’s phone vibrated in his pocket.
Noah looked down at it.
