Chương 4
“I should have told you,” she said.
He looked up.
“About Mrs. Rowe. She sent Henry away from the dinner table on Monday. He came to the kitchen later asking for bread. She told me not to give him any.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mrs. Alvarez shifted the towels. “You were never here.”
The answer was not cruel. It was practical.
“I have a phone.”
“You have many phones.”
She continued down the hall.
Dr. Park emerged after nine. “They are physically unharmed.”
Adrian stood.
“That sentence is not the end of the matter,” she added.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He accepted it.
She told him she was required to report credible concerns about threats of physical punishment. She did not dramatize the process. A report would be made. The state might screen it for investigation or refer it elsewhere. Someone could contact the family, the children, the school, the household staff. Adrian’s wealth would not exempt him, though it might give him resources other families lacked. He should not coach the children. He should preserve the strap and anything related to the incident. He should not allow Celeste access to them.
“What do I tell her?” Adrian asked.
“That she is no longer responsible for their care.”
“She lives here.”
“Then find a safe way to handle that.”
“My attorney can arrange a hotel.”
Dr. Park picked up her paper cup, discovered it empty, and frowned at it. “Good.”
“Are they afraid of me?”
The question escaped before he could decide whether to ask it.
She looked toward the bedroom door. “They don’t know whether you stay.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“It’s the answer I have.”
Celeste stood when Adrian entered the morning room. She had removed her heels and placed them neatly beside the sofa. Without them she seemed younger, though no less composed.
“I assume you have decided to dismiss me,” she said.
“You will not spend another minute alone with the children.”
“You employ me. You do not own my professional reputation.”
“I’m aware.”
“I raised an object. I did not use it.”
“You threatened to use it.”
“I never said I would strike them.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Her gaze shifted to his phone. “Have you called the police?”
“I called their pediatrician. She is making a report.”
For the first time, Celeste looked genuinely frightened.
“You brought the state into this house?”
“You brought a strap into the foyer.”
“It was already in the house.”
Adrian stared at her.
Celeste seemed to recognize her mistake.
“Where did you find it?”
She looked toward the dark windows. “In a storage cabinet.”
“Which cabinet?”
“The old nursery cupboard.”
“That room was cleared before you started working here.”
“Not entirely.”
“Why were you looking through it?”
“I was organizing.”
“You don’t organize storage.”
“You have no idea what I do.”
The force in her voice startled both of them.
Adrian sat across from her. “Then tell me.”
She remained standing.
“I arrived here nine months ago,” she said. “Your children were grieving. Oliver was throwing objects, Sophie was barely speaking, and Henry woke four times a night. You told the agency you needed order.”
“I said stability.”
“You said you needed someone who would not be manipulated by tears.”
He remembered saying something close to that during the interview. Celeste had asked how previous caregivers failed. Adrian, exhausted and embarrassed by Oliver’s behavior at school, had used the word manipulated.
“I was wrong.”
“You were absent.”
“That does not excuse what you did.”
“No. It explains why you were pleased with me until tonight.”
“I was not pleased with you.”
“You renewed my contract.”
Adrian had signed the renewal through an electronic portal while boarding a plane.
Celeste watched his face. “You didn’t know you renewed it.”
He said nothing.
She gave a single humorless laugh. “Of course.”
“Why were you in my library?”
“I was looking for a document.”
“What document?”
“My employment file.”
“That isn’t kept there.”
“You kept everything there.”
“What did you want from it?”
“A copy of your instructions.”
“My instructions to threaten my children?”
“Your instructions to establish consequences, restrict access to private rooms, and prepare Oliver for possible residential placement.”
“I never told you to prepare him for that.”
“You forwarded the school information.”
“To my attorney.”
“You copied me.”
He had. He remembered now. He had wanted Celeste’s assessment of whether Oliver’s behavior was escalating.
“You told the children he was being sent away,” Adrian said.
“I told Oliver that his behavior could affect where he lived.”
“He is eight.”
“He was holding a fireplace tool when I said it.”
The statement landed harder than Adrian expected.
“When?”
“February.”
No one had told him.
“Did he threaten you?”
“He threatened himself.”
Adrian’s mouth went dry.
“He stood in front of the sitting-room window with the poker and said he would smash every piece of glass so you would have to come home.”
“Why wasn’t I called?”
“I called you.”
He remembered a missed call during a board dinner in Chicago. Celeste had texted afterward: Situation resolved. No injury.
“You wrote that everything was fine.”
“Because by the time you answered, it was.”
Adrian leaned forward. “That is not fine.”
“No,” she said. “It is not.”
For a moment they sat in a silence neither could use.
Then Adrian saw the trap in it. Her failures did not erase his. His failures did not erase hers.
“Did you enter the library to remove the email from Dr. Feld?”
Celeste’s face changed.
“Oliver found it,” Adrian said, though he did not know that yet.
She looked down at her bare feet.
“You underlined the residential option.”
“I was asked for my professional opinion.”
“You are not a clinician.”
“I have lived with your children for nine months.”
“So have the houseplants. I don’t ask them to diagnose my son.”
Her eyes flashed. “There he is.”
May you like
“Who?”
“The father who arrives after the damage and performs certainty.”
