Chương 2
His face lost color.
Eleanor looked from him to the open locket in her hand.
Then back again.
“Celeste is alive?”
She did not intend to whisper.
The question came out that way anyway.
Victor set his champagne glass on the waiter’s tray.
The waiter almost dropped it.
“Mother,” Victor said.
Eleanor stood.
“Do not call me that.”
Several guests looked at one another.
Someone near the back reached discreetly for a phone.
Victor noticed.
“Phones away, please,” he said, not loudly.
That was the first mistake he made.
The instruction was so familiar, so natural in his mouth, that four people obeyed before seeming to realize he no longer had the authority to ask.
Eleanor stared at him.
“What does she mean?”
Victor glanced at Mia.
The little girl’s shoulders rose inside Eleanor’s hands.
“She’s confused.”
“No.”
“She got into the house somehow. We can work out who brought her in, but this is not the place.”
“No.”
His eyes returned to Eleanor.
“What?”
Eleanor stood very still.
“You do not get to move the conversation.”
Victor’s face barely changed.
He had inherited that from her.
For years she had considered it evidence of discipline.
Now it looked like something else.
Behind him, the gold-framed doorway opened into the long gallery leading toward the east staircase, the service hall, and the private elevators. The ballroom occupied the main floor of Vance House, the family foundation’s Manhattan headquarters and, before Eleanor donated most of it, the city residence where Victor and Celeste had spent half their childhoods.
The lower levels were older than the ballroom.
Wine rooms.
Archive vaults.
A former servants’ dining room.
Storage.
A small suite renovated after Eleanor’s husband died because she had once imagined using it for visiting nurses and then never did.
Eleanor looked at Mia.
“Downstairs where?”
Mia’s eyes went to Victor again.
“Blue door.”
Victor exhaled.
“Mother, listen to me.”
Eleanor rose to her full height.
“Security.”
The two men nearest the ballroom entrance straightened.
Victor said, “We need to speak privately.”
Eleanor ignored him.
“Lock the exterior doors.”
A murmur moved through the room.
Victor stepped forward.
“That is not necessary.”
“Not the guests,” Eleanor said to the security supervisor. “No one is being detained. Anyone who wishes to leave may leave. I want every service exit monitored, and I want the lower level opened.”
The supervisor hesitated.
His name was Daniel Keene. He had worked for the Vance family for eleven years.
He looked at Victor.
That hesitation told Eleanor more than she wanted to know.
“Mr. Keene,” she said.
His eyes snapped back to hers.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who gives you your instructions?”
He swallowed.
“The foundation retains our firm.”
“Who gives you your instructions in this house?”
Another pause.
“Mr. Vance handles day-to-day security.”
Victor closed his eyes for half a second.
Eleanor saw it.
“So he has access downstairs.”
“Mother.”
“Does he?”
Keene glanced at Victor again.
“Yes.”
Mia spoke so softly that Eleanor almost missed it.
“He has a card.”
Eleanor looked down.
“What card?”
“The black one.”
Victor’s voice sharpened.
“That’s enough.”
Mia jerked.
The reaction was tiny.
A contraction through the shoulders.
A breath held too fast.
Eleanor turned toward her son.
She had seen frightened children before. Charity photographs were full of them. Fundraising trips had introduced her to children who had lost homes, parents, limbs, countries.
She had always believed fear was obvious.
It was not.
Mia’s fear of Victor was almost polite.
That made it worse.
“Daniel,” Eleanor said, “take us downstairs.”
Victor stepped between them and the doorway.
“No.”
The room changed.
Not loudly.
No one gasped this time.
But attention tightened.
Victor noticed it too.
He lowered his voice.
“Celeste is ill.”
Eleanor stopped breathing.
Mia did not.
Her small breaths became faster.
Victor continued.
“She has been ill for some time. There are circumstances you do not understand.”
“You just told me this child was confused.”
“She is.”
“Is Celeste downstairs?”
He looked at her for a long moment.
“Yes.”
One of the guests whispered something.
Another said, “Oh my God,” under her breath.
Eleanor heard the strings from the hired orchestra stop completely.
The conductor had lowered his hands.
Victor glanced toward the crowd.
“Everyone needs to go.”
“No,” Eleanor said.
“This is a family matter.”
“No.”
“Mother, for once in your life, do not turn something private into a public execution.”
The sentence landed because it sounded like Celeste.
Not the words exactly.
The accusation.
Eleanor had heard versions of it from her daughter for years.
Victor seemed to realize what he had done.
He pressed his lips together.
Eleanor looked at the locket in her palm.
“Take me to her.”
Victor did not move.
Mia did.
She walked toward the doorway.
Victor turned.
Eleanor saw him calculate whether to stop her.
He did not.
That frightened Eleanor more than if he had.
She followed Mia.
Daniel Keene followed Eleanor.
After a second, Victor came too.
The waiter remained in the doorway with the tray against his chest.
As Eleanor passed him, one glass made a faint ringing sound.
She remembered that sound afterward too.
The east staircase was narrower than the ceremonial stairs at the front of the house. The walls were painted cream instead of paneled in gold. Catering staff had lined one side of the corridor with black plastic tubs, folded linens, boxes of sparkling water, and three cases of wine.
A young server flattened herself against the wall when she saw Eleanor.
Mia knew where she was going.
That was the detail Eleanor could not escape.
The girl did not search.
She turned at the bottom landing, crossed the service hall, and went toward the older part of the basement.
Victor caught up.
“Celeste cannot handle a crowd.”
Eleanor kept walking.
“No crowd.”
“She cannot handle you.”
Eleanor stopped.
Victor almost walked into her.
May you like
For one moment they stood close enough that she could see the small pulse moving near his temple.
He had been a beautiful boy.
