Chương 2
Emergency lights began to pulse beyond the iron gates. Their color moved across the trees and the pale stone façade, red against orange, then white against smoke. The arrival of help should have brought relief. Instead, it made the disaster official. The manor was no longer a private emergency the Reeds might contain by closing a door.
Charles turned toward the house.
The eastern roof collapsed inward with a shower of sparks.
Victoria made a sound through her teeth. Not a scream. Something smaller and more ashamed.
Elena shifted Oliver’s weight. Her arms were failing.
“Charles,” she said.
He turned back.
This time, when he bent to take his son, Oliver let him. His hands released Elena one finger at a time.
She remained on one knee after Charles lifted him. The cold penetrated her thin dress. The white cloth lay several yards away where she had dropped it. It moved across the lawn in the wind, stopping against the frost, lifting, then settling again.
By dawn, the upper floor of Reed Manor was gone.
The stone shell remained, along with portions of the west wing and the blackened front columns. The carved door had burned where it stood open. The crystal chandelier had fallen sometime after Elena carried Oliver beneath it. Its brass frame was found twisted across the gallery floor, surrounded by fragments that looked like ice.
Elena learned those details later.
For the next twelve hours, her world narrowed to oxygen tubing, paper cups of water, and the soreness spreading through her shoulders. She sat in a curtained hospital bay wearing gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt someone had provided from a sealed donation bag. Her maid dress had been taken away because it smelled of smoke and was damp from the lawn. The white collar had gone brown at the edges. Her apron was missing.
She kept rubbing the side of her thumb against the paper cup. The motion had no purpose. She noticed it only when the cup began to soften.
Charles stood near the closed curtain, still in his formal clothes. Soot darkened one sleeve of his coat, though he had never entered the house. He had removed his tie. Without it, the open collar of his shirt made him look less wealthy and more unprepared.
Victoria sat beside Oliver’s bed on the other side of the curtain. Elena could hear the soft mechanical adjustment of the mattress and the occasional rustle of Victoria’s gown. She had refused the hospital scrubs offered to her. Perhaps the silver dress was the only thing she still owned that had not burned.
Oliver had been given oxygen and observed for smoke inhalation. He coughed less often now. Each time he did, Elena’s hand tightened around the cup.
Charles watched her.
“You should sleep.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You haven’t closed your eyes in hours.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
He nodded as though she had corrected a figure during a meeting. His gaze moved to the floor.
“They said you carried him from the upper gallery.”
Elena said nothing.
“The wheelchair was under the chandelier.”
“I know where it was.”
Charles swallowed. A faint line of perspiration appeared at his hairline despite the cold air moving through the hospital vent.
“I thought Victoria had him.”
Elena stared at the cup.
“She thought you did.”
“I was in the west study when the alarm started.”
“Why?”
His eyes lifted.
It was the first question anyone had asked him about his own movements. Until then, the night had arranged itself around Elena’s run into the house and Oliver’s survival. Charles seemed surprised to find there were other parts of the story.
“I went back for the blue portfolio.”
Elena looked at him.
“It has the property documents,” he said. “Insurance schedules. Original plans. I thought the alarm was confined to the attic. The panel had shown faults before.”
“You went back for papers.”
“I didn’t know Oliver was upstairs.”
“You didn’t check.”
His mouth opened. No answer came.
Through the curtain, Oliver coughed.
Charles glanced toward the sound. “I saw Victoria outside. I assumed—”
“So did she.”
His expression tightened, not from anger exactly, but from the pain of being denied the shelter of a shared mistake.
Elena put the cup on the small table.
“Where did you think I was?”
He looked at her for a long time.
“With him.”
The answer settled between them.
Charles took a breath and let it out carefully. “That was your assignment.”
“My assignment?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You thought your wife had him. You thought I had him. Victoria thought you had him. Was there anyone in that house who actually knew where your son was?”
His face changed then, the control slipping for less than a second. His eyes closed. His shoulders dropped. Elena saw the image arrive in him: the wheelchair beneath the chandelier, the empty space between the parents on the lawn, the fact that his son’s survival had depended on a woman in thin shoes deciding not to wait.
When he opened his eyes again, the shutters had returned.
“This isn’t the place.”
“No,” Elena said. “The place burned down.”
Victoria pulled the curtain aside.
She had removed her earrings. Without them, her face looked narrower. Her formal updo had loosened, and a strand of dark-blond hair rested against her cheek.
“Oliver is asking for you.”
Elena pushed herself out of the chair. Pain moved across her back so quickly that she caught the edge of the bed rail.
Charles reached toward her, then stopped before touching her arm.
Oliver lay propped against two pillows. His hair had been combed away from his forehead. Someone had cut off his white shirt, leaving him in a pale hospital gown. His black shoes were lined up under the chair beside his bed, polished and absurdly neat.
Victoria moved aside.
Elena sat carefully.
Oliver looked at the soot still trapped in the lines around her fingernails.
May you like
“Did my chair burn?”
“We don’t know yet.”
