Chương 5
“That is not how she remembers it.”
“Then ask her again.”
“I have.”
“And?”
“She said she went downstairs first.”
Elena leaned back.
In her memory, Victoria had stood behind Oliver’s chair beneath the chandelier. Music from the ballroom had floated up the staircase. Oliver had complained that the noise made his head hurt. Victoria had touched his hair and told Elena to go find the small sewing kit in the dressing room downstairs. She had said, I’m staying right here.
Elena remembered the exact words because Victoria had rarely volunteered to stay when Oliver was upset. Elena had been pleased. Relieved, even.
She had gone downstairs.
The alarm began four minutes later.
“Bring her in,” Elena said.
“That isn’t necessary.”
“It is to me.”
Charles rubbed the side of his forehead. “She has barely slept.”
“Neither have I.”
“She almost lost her child.”
Elena’s coffee went cold between her hands.
“So did I.”
Charles looked up sharply.
Neither of them moved.
Elena had never called Oliver hers. She had corrected strangers who assumed she was his mother and maintained professional boundaries even when those boundaries made her feel ridiculous, such as the time she had waited outside a school conference because the teacher wanted family only, while Charles attended by phone and Victoria arrived twenty minutes late.
Now the truth had escaped in four careless words.
Charles looked toward the therapy room again. When he spoke, his voice had changed.
“He is not your child.”
“I know.”
“I’m grateful to you, but we cannot become confused about that.”
“We became confused years ago.”
The therapy room door opened.
Victoria pushed Oliver into the kitchen. The temporary chair caught against the threshold, and Oliver slapped one wheel in frustration.
“I told you,” he said. “It’s too wide.”
Victoria’s face was flushed. “I didn’t design the door.”
“You bought the chair.”
“I did not manufacture it.”
“You didn’t listen.”
Charles moved the folder off the table.
Oliver saw it.
“What is that?”
“Insurance paperwork,” Charles said.
“About the fire?”
“Yes.”
“Does it say why it happened?”
“Not yet.”
Oliver turned to Elena. His eyes rested on her face for a moment, then dropped to the folder.
“Are you in trouble?”
“No,” Charles said.
Elena did not answer.
Oliver looked back at his father.
“You say no too fast.”
Victoria closed her eyes briefly. “Oliver.”
“What?”
“Not everything is an interrogation.”
“I asked one question.”
Elena stood and carried her coffee to the sink. The small action allowed everyone to look somewhere else.
Behind her, paper moved across the table.
Oliver had reached for the folder.
Charles put his hand over it.
“This is private.”
“It has her name.”
“That does not make it yours.”
“Is it hers?”
Charles removed his hand.
Elena turned. “It’s a draft statement.”
“Of what you did?”
“Of what happened.”
“Those are different.”
No one spoke.
Oliver placed both hands on the wheels of the temporary chair and tried to back away from the table. The left wheel struck a cabinet. He muttered something under his breath.
Victoria reached for the chair.
“Don’t.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“You always help after I say not to.”
Her hand remained in the air, close to the handle.
Elena moved the decorative lemons aside and cleared a wider path around the island. Oliver maneuvered through it without assistance.
At the hallway, he stopped.
“I remember Mom being upstairs.”
Victoria’s hand dropped.
Charles looked at her.
Oliver continued facing away from them. “She said she’d stay until Elena came back.”
Victoria sat in the nearest chair.
Her silver gown was gone. She wore cream trousers and a gray cashmere sweater. In the rental house, without staff arranging her clothes and lighting and schedule, she sometimes looked younger. At that moment she looked almost elderly.
“Oliver,” she said, “you were frightened. Memories after something frightening can become mixed.”
He turned the chair slowly.
“So mine is mixed?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You did.”
“I said it can happen.”
“Can it happen to you?”
Victoria’s lips parted. She touched the hollow at the base of her throat.
“Yes,” she said. “It can.”
Charles pulled out a chair beside her. She did not look at him.
Oliver waited.
Victoria stared at the table. “I was upstairs.”
The refrigerator motor started with a soft hum.
“I told Elena I would stay,” Victoria said. “I intended to.”
Elena felt no satisfaction. The truth, once spoken, did not straighten anything. It only removed one place where they had been hiding.
“Why did you go?” Oliver asked.
Victoria folded her hands. “Your father sent me a message that the photographer was ready.”
Charles looked at her. “I did not know you were with Oliver.”
“No. You didn’t ask.”
“I thought Elena—”
“Yes,” Victoria said. “Everyone thought Elena.”
The sentence came out bitterly, and Elena saw that it was not meant as a defense of her. It was an accusation against the whole arrangement of their lives.
Victoria turned toward Oliver.
“You said you didn’t want to come down for the photograph. I thought you were being stubborn. I told myself I would be gone for two minutes. The alarm started before I reached the ballroom.”
“Then why didn’t you come back?”
“I tried.”
Elena watched her carefully.
Victoria’s gaze moved to the window. “Smoke came down the west staircase. People were moving toward the front door. Someone pulled me outside.”
No one asked who. There had been dozens of guests and event workers at the manor before the final evacuation. Their faces had blurred into motion, none becoming part of the family’s private account.
“I thought your father had gone up the east stairs,” Victoria said.
Charles shook his head. “I went to the study.”
“For the portfolio.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me that until the hospital.”
“I didn’t know I was required to report every movement to you during a fire.”
Victoria stared at him.
May you like
Charles’s expression shifted. “That was unfair.”
“It was accurate,” she said. “Just ugly.”
