Part 3
Belief was not a feeling in that house.
It was architecture.
Mrs. Kim returned carrying a clean linen napkin. She draped it over the champagne flute in her hand and gave Daniel a small nod.
“The sheriff’s office has been called,” Daniel said.
Mara looked at Adrian. “I don’t want to be here when they come.”
He studied her for a moment. “Where do you want to go?”
“Home.”
It was not true. Her apartment was forty minutes away, above a dental office in a town where the sidewalks emptied after eight. She had no one waiting there. But home was the only word that meant away.
Daniel spoke gently. “They’ll need your statement.”
“They can take it somewhere else.”
“We can arrange that,” Adrian said.
Celeste laughed again, but no amusement reached it. “You are allowing an employee to dictate the conditions of a police investigation.”
Mara felt heat rise under her skin.
Adrian turned toward his sister.
“She was tied up while holding my children.”
“She says she was tied.”
“The ribbon exists.”
“So does her capacity to manipulate you.”
Mara stood.
The movement made the room tilt. Noah stirred against her. Adrian stepped forward, but she held up one hand.
“I’m not manipulating anyone.”
Celeste regarded her almost sadly. “You have been in this house for eleven weeks.”
“Twelve.”
“That correction is exactly what I mean.”
Mara stared at her.
Then, unexpectedly, Mrs. Kim spoke.
“Miss Vale, I saw you take the ribbon from the wrapping room.”
Celeste turned.
Mrs. Kim’s expression was calm. She had worked at the estate for twenty-three years. She had served Adrian’s parents, then Adrian and Celeste after the car accident that killed them. She was not a woman who mistook silence for ignorance.
“When?” Adrian asked.
“After dinner. Around ten.”
Celeste’s eyes hardened. “I took ribbon for the silver boxes going to the hospital donors.”
“You took ivory,” Mrs. Kim said. “The donor boxes use green.”
“It was dark.”
“The lights were on.”
Adrian looked toward the floor.
The cut ribbon gleamed against the rug.
Celeste’s mouth tightened. “You have always disliked me.”
Mrs. Kim considered this.
“No,” she said. “Sometimes I have disliked working for you.”
Daniel glanced down, perhaps hiding a reaction.
Under any other circumstances, Mara might have smiled. Instead the small human sharpness of the reply made her throat ache. It reminded her that ordinary speech still existed beyond the room.
A siren sounded faintly across the lake road.
Celeste went still.
Adrian adjusted Elise’s blanket. His hand trembled once, then stopped.
“You should call Lawrence,” Celeste said. “Before they arrive.”
Lawrence Bell was the family attorney. Mara had met him twice. He spoke softly, wore beautiful shoes, and never answered a question before deciding who benefited from the answer.
“I’m not calling anyone for you,” Adrian said.
“I’m not asking for me.”
“You always say that.”
Something changed in Celeste’s face. Not guilt. Hurt.
It appeared so genuinely that Mara almost doubted herself.
Then Celeste looked at the red lines around Mara’s wrists, and the hurt vanished behind a small, tired smile.
“You have no idea what I have done for you,” she told her brother.
Adrian glanced at the doors as the siren grew louder.
“That may be the problem.”
The first deputy arrived at 11:47 p.m.
His name was Owen Barrett, and he looked younger than Mara had expected, with rain-dark hair despite the clear night and a habit of pressing his lips together before asking difficult questions. A second deputy, Lena Brooks, came behind him carrying a small body camera light on her uniform.
The sight of it made Celeste straighten.
No one was permitted to leave the nursery until the deputies had established where everyone had been and whether the children required emergency medical care. A paramedic unit was called for Mara. Adrian asked for a pediatric ambulance as well, though both infants appeared unharmed.
Mara sat again on the bench while Deputy Brooks examined her wrists from a careful distance.
“Can you tell me who tied you?”
“Celeste Vale.”
Across the room, Celeste looked toward the dark lake.
“Did anyone else see it happen?”
“No.”
“Did she use force?”
Mara hesitated.
The question had a shape she disliked. It asked for a clean border between persuasion and violence.
“She told me to put the babies in the crib. I refused. She said she was taking them to the east cottage. I asked why. She said it wasn’t my concern.”
Deputy Brooks waited.
“She reached for Elise,” Mara continued. “I moved away. Then she said I was becoming emotional and should sit down.”
“What happened after you sat?”
“I didn’t sit. Not at first.”
Her mouth had gone dry. She could feel Celeste listening without looking at her.
“She took the ribbon from her dress pocket. She said if I kept holding the babies, she needed to make sure I couldn’t do anything reckless.”
Deputy Brooks’s eyebrows shifted. “What did that mean?”
“I asked her. She didn’t answer.”
“How did she tie you while you were holding two children?”
“She told me to cross my wrists under the blankets.”
“And you did?”
Mara looked at the infants.
The question was reasonable. That made it worse.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she had one hand on Noah’s neck.”
Adrian moved so abruptly that Elise made a startled sound.
Celeste turned from the window. “That is a lie.”
Mara’s heart began striking hard beneath her ribs.
Deputy Barrett raised one hand. “Ms. Vale, you’ll have an opportunity to give your account.”
“She is accusing me of threatening a baby.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
Adrian stared at his sister.
Mara continued before her courage failed. “She wasn’t choking him. She just put her hand there. Here.”
She touched the side of her own neck beneath the jaw.
“She said babies were fragile and accidents happened when people became hysterical.”
Celeste took one step forward.
Daniel blocked her.
May you like
“I never said that.”
Deputy Brooks did not look away from Mara. “Then what happened?”
