Chương 2
Guests began moving toward the doors in embarrassed clusters. Nobody approached the seated woman. That was not proof that they believed Julian. It was proof that they did not know which version would become safest to remember.
Celeste pushed herself upright using the chaise. Julian stepped forward automatically, then stopped. Nora moved instead, offering an arm without warmth. Celeste ignored it.
“I want everyone out,” Celeste said.
“They’re leaving.”
“I mean staff too.”
“No,” Julian said.
Her gaze settled on him. “You don’t get to decide that alone.”
The sentence would have been ordinary on another day. They had said versions of it over renovations, schools, vacation dates, the placement of portraits in the west hall. Now it sounded like a warning neither of them could pretend not to understand.
Nora approached Eli carefully. “Come with me, sweetheart.”
He did not move.
Julian turned enough to see him. Eli’s neatly side-parted dark hair had fallen across his forehead. The white shirt beneath his navy waistcoat was rumpled where he had been gripping it. He still held the photograph, but his clenched fist had opened. Four crescent marks remained in his palm.
“You can go with Nora,” Julian said. “I’ll come in a minute.”
Eli looked at Celeste.
“She won’t touch you,” Julian said.
Celeste flinched as if the promise were an accusation.
Eli allowed Nora to guide him from the conservatory. The housekeeper kept one hand near his shoulder without quite making contact. She had always waited for children to decide whether they wanted comforting. Mara had loved that about her.
The thought of Mara arrived with such force that Julian lost the next few seconds. He saw her on the back steps in an old university sweatshirt, laughing because three-year-old Eli had filled both rain boots with gravel. He heard her asking Julian to stop checking email during breakfast. He remembered, uselessly and exactly, that she had disliked lilies because funeral homes used too many of them.
The conservatory held six arrangements of white lilies.
Celeste followed his eyes to the nearest vase.
“Don’t,” she said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to.”
Thomas closed the doors after the last guest. Through the glass, drivers crossed the gravel court beneath trimmed lindens. Evening had begun to flatten the colors outside.
Celeste stood very straight. “I want to speak to my mother.”
“You can call her.”
“Alone.”
Julian nodded toward the drawing room. “Use the library. Nora will stay with Eli. I’m calling the doctor.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“You fell.”
“Because you grabbed me.”
“Because you pulled away.”
She looked at the camera again.
Julian did too. The red light was no longer merely a light. It had become a witness, and both of them knew witnesses could clarify less than people imagined. A recording would show movement, distance, timing. It would not show what had been happening in the house before Eli found the photograph. It would not explain why a child had approached a room full of adults rather than taking the torn pieces to his father in private.
Julian called Dr. Sandoval while Celeste walked toward the library. She moved carefully, one hand at the base of her back. He could not tell whether the stiffness came from pain, fear, or the knowledge that people were watching through the remaining glass doors.
The doctor listened, asked precise questions, and instructed them to go to the hospital if Celeste experienced pain, bleeding, dizziness, contractions, or reduced fetal movement. Otherwise, she could come to the office that evening for an examination.
“She’ll go,” Julian said.
From the library entrance, Celeste shook her head.
Julian ended the call. “You’re being examined.”
“You don’t control my body.”
“No. But I won’t be accused tomorrow of ignoring a medical risk tonight.”
Her lips pressed together. “There it is.”
“What?”
“The lawyer.”
“I called your obstetrician.”
“You spoke like a deposition.”
Julian almost denied it. Instead he said, “I don’t know how else to speak to you right now.”
For the first time since she had fallen, some of the polish left her posture. She looked tired. The pregnancy had softened her face and made sleep difficult. For weeks she had complained that the baby pressed against her ribs whenever she lay on her left side. Julian had rubbed the place with two fingers while reading emails with his other hand. He had thought proximity counted as attention.
Celeste put a palm over her belly. “The baby is moving.”
“Good.”
“I need my mother.”
“Call her.”
“I need her here.”
“No one comes back into the house tonight until I know what happened.”
Her laugh was quiet. “You know exactly what happened. You chose the version where you get to be noble.”
Julian looked toward the corridor where Nora had taken Eli.
“What did you do to the photograph?”
Celeste’s eyes sharpened. “He was going through my things.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It was in a box in my dressing room.”
“Why?”
“Because I removed it from the blue salon.”
“Why?”
“Because this was my reception.”
“Our foundation’s reception.”
“In my home.”
“Eli’s home too.”
“And Mara’s, apparently.”
There it was—not the whole truth, but the part she had spent years disguising as tasteful housekeeping. Julian had watched paintings move, photographs disappear into drawers, traditions become inconvenient. Each change had seemed small enough to discuss later. Later had become a locked box in Celeste’s dressing room and his son standing in public with a photograph torn through his mother’s body.
“Did you tear it?” he asked.
Celeste looked past him.
“Did you?”
“I was upset.”
“That is not an answer.”
“You already decided it is.”
Julian heard a soft sound from the corridor. Eli stood at the far end beside Nora, listening.
Nora touched his shoulder. “We were looking for you, Mr. Mercer.”
May you like
Eli’s face closed with the practiced speed of a child who had learned adults preferred not to be caught causing pain.
Julian walked to him and crouched. The marble chilled one knee through his trousers.
