Chương 5
“Were you near her?”
“I was by the first step.”
“What did she do?”
“She looked at me like I did it.”
Mara closed her eyes.
“She said, ‘Pick them up.’ I said I didn’t. She said good girls don’t argue. Dad said he would get someone. She said no. She said I had to learn not to touch things that weren’t mine.”
“Did Dad tell you to kneel?”
“No.”
“Did he tell her to stop?”
Emma took too long to answer.
“He said, ‘Celeste, come on.’”
The words were pure Daniel: soft enough to avoid a fight, weak enough to change nothing.
Emma rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I wanted to find all of them so she would stop looking at me.”
“Then you tried to leave.”
“She stood in front of me. Her shoe came off. She said I wasn’t finished.”
“Did she block you?”
“Yes.”
“Did Dad move her?”
“No.”
Mara’s throat tightened.
“What happened when I came in?”
“She sat down.”
The final detail was so simple that it was almost worse than the rest. Celeste had placed herself in the chair and crossed her legs before Mara entered, leaving Emma kneeling beside the shoe she had lost while blocking the child’s way.
A picture arranged in seconds.
Daniel had supplied the explanation.
Mara lifted Emma from the counter and carried her to the largest bedroom. She checked the closet, bathroom, windows, and the door beneath the pretense of looking for extra blankets. Emma knew what she was doing. She always knew.
“You check everything,” the child said.
“Occupational habit.”
“Do you think someone’s hiding?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Mara sat beside her on the bed. “Because sometimes checking helps me settle down.”
“Does it work?”
“Not often.”
Emma considered this with serious sympathy. “Maybe you need a better habit.”
Mara smiled despite herself. “Maybe.”
She found one of Daniel’s old college sweatshirts in a drawer, likely left from a previous holiday, and changed out of her wet shirt in the bathroom. The sweatshirt smelled faintly of cedar and the house’s expensive detergent. She hated the familiarity of it.
Emma climbed beneath the duvet but kept the bedside lamp on.
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Are you mad at me?”
Mara sat so quickly that the mattress dipped.
“No. Not for one second.”
“You looked mad.”
“I am mad. But not at you.”
“Dad said Aunt Celeste gets mad when people embarrass her.”
“Adults are responsible for what they do when they’re embarrassed.”
Emma picked at a loose thread on the blanket. “Did I embarrass her?”
“No.”
“I saw the papers.”
“That isn’t bad.”
“I wasn’t supposed to.”
“You were looking for a charger.”
“She said I listened.”
Mara took the child’s hand. “You are not responsible for adults having a conversation where you could hear it.”
Emma looked unconvinced.
Mara wanted to promise that nothing like this would ever happen again. The sentence rose immediately, warm and useless. She swallowed it.
“I’m going to make sure you are not left alone with Aunt Celeste again.”
“What about Dad?”
The question was small.
Mara looked at their joined hands.
“We’ll figure out what being with Dad looks like after he tells the truth.”
“Will he get in trouble?”
“He may have consequences.”
Emma’s eyes filled. “Because I told?”
“No. Because of what he did.”
“But if I didn’t tell—”
“It would still have happened.”
The child looked toward the rain-streaked window.
Mara squeezed her hand. “Telling the truth does not create the bad thing. It only brings it into the room where people can see it.”
“Like turning on a light?”
“Like that.”
“What if people get mad when the light’s on?”
“Some people do.”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes.”
Emma waited.
Mara gave her the answer she deserved. “But I’m working on it.”
The child shifted over, making space.
Mara lay beside her on top of the duvet. Emma curled into the center of her body, knees against Mara’s stomach, one hand gripping the sweatshirt near the collar. Within minutes, exhaustion pulled her breathing into a slower rhythm.
Mara stared at the ceiling.
At eleven forty-seven, someone tried the corridor door.
The handle moved once, paused, then moved again.
Mara was out of bed before it stopped. She crossed the room barefoot and stood beside the sitting room door.
“Who is it?”
Daniel answered. “Me.”
Emma stirred behind her.
“What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“Morning.”
“Mara, please.”
She opened the bedroom door but not the locked corridor door. “You’re waking her.”
Silence followed.
Then Daniel said, “Celeste is leaving before daylight.”
“Where?”
“She has a house in Georgetown.”
“In this weather?”
“She doesn’t care.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because you said she couldn’t come near Emma.”
“You think geography is the problem?”
“Mara.”
She leaned her forehead against the door for one second, then straightened.
“What happened to the real necklace?”
No answer.
“Go away.”
“I didn’t sell it.”
The denial came too late and too specifically.
Mara unlocked the door but kept the chain engaged. Through the narrow gap, Daniel appeared pale and unsteady. He held no coat, no phone, no glass. His white shirt was wrinkled at the waist.
“You didn’t sell it,” Mara said. “Who did?”
He looked over his shoulder toward the empty hall.
“Celeste thinks I did.”
“Did you take it?”
His gaze dropped.
“Daniel.”
“I borrowed it.”
The word made Mara’s skin crawl.
“You borrowed jewelry from a locked family collection without permission?”
“It wasn’t locked.”
“That isn’t a defense.”
“I needed an appraisal.”
“For what?”
“A loan.”
“Secured by the necklace?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get the loan?”
He rubbed his thumb against the side of his hand, an old sign that he was trying to decide how much truth he could survive.
“I used a private lender.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
Mara stared at him.
“For what?”
“A property deal.”
“What property?”
“The warehouse project in Alexandria.”
May you like
“The one you told me was fully funded?”
“It was supposed to be.”
