Part 12
“Was that mean?” she asked.
“No.”
“Was it nice?”
“Not exactly.”
“What was it?”
“True.”
Lila considered this.
“That can still be mean.”
“Yes.”
They returned to their chairs.
At home that night, Lila opened the wooden box beside her bed and took out the cracked silver locket. The red recording light had been off for years. The finger marks on her wrist had faded within days, though she still rubbed the place when anxious.
Camille stood in the doorway.
“Do you want me to leave?” she asked.
“No.”
Lila pressed the playback button.
Marc’s voice emerged through the tiny speaker, softened by static.
Hello, bug. If you are listening because you cannot sleep, your mother is probably pretending she can.
Lila smiled.
Camille sat beside her.
The message continued. Marc talked about a pigeon he had seen stealing part of a sandwich outside the hospital. He forgot the point of the story halfway through and laughed at himself. Then he told Lila to brush her teeth, even if it was morning, because he did not know when she would play the recording.
His voice ended with a click.
Lila turned the locket over in her palm.
“Was Daddy good?” she asked.
Camille looked at the bent lid, the scratched silver, and the dark place where the red light had once warned anyone willing to notice.
“He loved you,” she said.
“That’s not the question.”
“No.”
Camille folded her hands in her lap.
“He could be generous. He could be vain. He was funny when he wasn’t trying to be. He made a decision at the foundation that he should not have made. Then he tried to fix it, and he was not brave enough to tell me plainly. I was not patient enough to hear him when he tried.”
Lila watched her.
“So was he good?”
“I think being good is something people do. It is not something they get to keep forever after doing it once.”
“Did he do it enough?”
Camille felt the old instinct rise—to protect, simplify, close the bent lid over every sharp edge.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Lila nodded, disappointed but not surprised.
She placed the locket back in the wooden box. The lid would not lie flat because of the damage, so she adjusted it twice and finally left it slightly open.
Then she reached for Camille’s hand.
They sat together without speaking while rain tapped the bedroom window and someone on the street below argued cheerfully about where to park.
After a while, Lila leaned against her shoulder.
Camille did not tell her everything was repaired.
She did not promise that truth had made them safe.
She stayed until the child’s breathing deepened, her fingers loosening around Camille’s hand, while the broken locket rested in its box exactly as it was.
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The Winter Gala Where One Broken Locket Changed Every Name in the Room
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Camille D’Arcy saw the red marks around her daughter’s wrist and crossed the conservatory before anyone had time to decide whether to stop her.
Guests parted in uneven steps, some recognizing the danger in her face, others merely protecting champagne from the sweep of her black velvet gown. Her satin clutch remained locked in one hand. She did not run. Camille never ran in public. She moved quickly enough that a waiter backed into a white rose arrangement and caught the vase with both palms before it tipped.
Seven-year-old Lila stood beside a champagne table, trembling inside her pale ice-blue party dress. Her light brown hair had loosened around the ribbon at her neck. She gripped a cracked silver locket in both hands. Its bent lid hung open, and a tiny red light glowed near the hinge.
Odette Vane stood over her with an ivory fan pressed against the draped shoulder of her emerald gown. Her silver beaded clutch rested in the crook of one elbow. At seventy-two, Odette possessed the particular stillness of a woman who had spent half a century making other people feel clumsy. Only her eyes moved as Camille approached.
Camille dropped to one knee.
“Lila.”
The child tried to speak, swallowed, and looked down at the locket. Her breath came in shallow pulls. A fresh red band circled her left wrist, divided into the shapes of fingers.
Camille touched the skin with two fingertips. Lila flinched.
“Who did that?”
Lila’s eyes shifted toward Odette.
“She tried to take it.”
The words were barely louder than the conversations continuing near the far windows. Camille looked at the cracked locket, then at the red light, then back at Odette.
Odette opened her fan once, though the winter conservatory was cool.
“The child became confused,” she said. “I was preventing her from damaging something.”
Camille drew Lila against her side. The girl’s forehead pressed into the black velvet beneath Camille’s shoulder. For half a second Camille closed her eyes, feeling the small tremors pass through her daughter’s body.
Then she stood.
She kept one arm around Lila. Her other hand rose with no flourish and crossed the narrow space between the women.
The slap was controlled, flat, and unmistakable.
Odette’s face turned with the impact. One diamond chandelier seemed to tremble in the silence that followed, though it was only the crystals settling in the warm air. Odette’s ivory fan struck the edge of the champagne table. Julian Cross, standing twelve feet away with a short glass of amber liquor, froze with the drink halfway to his mouth.
No one screamed. The room simply emptied itself of sound.
Odette turned back slowly. A faint red mark had appeared on her right cheek. She touched it with the tips of two fingers, as if verifying an insult delivered in a language she had never expected to hear.
“How dare you?”
May you like
Camille’s breathing remained steady. That frightened Julian more than the slap had.
He placed his glass on a passing tray, missed the center, corrected it, and began moving through the guests.
