Chương 5
Eleanor gestured toward the chair across from the desk.
Chloe remained standing.
“Is Julian with you?” Eleanor asked.
“He’s listening to the rest.”
“Then you have time to tell me why you came.”
Chloe folded her arms.
“I want the original recording.”
“No.”
“I’ll have an attorney stop you from distributing it.”
“I have no intention of distributing it.”
“You expect me to trust that?”
“No.”
Chloe looked at the damp wig.
“You enjoyed it.”
“The water?”
“The disguise. Watching me make mistakes.”
Eleanor removed her glasses and cleaned the already clean lens with a cloth.
“At first,” she said, “I found it useful.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It became less enjoyable around the time you asked me whether old women understood they were replaceable.”
Chloe’s mouth tightened. “You were deliberately incompetent.”
“I was deliberately unfamiliar with your preferences.”
“You put the wrong flowers in the breakfast room.”
“They were fresh.”
“They were funeral lilies.”
“They were white lilies.”
“My mother had white lilies at her funeral.”
Eleanor stopped polishing the lens.
That detail had not appeared in the background review.
Chloe looked away. “You didn’t know that.”
“No.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“You told the florist to discard them. You did not explain why.”
“To a housekeeper?”
“To anyone.”
Chloe pressed her lips together.
Eleanor put her glasses back on.
The first day of the disguise, Chloe had seemed merely impatient. She corrected the placement of breakfast plates, complained about streaks on a mirror, and asked why the temporary maid moved like someone had installed her knees backward.
On the second day, she had become cruel.
Not continuously. That would have been easier. She sometimes thanked Eleanor. Once she carried a heavy laundry basket up two steps before remembering that carrying it was not a thing she wanted to be seen doing. She had spent twenty minutes helping Eleanor fasten a loose cuff, talking about a television show neither of them liked.
Then her phone rang, a wedding vendor disappointed her, and she told Eleanor that women who worked in houses should be grateful wealthy people still employed them instead of buying machines.
Cruelty had not been Chloe’s permanent state. It had been the place she went when frightened, inconvenienced, or denied.
Eleanor understood that place better than she wanted to.
“Why did you delete my invitations from Julian’s calendar?” she asked.
Chloe sat at last.
“Because every dinner became an ambush.”
“They were family dinners.”
“You asked about my student loans during dessert.”
“You had asked Julian to invest in your friend’s company.”
“It was a wellness brand.”
“It sold unverified hormone treatments online.”
“You made me look stupid.”
“I told you it was a bad investment.”
“In front of him.”
“He had already transferred ten thousand dollars.”
Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “He told you that?”
“The transfer came from an account I helped establish.”
“So you monitor him.”
“The bank flagged it because he had never sent money to that recipient.”
“You always have a clean reason.”
“Usually.”
“That must be nice.”
Eleanor leaned back.
Chloe picked at a loose thread on her sweater.
“I didn’t delete every invitation,” she said. “Just some.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“Approximately.”
“Seven. Maybe eight.”
“Over how long?”
“Four months.”
Eleanor felt something settle in her chest.
She had blamed Julian for each absence. She had told herself his work mattered more than family, that he had inherited his father’s talent for retreating behind duty. She had responded by becoming colder, which made his next refusal easier.
Chloe watched the realization.
“You stopped calling him,” she said.
“Because he stopped coming.”
“You could have asked why.”
“He could have called.”
“He thought you were punishing him for the engagement.”
“I was angry about the engagement.”
“I know.”
“That does not excuse what you did.”
“No. It explains why it worked.”
Eleanor looked toward the facedown photograph.
Chloe saw it but said nothing.
“Why are you marrying him?” Eleanor asked.
Chloe gave a tired smile. “There it is.”
“It is a fair question.”
“Not from you.”
“Why?”
“Because you believe there are only two possible answers. Either I want his name and money, or I have somehow fooled myself into thinking I love him.”
“Do you love him?”
“Yes.”
The answer came without hesitation.
Eleanor believed her.
That complicated nothing and everything.
“Then why isolate him from his mother?”
“Because when he leaves this house after seeing you, he becomes someone else.”
“What does that mean?”
“He stops sleeping. He checks his phone every ten minutes. He starts apologizing for things he hasn’t done. He reads your messages out loud and tries to figure out which sentence is the real accusation.”
Eleanor’s hands went still on the desk.
Chloe leaned forward.
“You don’t yell at him. You don’t have to. You make disappointment sound like weather. It fills the whole room, and he stands there trying to change the climate.”
“That is an impressive line.”
“It isn’t a line.”
“No. I suppose it isn’t.”
Chloe looked briefly surprised.
Eleanor had spent years believing Julian’s anxiety came from the dangers of his work, the pressure of public expectations, and the responsibility he carried too easily for other people. She had not considered that her messages might be among the things he recovered from.
Or perhaps she had considered it and filed the thought somewhere it could not interfere with her certainty.
“You could have encouraged him to tell me that,” she said.
“He did tell you.”
“When?”
“Last Thanksgiving. In the greenhouse.”
Eleanor remembered the greenhouse, condensation on the windows, Julian asking her to stop turning every disagreement into a judgment of his character.
She had told him character was revealed by decisions.
“He was talking about Chloe,” she said.
“He was talking about you.”
The study door opened.
Julian stood there in shirtsleeves, the recorder in one hand.
Neither woman spoke.
He looked from Chloe to Eleanor.
“I heard all of it.”
Chloe stood. “Julian—”
“Sit down.”
May you like
She did.
Julian closed the door and remained beside it.
