Part 3
“No.”
For a second, Vivian looked genuinely surprised.
Then her face settled again.
“You have something that belongs to this family,” she said.
Chloe’s hand moved instinctively toward her bag.
Vivian noticed.
Of course she did.
“Margot’s phone,” Vivian said.
The words entered the foyer with the hard clarity of glass breaking.
Chloe stared at her.
“How do you know I have it?”
Vivian’s gaze did not move.
“You contacted the studio.”
“I contacted the person who restored the files.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Vivian’s eyes narrowed. “You think you found something.”
“I did.”
“Then you should have brought it to me.”
Chloe’s pulse started to climb.
“Why?”
“Because Margot was my future mother-in-law.”
“She was Gabriel’s mother.”
Vivian looked away for the first time.
Only briefly.
“She trusted me.”
Chloe felt something sharp move through her chest.
Margot had trusted Vivian once. That much was true. She had invited her to dinners. She had called her sweetheart. She had spoken of Vivian with the cautious hope mothers sometimes reserve for the women their sons love.
But Chloe had been there near the end too.
She had seen the changes.
Margot had started locking her office. She had begun asking Chloe to check whether the bedroom door latched. She had stopped taking calls in front of Vivian. Once, when Vivian walked into the room unexpectedly, Margot had gone quiet so abruptly that Chloe had looked up from the medication list and understood something was wrong.
She just had not known what.
“You didn’t come here to give Gabriel anything,” Vivian said. “You came here to punish him.”
Chloe’s face warmed.
“I came because he deserves to hear it himself.”
“Why?”
“Because it concerns his mother.”
“No.” Vivian took another step down. “Why do you care what Gabriel deserves?”
Chloe looked at the polished floor.
That was the question beneath every other question.
It was easier to say Margot’s name. Easier to say truth. Easier to say fairness.
It was harder to admit that Gabriel had once been the person Chloe told everything to. That he knew how she took her coffee, how she pressed her thumbnail against her finger when she was anxious, how she could not sleep without a fan running even in winter. Harder to admit she had loved him through parts of his life that his friends only read about in newspapers.
Harder still to admit that she had stopped being loved by him in a single week and never understood whether he regretted it.
“I don’t have to explain that to you,” Chloe said.
Vivian smiled faintly.
“No. But you will.”
Chloe should have left then.
She knew it later, as she lay on the stairs with Gabriel’s hand beneath her head. She would replay that moment until it lost its edges: Vivian on the landing, the house empty, the message in her bag, the door behind her still open.
She should have walked out.
Instead, she said, “Call Gabriel down.”
Vivian looked toward the upper hall again.
“He’s busy.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
“That would be awkward.”
“I can live with awkward.”
Vivian laughed under her breath.
Chloe heard the sound and felt a small, ugly satisfaction that Vivian was finally unsettled.
It disappeared quickly.
“Fine,” Vivian said. “Wait.”
She turned and walked back up the stairs.
Chloe watched her go.
For a few seconds, she stood alone beneath the chandelier.
Then Vivian stopped at the landing and looked back.
“Actually,” she said, “you should come up. It will be easier.”
Chloe did not answer.
Vivian rested one hand on the railing.
“You came here with evidence, right? You want to do this in front of Gabriel? Then come upstairs.”
The invitation was wrong. Every part of it was wrong.
But Chloe followed anyway.
Not because she trusted Vivian.
Because she was tired of being afraid of a woman who had spent three years making fear look reasonable.
She climbed slowly.
Her champagne-gold dress was softer than she usually wore. The fabric moved around her legs with each step. She had chosen it that morning after standing in front of her closet for nearly twenty minutes, rejecting anything black because it felt too severe, anything bright because it felt too hopeful.
The gold had seemed neutral.
It had seemed safe.
By the time she reached the upper landing, Vivian had already turned toward the west corridor.
“Gabriel’s room is this way,” she said.
Chloe stopped.
“Why?”
Vivian looked back.
“You want to give him the phone, don’t you?”
“I can do it in the foyer.”
“Not if you want him to listen.”
Chloe stared at her.
May you like
“What does that mean?”
“It means Gabriel is not going to stand in the middle of the stairs and watch you hand him a dead woman’s phone like you’re delivering a subpoena.”
