Chương 5
“That is why you should preserve what exists and avoid coaching anyone.”
Victor looked at the drawing. “Did I fail to protect him?”
Dr. Hale was silent long enough that he regretted asking.
“You are protecting him now,” she said. “What you do next matters more than what I call what came before.”
It was not absolution. He was grateful for that.
When he entered the morning room, Ethan was curled in the corner of the sofa with his head against Clara’s shoulder. Nora sat near the cold fireplace, pretending to inspect a stack of grocery receipts. The red ribbon lay across Ethan’s lap.
Clara opened her eyes when Victor came in.
“Dr. Hale is making a report,” he said.
Nora stopped sorting receipts.
Clara nodded once. “Good.”
Ethan lifted his head. “Am I going to the police?”
“No.”
“Is Grandmother?”
“I don’t know.”
The answer frightened him less than a false certainty might have.
Victor sat in the armchair opposite the sofa. The chair had belonged to Anna. He had avoided it since her death, though no one had been told to leave it empty.
“You are not in trouble for the globe,” he said.
Ethan looked down. “It was Grandfather’s.”
“It was an object. You are my son.”
“What if it can’t be fixed?”
“Then it can’t.”
Margaret would have called that wasteful sentimentality. Victor heard her voice in his own mind and felt suddenly tired.
He leaned forward. “Do you feel safe tonight?”
Ethan looked at Clara before answering.
“Yes.”
Victor tried not to react.
“Do you hurt anywhere?”
“No.”
“Did Grandmother hurt you yesterday?”
Clara’s gaze sharpened.
Victor stopped.
Ethan pulled the ribbon through his fingers. “She was teaching me.”
“What?”
“How not to hide.”
“Under the desk?”
A small nod.
“What happened?”
Clara shifted beside him. “You don’t have to tell everything tonight.”
Ethan’s face crumpled with relief.
Victor sat back.
“All right,” he said. “You don’t.”
Nora stood. “He hasn’t eaten.”
“I’m not hungry,” Ethan said.
“You say that every time I make lentils,” Nora replied.
“I don’t like lentils.”
“You ate two bowls last month.”
“I was younger then.”
The sentence was so serious that Nora made an undignified sound that might have become a laugh if the room had been different. Clara’s mouth twitched. Even Victor felt something loosen in his chest.
Nora folded the grocery receipts and tucked them into her apron. “Toast, then.”
“With butter?”
“I had planned to use furniture polish.”
Ethan leaned against Clara again. “Butter.”
Nora left.
The ordinary exchange seemed to exhaust him. His eyes closed, then opened.
“Is Grandmother coming back tomorrow?”
“No,” Victor said.
“Did she fire Clara?”
“No.”
Clara looked at him.
Victor corrected himself. “The agency may have ended the placement. I have not.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the adults have to work some things out.”
“Adults always say that when they already decided.”
Victor had said nearly the same thing to his father at nine. The memory came not as a story but as the smell of pipe tobacco and the hard edge of a dining chair beneath his hands.
“Not this time,” he said.
Clara’s gaze remained on him, measuring the claim.
Ethan touched the scratch on her cheek with one finger. “Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“That one was me.”
Victor looked at her.
Ethan withdrew his hand. “I scratched her when I had the bad dream. She didn’t tell.”
“It was an accident,” Clara said.
“I know.”
Victor watched the two of them. The tenderness between them did not look indulgent. It looked earned through nights he had slept elsewhere, through fears he had permitted other people to translate.
Nora returned with toast, apple slices, and a glass of milk. Ethan ate half a slice before falling asleep against Clara.
Victor carried him upstairs.
His son weighed less than he expected.
At the bedroom door, Ethan stirred and gripped Victor’s lapel. For one second, Victor thought the boy meant to pull himself closer. Instead, Ethan whispered, “Clara has to lock her door.”
“Why?”
“Grandmother went in there.”
“When?”
“Today.”
Victor’s arms tightened.
“What did she do?”
Ethan’s eyes remained closed. “I don’t know.”
Victor laid him on the bed and pulled the blanket to his chest. Clara stood in the hallway, holding Ethan’s glass of water.
“Did Margaret enter your room today?” he asked.
Clara went still.
“She supervised the packing.”
“Did she touch your things?”
“She opened the wardrobe and the desk.”
“Why?”
“She said she was making sure I did not remove family property.”
Victor looked at the narrow service corridor leading toward Clara’s room.
“Is anything missing?”
“I haven’t checked.”
They went together.
Clara’s room was small by the mansion’s standards, larger than the apartment bedroom in which she had grown up. A packed suitcase stood on the bed. A canvas tote waited beside it. The desk drawers had been left open.
Clara stopped at the threshold.
“What?” Victor asked.
She crossed to the desk and moved a stack of envelopes. “My notebook.”
“What notebook?”
“I wrote down dates.”
His pulse changed. “Dates of what?”
“Anything that worried me. Changes in Ethan’s behavior. Things your mother said. Times she arrived without being on the schedule.”
“Where did you keep it?”
“In the bottom drawer.”
Victor examined the empty drawer. “Who knew?”
“No one.”
“Ethan?”
“I never showed him.”
“Mrs. Alvarez?”
“No.”
“Was the room locked?”
“I was told staff rooms were not to be locked during working hours.”
Victor stared at the suitcase.
Clara opened it and began checking folded clothes. Her movements were controlled until she reached the bottom. Then she stopped.
“What else?” he asked.
“My old phone.”
“Why did you keep an old phone in your suitcase?”
“The microphone on my current one stopped working last month. I used the old one to record notes after Ethan went to sleep.”
“Were there recordings of my mother?”
“No conversations. Just my own summaries.”
“Backed up?”
May you like
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
