Chapter 2 - Privacy
She swallowed.
“Nathaniel, listen to me.”
“No.”
His voice was quiet.
That made it worse.
“You will not speak first.”
Marianne’s fingers tightened around the door handle.
The daughter made a tiny sound behind him.
Nathaniel turned slightly.
“Is he hurt?”
His daughter shook her head quickly.
“I kept him wrapped.”
“You did good.”
Her face broke.
“I tried.”
The words nearly destroyed him.
Seven years old.
Trying to protect an infant from adults inside a house with chandeliers, antique furniture, locked doors, and staff who had all been dismissed for the weekend.
Trying.
Nathaniel looked back at Marianne.
“Where is Mrs. Bell?”
Marianne’s eyes flickered.
The housekeeper.
The nanny.
The woman who had been with the family for fifteen years.
Nathaniel asked again.
“Where is she?”
“I gave her the weekend off.”
“You never give her weekends off.”
“We needed privacy.”
The word landed like rot.
Privacy.
Nathaniel looked toward the baby.
His son, Oliver, was only five months old.
His daughter, Ava, had become a big sister with solemn devotion. She sang to him. Guarded his pacifier. Told visitors to wash their hands twice.
Nathaniel had thought Marianne found that sweet.
Now he saw what he should have seen sooner.
Marianne had found it inconvenient.
Ava was not Marianne’s daughter.
Oliver was not Marianne’s son.
They were Nathaniel’s children from his first marriage to Caroline, who had died after complications following Oliver’s birth.
Marianne had entered their lives three months later.
Too soon.
Nathaniel knew that now.
At the time, grief made everything blurry.
Marianne was Caroline’s old college friend. Or so she said. She arrived with sympathy cards, casseroles, soft condolences, and stories about how Caroline had “wanted Nathaniel to be happy.”
That sentence was a key.
She used it often.
When Nathaniel felt guilty for letting her stay for dinner.
When Ava refused to speak to her.
When Oliver cried whenever Marianne held him.
When the housekeeper quietly warned, “Sir, children know things before adults do.”
Nathaniel had ignored too much.
May you like
He had been drowning.
Marianne offered herself as shore.
