Chapter 2 - The Thing Helen Feared More Than Humiliation
Grant did not even glance at Vanessa again at first. He crouched beside Helen while Maya supported her shoulders. Dirty water still dripped from the ends of Helen’s graying hair onto her white apron.
“Helen,” he said, voice tight, “look at me.”
She did, but only for a second. Her face was red, her expression shattered. Still, underneath the humiliation, Grant saw something stranger than pain. He saw fear.
Not fear of Vanessa.
Fear of what Vanessa might already have done.
Grant slipped off his suit jacket and wrapped it around Helen’s shoulders while Maya helped her stand. Behind them, Vanessa slowly pushed herself upright, one hand pressed to her cheek, fury and shock mixing in her eyes.
“You slapped me over a maid?” she demanded.
Grant turned so slowly that even Vanessa seemed to hear the danger in the silence before he spoke. “You dumped filthy water over a woman who has served this house longer than you’ve known my name. If that’s the version you want remembered, keep talking.”
Vanessa’s lips parted, but Helen cut across them both in a hoarse voice. “Grant, please. The study.”
Grant looked back at her. “What about it?”
Helen swallowed. “Did you lock your father’s cabinet this morning?”
His stomach tightened. “Why?”
“I need you to answer me.”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t lock it.”
Helen’s eyes closed for one beat, as if that confirmed a private nightmare. When she opened them again, she looked at Maya, not Grant. “Was she upstairs earlier?”
Maya nodded once. “I saw her coming out of the east hall.”
Vanessa straightened, suddenly defensive. “I live here. I don’t need permission to walk in a hallway.”
But Grant was already moving. “Stay right here,” he told her.
Vanessa laughed bitterly. “You don’t get to order me around like staff.”
Grant stopped at the double doors and looked over his shoulder. “After what I just saw, you should be grateful I’m only asking for stillness.”
He went upstairs to the late Theodore Parker’s study, and when he pushed open the walnut door, one thing was immediately wrong.
The hidden cabinet behind his father’s framed landscape was open.
May you like
And inside, the velvet box Helen had once sworn she was “keeping for the right day” was gone.
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