Chapter 8 - June Asked Why Rich People Had Different Rules
June returned to the house once to collect some things from the staff apartment.
Celeste was gone.
I saw June standing near the repaired wall where the mirror had been removed.
She stared at the empty space.
I approached slowly.
“We’re not putting another mirror there.”
She looked up.
“Why?”
“I don’t want you having to look at it.”
She thought about that.
Then asked:
“Did Mrs. Celeste get in trouble?”
“Yes.”
“What trouble?”
“She isn’t living here right now.”
June considered the answer.
“Because she pushed me?”
“Yes.”
She frowned.
Then asked:
“If I pushed somebody, I’d get in really big trouble.”
“Yes.”
“But she’s grown.”
“Yes.”
“And rich.”
I knew where this was going.
“Does that mean she gets less trouble?”
“No.”
“Sometimes it does.”
I stared at her.
Seven years old.
Already learned enough to know adults with money often receive softer consequences.
“That shouldn’t happen.”
“But does it?”
I refused to lie.
“Sometimes.”
June looked back at the wall.
Then said:
“That’s dumb.”
I laughed softly.
“Yes.”
She looked at me again.
“Are you still married to her?”
“For now.”
“Why?”
Children are brutal with efficient questions.
“I’m figuring that out.”
June nodded.
Then:
“If someone pushed my kid into a mirror, I wouldn’t marry them anymore.”
I nearly smiled.
“That seems reasonable.”
She took her backpack and went downstairs.
I stood in the hallway alone.
A seven-year-old had just summarized the decision I had been avoiding for weeks.
Not because divorce was simple.
It wasn’t.
Because sometimes complexity becomes a place adults hide from obvious truths.
I loved Celeste.
Or had.
We had eight years together.
Real memories.
Real tenderness.
Real partnership.
And she had also terrorized a child because the child’s mother cleaned our house.
Both things could be true.
May you like
The question was whether the first truth obligated me to survive the second.
It didn’t.
