Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN RUSSELL BROUGHT INTO AMELIA’S HOUSE
Russell did not shout.
That frightened Seraphina more.
He took Caleb upstairs himself, wrapped him in a blanket, and sat beside him until his hands stopped shaking.
Denise remained nearby.
“What happened before the freezer?”
Caleb looked toward the bedroom door.
“Is she coming?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
Russell hesitated only because the question hurt.
“I promise.”
Caleb pulled the blanket higher.
He had been looking for a wooden race car Amelia used to keep on her dressing-room shelf.
Seraphina had begun packing Amelia’s belongings three weeks earlier.
Russell had approved that.
The mansion had been unchanged since his wife’s death from metastatic breast cancer. Clothes still hung in her closet. Perfume sat on her vanity. Her reading glasses remained beside a novel she never finished.
Russell said he wanted the room renovated before the second anniversary.
Denise had understood.
Caleb had not.
“She keeps throwing Mom away,” he whispered.
Russell looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
“She says Mom’s stuff makes the house sick.”
Denise closed her eyes.
She had heard variations of that before.
Seraphina calling Amelia’s dried flowers “dust collectors.”
Removing family photographs from the breakfast room.
Telling Caleb that keeping his mother’s robe beneath his pillow was “unhealthy.”
Denise had challenged her twice.
Russell had defended Seraphina.
“She’s trying to help us move forward.”
Now Caleb said, “I saw her take the red bag.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
He had followed Seraphina from Amelia’s room to the kitchen.
When Seraphina realized he was watching, she demanded the pouch.
Caleb ran.
The freezer incident followed.
Russell stared at the carpet.
Denise knew exactly what he was confronting.
Not simply what Seraphina had done tonight.
Every earlier moment he had explained away.
Downstairs, Seraphina waited in the library.
She had been part of the Halden world longer than most people realized.
Five years earlier Amelia had hired her as an independent art-and-estate consultant to catalogue a collection inherited from Amelia’s mother: antique jewelry, small paintings, silver, and family pieces accumulated over generations.
After Amelia’s illness worsened, Seraphina became one of the few people allowed into her private dressing room.
Eight months after Amelia’s death, Russell started dating her.
Denise had hated the speed.
Russell told her grief did not run on a respectable schedule.
He was right.
That had made objecting harder.
When Russell entered the library now, Seraphina stood.
“That child broke into a room I was organizing.”
“You locked my son in a freezer.”
“For thirty seconds.”
Russell’s face changed.
“Do not measure what you did by how long you got away with it.”
Seraphina folded her arms.
“He stole something Amelia entrusted to me.”
Russell placed the burgundy pouch on the desk.
“Amelia entrusted this to you?”
Seraphina looked at the key inside.
“Yes.”
“Then why was it hidden in Amelia’s room?”
She did not answer.
Russell lifted the matching pendant from her chest without touching her skin.
“And why are there two?”
Seraphina finally looked toward Denise.
Not Russell.
Denise noticed.
So did he.
May you like
Seraphina said quietly:
“Because Amelia never intended one person to open what they unlock.”
Related Stories
