Chapter 6 - THE THINGS CALEB HAD BEEN AFRAID TO SAY
Russell crouched immediately.
“When?”
Caleb looked at Seraphina.
Denise moved beside him.
“You can answer your dad.”
“At the party.”
“What party?”
“The one downstairs when I had to stay with Mrs. Carter.”
Denise remembered.
A private donor dinner six months earlier.
Russell had hosted trustees from the Halden Arts Foundation.
Seraphina wore a sapphire necklace that evening.
Denise had assumed it was hers.
Caleb had recognized it.
“I told her it was Mom’s.”
Russell’s face tightened.
“What did she say?”
Caleb rubbed his thumb against his pajama sleeve.
“She said Mom didn’t need necklaces anymore.”
The cruelty was so casual Russell had no defense against it.
“What did you do?”
“I cried.”
Russell looked at Denise.
She nodded slowly.
“I found him in the upstairs hall.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Denise answered carefully.
“Because when I asked Seraphina about the necklace, she said Amelia had transferred several pieces to her as compensation.”
Russell turned.
Seraphina spoke before he could.
“She did.”
“Show me.”
“It may be in the compensation file.”
“There is no compensation file.”
Seraphina’s face changed.
Margaret asked, “Was there a written transfer?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I need to find it.”
Russell laughed without humor.
“Interesting how every document helping you is somewhere else.”
Caleb pulled at Denise’s sleeve.
“There’s more.”
Denise crouched.
“What?”
“She told me if I kept telling Dad things about Mom, he’d get sick too.”
Russell went completely still.
Caleb continued because children often kept speaking once the dangerous sentence finally escaped.
“She said Dad cries when I talk about her.”
Russell looked away.
That part was true.
During the first months after Amelia died, Caleb asking about her could knock the breath out of him.
He had once left dinner halfway through because Caleb wanted to watch a video from Amelia’s birthday.
Seraphina had noticed.
Then apparently used it.
Caleb whispered:
“So I stopped.”
Russell covered his mouth.
For nearly a year he had thought his son was healing.
Caleb had simply learned silence.
Denise put an arm around him.
Russell looked at Seraphina.
“You told my child he could hurt me by talking about his mother?”
“I was trying to stop him from living in grief every day.”
“He was seven.”
“You were drowning.”
“That did not make him responsible for keeping me afloat.”
Seraphina looked at Russell as if she barely recognized him.
“You thanked me for helping him move on.”
That landed.
Because he had.
More than once.
Russell had praised Seraphina for getting Caleb to stop sleeping with Amelia’s robe.
For clearing photographs from the breakfast room.
For “making the house livable.”
Every act he now recognized as erasure had been rewarded by him because it made his own grief easier.
He turned toward Caleb.
“I’m sorry.”
Caleb did not answer.
Russell didn’t push.
That evening he told Seraphina to leave the mansion.
She stared at him.
“You’re throwing me out over a frightened child’s version of things?”
“No.”
He placed the sapphire inventory sheet on the table.
“I’m asking you to leave because I no longer trust you in my home.”
Seraphina picked up her handbag.
At the door she stopped.
“If you keep digging through Amelia’s accounts, be prepared to find out why she really created Aster.”
Russell looked at her.
“I already know.”
Seraphina smiled sadly.
“No.”
“You know what she told you after you almost lost your company.”
May you like
Then she opened the door.
“You don’t know what she discovered after she saved it.”
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