Chapter 5
I made him answer upstairs.
Not in front of Amelia.
She was asleep by then, curled on her side beneath a thin blanket with half a piece of toast still on the plate beside her. Her temperature had begun coming down, and the doctor wanted quiet more than anything.
I stood in the hallway outside her room and looked at my father.
“Who was supposed to replace me?”
Robert lowered his voice.
“No one.”
“That isn’t what you said.”
“I said Marcus wasn’t replacing you.”
“Then explain.”
He looked toward the nursery door.
Diane arrived behind us before he could.
“She doesn’t need explanations. She needs perspective.”
I turned.
My mother had changed clothes.
Fresh blouse.
Fresh makeup.
As if changing clothes could separate her from what she had done beside the pool.
“You kept food from a three-year-old.”
“She refused to answer.”
“Stop saying that like it helps you.”
Her mouth hardened.
Robert finally spoke.
“The plan was not to remove you.”
I waited.
“It was to limit you.”
Marcus, standing at the far end of the hallway, laughed once.
Bitter.
“You told me I’d run council.”
Diane snapped, “You would.”
Robert shook his head.
“No.”
Marcus looked at him.
My father continued.
“You would run enough council to keep Mercer satisfied.”
My brother went still.
There it was.
He was not the new boss.
He was a buffer.
A face.
A man Diane could point at whenever the eldest-son argument became useful.
I looked at Robert.
“And me?”
“You keep the family seat.”
“But?”
He closed his eyes.
“Major western decisions go through a three-person table.”
“Who?”
“Marcus.”
Pause.
“Conrad Mercer.”
Another pause.
“And Diane.”
Marcus actually laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because he had finally seen his place in the plan.
“And Liberty?”
Robert looked at me.
“She keeps the title.”
The insult was almost elegant.
I could remain boss as long as I stopped behaving like one.
Diane stepped forward.
“You have become impossible to advise.”
“No.”
I looked at her.
“I became impossible to control.”
She said nothing.
That was the truth.
Then Amelia murmured from inside the room.
I opened the door immediately.
Her eyes were barely open.
“Mom?”
“I’m here.”
She reached beneath her pillow.
Something small glittered in her palm.
Brass.
A key.
Diane inhaled sharply behind me.
Amelia looked at her grandmother, then back at me.
“She kept asking for this.”
I took it carefully.
“Where did you find it?”
Amelia whispered:
“The wolf man gave it to me.”
Everything inside me stopped.
May you like
The key had not been lost.
Conrad Mercer had handed it directly to my daughter.
