Chapter 14
Faye stopped being a housemaid a year later.
Not because of us.
Because she wanted evenings with June.
She had always loved music.
Not performing.
Teaching children simple songs.
Lucien encouraged her?
A little.
I did too?
Carefully.
She started working afternoons at a community arts program attached to one of our family-supported houses.
Paid properly.
Independent supervisor.
No Sabine.
June attended after school.
The melody returned.
At first Faye refused to sing it.
Too much attached.
Then June did.
Children again.
Unimpressed by adult symbolism.
Lucien happened to hear her one afternoon.
He stopped in the doorway.
June kept humming.
Faye looked alarmed.
Lucien smiled.
“My mother wrote that.”
June shrugged.
“It’s nice.”
That was all.
The song had spent ten years carrying death.
Then three months carrying a secret.
Now a five-year-old declared it nice.
Maybe that was how symbols healed.
Not speeches.
Reuse.
Claire Pike came to meet Lucien eventually.
Owen’s niece.
Hard conversation.
She asked:
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Lucien answered:
“Because I thought Dorian tried to kill me, and I thought everyone around him belonged to him.”
Then:
“I was wrong.”
Specific.
He apologized for never finding Owen’s family independently.
He had spent his exile surviving first, then hiding, then building a life.
Understandable.
Still consequence.
Claire accepted the truth.
Not instant closeness.
She did ask Lucien for every memory he had of Owen.
They spent three hours talking.
No one recorded it.
No family archive.
Some stories belong to people before institutions.
Later Claire visited Owen’s grave.
Correct name now.
Lucien went with her.
I did not.
May you like
That relationship was theirs.
I was learning not to stand in every important room simply because I was the boss.
