Chapter 12
I asked Gideon about Margaret.
Not strategy.
Not the home.
My mother.
Harder.
“What was she like?”
He stared at the table.
“Loud.”
I almost smiled.
“About everything?”
“Especially when Father wanted quiet.”
Good.
“She painted.”
I had never touched a brush voluntarily.
“Badly.”
Better.
“She hated formal dinners.”
That felt familiar.
“She loved cinnamon.”
No idea why that one hurt.
Small details are crueler than grand revelations.
I could imagine a woman who loved cinnamon.
A person.
Not the empty shape called mother.
“Did she hold me?”
Gideon’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Eleven days.”
Before Vincent Vale removed me.
Margaret was twenty.
Unmarried.
The father?
Gideon did not know.
Or claimed not to.
I believed him.
For once, the unknown did not consume me.
“What happened after?”
Margaret fought.
Her father moved her away.
She returned twice.
Then became ill.
Pneumonia that damaged her heart.
Medicine helped.
Not enough.
She died at twenty-two.
“Did she know my name?”
“Yes.”
I stopped breathing.
“Gabriel?”
“Yes.”
Father Mercer wrote to her secretly once.
Told her I was healthy.
Told her the name.
She sent back the letter Serena later burned.
So my mother had known me as Gabriel.
Not infant male.
Not mistake.
Gabriel.
That mattered more than I wanted.
Then Gideon said:
“I was sixteen.”
I looked at him.
There.
The part I had ignored.
He had not been some adult accomplice when I was removed.
A boy.
Controlled by the same father.
“Did you help?”
“No.”
“Did you stop it?”
“No.”
Honest.
He carried shame anyway.
Later, as an adult, he preserved the secret because exposing Vincent meant exposing the family.
Then because Margaret was dead.
Then because I had become powerful.
Every year silence became harder to break.
Until Serena found the notebook.
She chose to repeat it.
That distinction mattered.
Gideon had failed through cowardice.
Serena through active control.
Different consequence.
Same wound.
I left with one photograph of Margaret.
Gideon gave it freely.
Twenty years old.
Laughing beside a kitchen table.
May you like
Bread in front of her.
Of course.
