Chapter 5
Mason knew about Elena.
More than I expected.
Vanessa talked about her often.
Not kindly.
“She says Lily’s real mom trapped you.”
My jaw tightened.
“Did she say how?”
Mason looked embarrassed.
“By getting pregnant.”
Lily sat beside me coloring.
Too young to understand every word.
Old enough to feel tone.
I lowered my voice.
“What else?”
“She says you married Elena because you felt sorry for her.”
I almost laughed.
No.
I married Elena because she insulted me on our third date and then stole my car because I told her she couldn’t drive it.
Pity had not survived the first week.
Mason continued.
“Mom says if Elena was still alive, she’d still be trying to turn staff into family.”
Interesting.
Not only jealousy.
Class.
Hierarchy.
Vanessa believed proximity to service contaminated status.
She married into my family because she respected power.
Not people.
“What did she say about you?”
Mason looked down.
“That I’m different.”
“How?”
“My dad’s family had money.”
There.
Vanessa had built two categories.
Mason, acceptable blood from respectable background.
Lily, daughter of a woman who came from service.
It did not matter that Lily was a Moretti by blood.
To Vanessa, class history could stain downward.
I looked at Mason.
“Do you think you’re better than Lily?”
His face turned red.
“No.”
“Ever?”
He hesitated.
“Sometimes when Mom said it.”
Honest again.
Good.
He swallowed.
“Then I felt bad.”
“Why?”
“Because Lily gives me her cookies.”
My daughter looked up.
“I like sharing.”
Mason’s eyes filled.
That nearly broke him.
Vanessa had tried to create rivalry between children who naturally liked each other.
Because affection interfered with hierarchy.
“Did your mother ever punish you for being kind to Lily?”
He nodded.
Once he carried Lily after she fell.
Vanessa made him stand outside the family game room for an hour.
Another time he gave Lily his dessert after hers was taken.
Vanessa told him he was teaching her to manipulate men.
He had been ten.
Lily had been two.
I looked toward the terrace.
This was not only a campaign against Elena’s daughter.
It was training Mason too.
Teach the boy that kindness risks belonging.
Teach the girl that dignity risks food.
Then both children become easier to direct.
May you like
Vanessa had not been raising them.
She had been arranging them.
