Chapter 4
Rosalind asked to speak to me without Sebastian present.
I allowed it.
No ring on her finger.
She had removed it.
Placed it on my desk.
Interesting.
“I didn’t start this.”
“I know.”
Relief appeared too early.
“But you continued it.”
Gone.
She sat.
Her father had died when she was nineteen.
Her mother remarried quickly.
Rosalind hated the new husband.
Not because he was cruel.
Because everyone expected instant family.
Photos.
Vacations.
New traditions.
Her grief was treated like stubbornness.
She learned one lesson from it:
Children resist change unless adults make it unavoidable.
Wrong lesson.
Understandable origin.
Still wrong.
Sebastian saw that belief in her.
He told Rosalind Clara’s attachment to Evelyn’s memory would always keep Rosalind outside.
Then Everett reinforced it.
You will never truly marry Adrian if the child controls the emotional center of the house.
Poison.
Delivered as strategy.
Rosalind started small.
Move Evelyn’s portrait from the breakfast room.
Change Clara’s bedtime routine.
Reduce Nell’s hours.
Clara resisted.
Every refusal made Rosalind feel more excluded.
Then Sebastian suggested the greenhouse sessions.
“Did you attend?”
Rosalind looked down.
“Twice.”
“What did you say?”
She cried.
“I told Clara nobody was replacing her mother.”
Good.
Then:
“But I also told her I needed her to help make the wedding work.”
My hands tightened.
A four-year-old assigned responsibility for adult marriage.
“What did that mean?”
“She should try calling me Mom.”
There.
Clara had refused.
Rosalind felt humiliated.
Everett began the recordings afterward.
Practice until the words sounded natural.
Then show the Circle.
Not because the Circle needed legal proof.
Because old men trust recordings more than children standing in front of them.
I asked:
“Did Clara ever ask you to stop?”
Rosalind nodded.
“How many times?”
She started crying harder.
May you like
“Every time.”
That answered everything.
