Chapter 17
Three years after the staircase incident, Oscar was nine.
No cast.
No crutches.
He raced down the same stairs despite repeated warnings.
Children heal into new ways of terrifying parents.
At the bottom, he nearly collided with Nathan.
Nathan caught him.
“Walk.”
Oscar groaned.
“You sound like Dad.”
“Terrifying.”
Claudia was visiting too.
Duncan was gone from our lives.
Not dead.
Not hunted.
Simply outside Sterling.
The red box sat open on a side table holding board-game pieces.
My father’s letters were archived.
Nathan’s existence was no longer a secret.
West House was a story we told carefully, not a model we preserved.
Oscar pointed at the box.
“Can I use it?”
“For what?”
“Dice.”
“Apparently.”
He dumped game pieces inside.
I watched.
Three years earlier Duncan pushed my son down the stairs because Oscar saw that box.
Claudia threw away his crutches because she wanted him to stop accusing her husband.
I thought the mystery was what Oscar had been forced to keep quiet about.
It was larger.
Our family had been training people to keep quiet for generations.
Nathan kept outside.
Claudia kept West House quiet.
I kept my father’s authority intact by never asking what it cost everyone else.
Duncan simply learned the oldest Sterling lesson too well:
If truth threatens the structure, make the witness feel like the problem.
Oscar destroyed that with one sentence.
He pushed me. I didn’t fall.
Simple.
Specific.
Enough.
Nathan sat across from him at the game table.
Claudia joined.
I took the final chair.
Oscar shook the dice inside the red box.
Loud.
Careless.
Ordinary.
Then he looked at me.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“No secrets in this game.”
I smiled.
“Good rule.”
May you like
He rolled.
And for once, Sterling had nothing hidden behind the wall.
