Chapter 3
Father died four hours after Lucian and Davina left.
I was away.
Two towns north.
By the time I returned, the doctor told me his heart simply failed during sleep.
His health had been declining for months.
Nothing looked unusual.
Nothing required a mystery.
Davina looked at me across the desk.
“I never knew whether the missing medication caused it.”
Neither did I.
That uncertainty would remain.
Important.
She had interfered with necessary medicine.
She had not entered the house intending to kill him.
Both truths.
“Did Lucian know?”
“Not until we were leaving.”
“What did he do?”
“He made me turn the car around.”
That surprised me.
They returned.
But by then the house gates were closed for the night.
Lucian called.
No answer.
He wanted to break in.
Davina stopped him.
Why?
Fear.
Not of prison.
Not of police.
Of Aldric.
Of what would happen if he survived and learned she tampered with his medicine.
So they left.
The next morning, Lucian heard Father was dead.
He never recovered from it.
“He blamed himself?”
“No.”
Davina looked at me.
“He blamed me.”
That was honest.
Lucian refused to speak to his daughter for nearly a year.
Eventually they reconciled partially.
Then he died of cancer.
“He told you to tell me?”
“Yes.”
My chest tightened.
“And?”
“I didn’t.”
Of course.
Years later she met me at a charity dinner.
She recognized my name immediately.
I recognized hers only as Vale.
Not Lucian Vale.
Just Davina Vale.
I had never asked enough.
“At first I wanted to know what kind of man Aldric’s son became.”
Not love.
Investigation.
Then we kept seeing each other.
Dinner became weekend.
Weekend became relationship.
Relationship became engagement.
“And at what point did you decide never to tell me?”
She laughed bitterly.
“Every day.”
That answer hurt more than a clean date.
Then I asked about Mother.
“Why starve her?”
Davina immediately shook her head.
“I wasn’t starving her.”
I looked at her.
“She had no dinner.”
“One meal.”
“And Nella said punished.”
Silence.
There.
Not first time.
Mother had been remembering fragments for weeks.
Lucian’s face.
The blue pills.
Davina standing near Father’s bedroom.
Each lucid moment endangered the life Davina had built with me.
So she began calling Mother confused.
Then difficult.
Then manipulative.
Food became discipline when Mother repeated the wrong memory at the wrong time.
May you like
Davina had spent years hiding the truth.
Now she was teaching everyone else to dismiss the only witness who still carried pieces of it.
