Chapter 2
I took Dashiell upstairs before listening to another second.
Not because I feared the recording.
Because I had already made the mistake of letting adult urgency outrank his fear once tonight.
Never again.
He sat beside me in the dressing room while the bodyguard waited outside.
“Did Grandma play those voices before?”
He nodded.
“How many times?”
“Lots.”
“What happens if you guess wrong?”
His hand went to his cheek.
Answer enough.
“What happens if you guess right?”
He looked confused.
“Grandma stops.”
There.
Not reward.
Relief.
The oldest conditioning method in the world.
“What did she want you to say?”
He stared at the floor.
“That Uncle Thaddeus wasn’t there.”
My blood cooled.
“Did you remember him being there?”
Dashiell whispered:
“I remember Daddy mad.”
That was new.
Julian died eleven months earlier after driving away from a private lakeside property during a storm.
His car left the road.
No evidence of sabotage.
No hidden killer.
An accident.
At least that was what every fact had supported.
But I had never known Dashiell heard anything that night.
He had been asleep upstairs.
Or I thought he had.
“What did you hear?”
“Daddy said ‘give it back.’”
“To who?”
Dashiell shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Good.
I would not make him invent certainty for me either.
“Did you see anyone?”
“No.”
“What did Grandma tell you?”
His face tightened.
“That remembering wrong can hurt family.”
Of course.
Protect the family.
The phrase adults use when truth becomes inconvenient.
Then Dashiell said:
“She says if I keep saying Uncle Thaddeus, Mommy gets angry and sends him away.”
There.
Winifred had made me the punishment too.
If the boy remembered Thaddeus, he would be responsible for destroying the family.
I pulled him against me.
“You are not responsible for what adults do.”
He nodded against my jacket.
Maybe he understood.
Maybe not yet.
Then he asked:
“Did Daddy die because I heard him?”
My eyes burned.
“No.”
Immediate.
Absolute.
“You hearing something did not cause anything.”
That answer I could guarantee.
Downstairs, Winifred and Thaddeus were waiting.
For years I had wondered what Julian argued about before his final drive.
May you like
Now I knew one thing.
His family had spent eleven months trying to train my son not to remember it.
