Chapter 10
Miles changed differently.
At first, he blamed Silas.
Then Gwendolyn.
Then me.
Never himself.
Predictable.
I removed him from family operations.
He kept his money.
His home.
His name.
Nothing else.
He called it humiliation.
I called it consequences without theater.
A year passed.
Then he asked for work.
Not position.
Work.
I gave him none.
Not because he could never return.
Because he still spoke like power was something withheld from him rather than something he had betrayed.
Another year passed.
He asked again.
Different this time.
“I can start anywhere.”
I looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because I need to learn whether I actually know how to do anything without Mother arranging rooms.”
Better.
I gave him oversight of a warehouse renovation.
Boring.
Expensive.
No captains.
No titles.
He did well.
That surprised him more than me.
Eventually he admitted:
“I thought if I wasn’t near the chair, I disappeared.”
There.
His wound.
Gwendolyn raised him as future significance.
Not loved enough unless ascending.
Silas exploited that.
Different from excuse.
Still useful.
“Did you ever want Peter hurt?”
“No.”
I believed him.
“Did you use him?”
“Yes.”
Better.
“I thought funeral grief would make everyone accept me.”
Ugly.
Honest.
Then:
“I didn’t think about what it would do to him.”
Exactly.
Power often depends on refusing to imagine the interior life of whoever becomes the symbol.
Miles had seen Peter as grieving heir.
Not child.
That changed slowly.
Years later, when Peter asked Miles to help build a model dinosaur, my cousin spent two hours doing it badly.
No politics.
No redemption speech.
Just glue everywhere.
May you like
Progress looks stupid sometimes.
Good.
