Chapter 8
Eulalie refused replacement wages from Ottavia.
Good.
She accepted them from me only after I explained something.
The money shredded at my engagement party had been wages earned under my roof.
My household had allowed someone else to interfere with them.
That made correction my responsibility.
Not charity.
She accepted every dollar.
Then asked:
“Can Callum work here?”
Interesting.
I said:
“Ask Callum.”
She smiled slightly.
Progress.
Callum did not want to.
Also good.
He had spent four months working because leaving threatened someone he loved.
The last thing he needed was another powerful man offering employment immediately after rescue.
He chose a restoration shop instead.
Ordinary hours.
Ordinary pay.
He hated the commute.
Excellent sign.
Life returning.
Miriam returned to Queens.
New apartment.
Smaller than Ashdown.
Hers.
She invited me for coffee after two weeks.
I went without staff inside.
Her walls were covered in photographs.
Ottavia everywhere.
Child Ottavia with missing front teeth.
Teenage Ottavia in a thrift-store prom dress Miriam altered by hand.
College Ottavia holding flowers.
No shame in any frame.
I asked:
“Did she know you kept these?”
“Yes.”
“Did that bother her?”
“She asked me not to display them if she visited.”
Of course.
Then Miriam showed me one photograph.
Ottavia at sixteen wearing a black-and-white hotel maid uniform beside her mother.
I looked closer.
“She worked with you?”
“One summer.”
That changed something.
Ottavia had not only grown up around service.
She had done it.
Made beds.
Carried trays.
Cleaned rooms.
And later she looked at Eulalie’s apron as though it marked a lesser species.
Miriam touched the photograph.
“She hated how guests looked through us.”
There.
That was the wound.
Not work.
Invisibility.
Ottavia escaped being unseen.
Then became the person who looked through others.
May you like
The irony was almost too clean for fiction.
Unfortunately, we were living it.
