Chapter 2
I sent Theo inside with my sister Elena and took Winifred into the garden room.
Not the council room.
I wanted family witnesses.
Not captains.
She sat without being invited.
Old habit.
I remained standing.
“How many times?”
She sighed.
“You’re being dramatic.”
I looked toward my cousin Anthony.
He swallowed.
“Four that I saw.”
My hands became still.
Winifred turned.
“Coward.”
Anthony looked away.
I noticed.
She had trained the room well.
“What happened?”
Anthony hesitated.
“The Christmas train.”
My chest tightened.
Theo had received a wooden train set six months earlier.
One piece vanished before dinner.
We spent an hour searching.
Winifred found it later beneath a sofa.
Apparently.
Anthony continued.
“She hid it.”
Winifred scoffed.
“To teach him patience.”
I stared.
Another cousin spoke.
“The garden kite.”
I looked toward her.
“What about it?”
“Winifred cut the string.”
Silence.
Theo cried for twenty minutes that afternoon.
Winifred held him.
Comforted him.
Told him some things simply fly away.
I remembered thanking her.
The memory tasted rotten.
“What else?”
Nobody wanted to answer.
That told me enough.
Winifred leaned back.
“He’s spoiled.”
“He is three.”
“Exactly.”
I almost smiled.
“You think that helps your argument?”
“He gets something every time he cries.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“He gets comfort.”
“Same thing.”
There it was.
Not to her.
Comfort was reward.
Affection was leverage.
Loss was instruction.
I understood the philosophy before I understood the motive.
“You’ve been taking things from him.”
“Yes.”
Finally.
Openly.
“Why?”
She looked me directly in the eye.
“Because nobody else will teach him that Armano boys survive without attachment.”
Theo’s mother had been dead for eleven months.
My son already understood loss.
More than any three-year-old should.
I stepped closer.
“You chose a grieving child to demonstrate detachment.”
Winifred’s expression hardened.
“He needs to become strong.”
“No.”
My voice lowered.
May you like
“You needed him to become numb.”
That distinction frightened her more than anger would have.
