Chapter 4
Agatha requested to see Conrad.
He made her wait two days.
Not as punishment.
Because every version of the conversation he imagined ended with him saying something useful to her rather than useful to the truth.
When they finally met, Rachel attended.
Agatha hated that.
“This is a family matter.”
Conrad sat across from her.
“You stopped earning privacy when you chained a child outdoors.”
Agatha’s mouth tightened.
“He was there for minutes.”
“His monitor alarmed.”
“He gets excited.”
“You took his water.”
“He was throwing it.”
Conrad looked toward Rachel.
Rachel made a small note.
Agatha noticed.
“That is exactly the problem.”
“What?”
“Everything becomes documentation now.”
Conrad studied her.
“You seem unusually interested in documentation.”
Her eyes changed.
Only slightly.
“What does that mean?”
“You requested governance rules seventeen days ago.”
Agatha leaned back.
“I’m a senior shareholder.”
“You invited three independent directors to a family party.”
“They are family friends.”
“You invited outside governance counsel.”
“He’s known us twenty years.”
“You installed a chain that morning.”
Her face hardened.
“I did not install anything.”
“Julian’s assistant did.”
“Then ask Julian.”
“I will.”
Agatha folded her hands.
“You are becoming paranoid.”
Conrad almost smiled.
“Maybe.”
“You have been different since Elliot’s diagnosis.”
There it was.
Not an insult.
A line she had used before.
Conrad had heard versions of it at family meetings.
You leave early.
You cancel dinners.
You question security.
You refuse unnecessary travel.
You’re different.
Fatherhood had changed his priorities.
Agatha considered that weakness.
“He is three,” Conrad said.
“I know his age.”
“Do you?”
His voice sharpened for the first time.
“Because chaining a medically monitored three-year-old under the sun suggests somebody in the room forgot.”
Agatha looked away.
Rachel asked, “Why did you send Mrs. Bennett upstairs?”
Agatha answered too quickly.
“I didn’t.”
Rachel slid the security report across the table.
Agatha did not touch it.
Then Conrad asked a different question.
“What did you expect me to do when I saw Elliot?”
Agatha looked at him.
The silence lasted perhaps two seconds.
It felt longer.
“Help your son.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
Conrad watched her.
He remembered Julian’s eyes moving across the garden after being hit.
Counting witnesses.
Something about Agatha’s answer felt incomplete.
After she left, Rachel said, “You saw it too.”
“Yes.”
“She had prepared answers for the chain, the water, the message.”
“Not for my reaction.”
Rachel nodded.
That was the second clue Conrad could not explain.
May you like
Agatha had planned almost everything around Elliot.
Yet when asked what she expected Conrad to do, she suddenly had nothing.
