Chapter 2
The anniversary dinner ended without dessert.
Relatives were sent home.
Tamsin remained in the sitting room with her own attorney once he arrived.
Orson did not question her himself.
His attorney, Elena Russo, advised him not to.
“You hit her.”
“She reached for my daughter’s medication after nearly putting her on the floor.”
“I know what happened.”
“Then why are we discussing me?”
“Because facts don’t stop existing when we dislike where they point.”
Orson said nothing.
Elena continued.
“You intervened physically. There were witnesses. If Tamsin wants to make an issue of that, she can.”
“Fine.”
“That isn’t permission to be reckless.”
Orson looked through the glass doors toward Mara sleeping in the adjoining room.
“I’m done being reckless around my daughter.”
Elena accepted that.
Then they began interviewing staff.
The first revelation was simple.
Tamsin had criticized Mara’s asthma for months.
She called the inhaler a “crutch.”
She complained that staff treated Mara as fragile.
She once told a nanny not to bring the pouch into the garden because “fresh air would cure half of this nonsense.”
The nanny ignored her.
Another employee remembered Tamsin becoming visibly angry when Mara’s pediatric respiratory specialist visited the estate.
“Did she explain why?” Orson asked.
“No.”
“Did she know the doctor?”
“I don’t think so.”
Then the employee reconsidered.
“Actually… she asked whether he still worked at North Shore Pediatric Respiratory.”
Orson looked up.
“How would she know where he worked?”
The employee did not know.
Neither did Orson.
Mara had only begun seeing that clinic eighteen months earlier.
Orson had never discussed the location with Tamsin.
The next morning, Elena obtained permission from Mara’s doctors to review only records relevant to household care.
Nothing explained Tamsin.
But Rachel called Orson privately.
“I think you should talk to your aunt Celeste.”
“About what?”
A pause.
“About Luca.”
Orson knew the name.
Everyone in the Bellori family did.
Luca Bellori had been Tamsin’s son.
He died thirteen years earlier at seven years old.
Orson remembered the funeral.
Small white coffin.
Tamsin refusing to leave the cemetery.
The family had been told Luca suffered an unexpected respiratory collapse during a viral illness.
Tragic.
Sudden.
Unavoidable.
May you like
Orson had never questioned it.
Until now.
