Chapter 2
I cleared the ballroom.
Family protested.
I ignored them.
This was no longer a memorial.
It was an excavation.
Father needed food first.
Water.
A doctor.
Tilda insisted he had eaten recently, but I wanted someone independent examining him.
Dr. Hale arrived within twenty minutes.
Dehydrated.
Weak.
Muscle loss from too little movement.
No major untreated illness.
No signs anyone had physically brutalized him.
That distinction mattered.
Imprisonment did not need bruises to remain imprisonment.
I waited until Father was settled in the library.
Then I turned to Tilda.
“Where did you find him?”
“The west garden house.”
I frowned.
That building had been closed for renovations nearly a year.
“Which room?”
“Upstairs.”
“Locked?”
“Yes.”
“From outside?”
“Yes.”
My father spoke behind us.
“Most days.”
Calista closed her eyes.
I looked at her.
“How long?”
No answer.
Father gave it.
“Six months.”
Exactly as long as I had believed him dead.
My chest tightened.
“How did this start?”
Father looked toward Calista.
She did not speak.
So he did.
He had gone to the west garden house alone six months earlier because Calista asked to meet him privately.
Why?
She told him she wanted his blessing before our engagement became public.
He went.
They argued.
Not about me initially.
About Evelyn.
Father recognized the surname.
Arden.
Calista had used her father’s surname growing up.
Her mother’s maiden name had never mattered to me.
It mattered to him.
Evelyn Arden had worked at Wynthrop House thirty-five years earlier.
Twenty years old.
Poor.
Bright.
Trusted by my mother.
Then accused of stealing a diamond necklace belonging to my grandmother.
The necklace was found hidden among Evelyn’s belongings.
She was dismissed.
Her reputation destroyed.
No respectable household hired her afterward.
She left the city pregnant with Calista.
I looked at Father.
“Pregnant by who?”
Calista stared at him too.
Interesting.
Even she did not know everything.
Father swallowed.
“Not me.”
Then:
“My younger brother.”
Silence.
Uncle Tobias.
Dead twenty-seven years.
Charming.
Loved.
Remembered at every Christmas.
Father whispered:
“Tobias stole the necklace.”
Calista stopped breathing.
“And I knew.”
There.
A dead maid.
A dead uncle.
A lie my father had carried thirty-five years.
May you like
Calista had come for an answer.
She received something worse.
