Chapter 4
The desk drawer opened with a soft click.
Inside lay Lily’s blue box.
I had feared Bianca had taken it away. Relief came so sharply that I gripped the back of a chair. Daniel lifted the lid while Ella and Oliver leaned against me.
Lily’s wedding photograph was on top. Beneath it were birthday cards, the bracelet Ella had worn as a baby, and the folded recipe she had begged me to write out for her when she first learned to make bread.
Daniel picked up a small envelope with his name on it.
Bianca spoke before he opened it.
“Lily wrote private things. The children don’t need to hear them.”
Daniel looked at the envelope, then set it aside.
“Why was this desk key outside by the garage?” he asked.
“I took it out when I was checking the storage boxes,” Bianca said. “It must have fallen.”
“Why were you checking them?”
“I’m allowed to care for this house.”
Nora gently asked the children to wait with me in my room. Ella resisted until I promised I would bring her mother’s box to her before bed. Daniel agreed.
As we walked down the hall, Oliver whispered, “She said you stole Mommy’s letters.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know.”
Those two words nearly undid me.
In my room, I gave the children dry socks. Oliver sat against my side while Ella drew a picture of Lily’s greenhouse. She made the glass panes bright blue and filled every shelf with flowers.
Downstairs, voices rose and fell. I could not make out the words.
A little later, Nora knocked. Daniel stood behind her with Lily’s box in his arms.
“I checked everything,” he said. “As far as I can tell, it’s all here.”
Ella took the box from him and hugged it.
Daniel looked at me.
“I’ve asked Bianca to stay in the guest wing tonight.”
Oliver’s fingers tightened around mine.
“And tomorrow?” I asked.
“I’m going to listen to the children.”
He sounded frightened. That was the first honest thing I had heard from him all day.
Nora drove me to an urgent care clinic after the children fell asleep. Daniel stayed with them. The doctor treated my scrape and examined my shoulder. She told me to return if the pain worsened, then asked how I had been injured.
I told her the truth.
Back in Nora’s car, I stared at the discharge papers in my lap.
“I should have done this sooner,” I said. “Oliver tried to tell me about the playroom.”
“You’re telling us now.”
“I kept thinking Daniel would notice.”
Nora started the engine but did not pull away.
“Tomorrow I’ll ask the trustee to review the survey request. I also want to know whether Bianca has contacted anyone about the children’s property before.”
I turned toward her.
“You think she has?”
“I don’t know yet. The estate office sounded concerned enough to call Daniel.”
I spent the night at Nora’s insistence in the guest room. At dawn, Daniel called. Ella had woken asking for me. He said Bianca was still in the guest wing and the surveyor had been canceled.
I returned before breakfast.
At the front door, Ella ran into my arms. Oliver came behind her carrying two glasses of water.
“I poured these myself,” he said.
I took one, though my throat closed as I drank.
Daniel had set three chairs around the kitchen table. He asked the children whether they wanted me to stay while they talked. Both said yes.
Ella told him she had seen Bianca push me.
Daniel did not interrupt. He asked where she had stood and what she had seen. Ella answered, trembling, while I held her hand.
Oliver described Bianca locking the playroom door the week before. She had opened it after several minutes, but he had been scared because the room was dark and Ella was outside. Bianca had told him to stop complaining.
Daniel lowered his eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
“I did,” Oliver said. “At dinner. Bianca said I made it up.”
Daniel remembered. I saw it in his face.
He apologized to Oliver, then to Ella. He turned to me last.
“I should have listened.”
“You need to keep listening,” I said.
He nodded.
Bianca appeared in the doorway in a silk robe.
“Are you interrogating them without me?”
Daniel stood. “They told me what happened.”
“Children misunderstand what they see.”
“Ella saw you push Martha.”
Bianca looked at Ella. My granddaughter shrank toward me, and Daniel moved between them.
“I’ve asked Nora to come back,” he said. “You should call someone to represent you too. For now, I want you to stay away from the children.”
Bianca’s face flushed.
“This is my home.”
“The house is held for Ella and Oliver.”
There it was, the fact she had spent weeks trying to bury.
She stared at him. Then she turned and went upstairs.
That afternoon, Nora returned with news. The surveyor had forwarded the request he had received. It listed Bianca as the contact and proposed a new access road through Lily’s orchard. A developer had asked for it.
“No sale has happened,” Nora said. “The trustee would have to approve one.”
Daniel looked sick.
“I knew she wanted to clear the old greenhouse,” he said. “She never mentioned a road.”
While they spoke, I went to find the children. Ella was in the greenhouse, watering Lily’s herbs. Oliver crouched beside her, watching a snail climb a pot.
I sat on a bench and told them their father had listened that morning.
Ella kept her eyes on the watering can.
“Will he remember tomorrow?”
“I’ll remind him,” I said.
Oliver looked toward the house. “Bianca said people who cause trouble have to leave.”
“You didn’t cause trouble.”
He wiped his hands on his shorts.
Before I could say more, Ella pointed to the drive. A dark car was leaving through the gates.
Bianca sat in the back seat.
Daniel had asked her to stay away from the children, but he had not said she was leaving. I went inside and found him standing in the foyer with his phone.
“She’s gone to her sister’s,” he said.
“Did she tell you when she’ll be back?”
He shook his head.
Then his phone lit up with a message. He read it twice.
May you like
“What is it?” I asked.
“She says she took something of Lily’s,” he said. “She wants to talk to me alone before she returns it.”
