Chapter 2
By six, Grant had stopped pretending he might sleep.
Caleb was tucked beneath his blue blanket in the hotel crib. Audrey sat on the edge of the bed, watching the gray December light gather at the window. Her eyes looked swollen, but her voice was steady when she asked, “Are you going back?”
“I’m meeting the movers.”
“And your mother?”
“I don’t know what she’ll do.”
Audrey looked down at her hands. “Then don’t go alone.”
Grant’s first instinct was to tell her to stay with Caleb. The words rose, familiar and protective—and, suddenly, too close to the way other people had decided what was best for her.
“I’ll take you both to Tessa’s,” he said. “If you want to come.”
Audrey considered him, then nodded. “I want to see what she does when she can’t pretend last night didn’t happen.”
The house stood pale and still when they arrived. In daylight, the holiday decorations seemed less magical than labor-intensive: garlands looped over the porch rail, lanterns lining the stone path, a wreath nearly as wide as the front door. One of the movers had already opened the first truck. A metal rack of folded table linens leaned against its side.
Grant felt his jaw tighten. Those linens hadn’t been there when he left for Chicago.
The movers carried boxes from the guest wing, where Lenora had kept her things and the equipment she used for parties. Cases of glassware. Stacked silver trays. A pair of tall, brass stands wrapped in moving blankets. The careful labels on the boxes—DINING, BAR, WINTER—made the guest rooms look less like rooms than storage for a life that had crowded his own.
Audrey stayed near the porch with Caleb in his carrier. Grant could see her through the doorway while he spoke to the crew chief.
“Only what’s hers,” Grant said. “Nothing from the family rooms.”
The man gave a brief nod. “We’ve got it.”
The crunch of tires on gravel cut through the rumble of the truck. Lenora’s dark sedan stopped behind it, blocking the drive.
She came out wearing a camel coat over yesterday’s party dress. Her hair was immaculate. Her gaze swept over the truck, the boxes, and finally Grant.
“What is this?”
“Your things are being moved to your condo.”
“Put them back.”
The crew chief glanced at Grant. Grant didn’t move.
Lenora stepped toward the open truck. “You can’t take anything out of this house.”
“I can.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Those are my things.”
“Then they’ll be delivered to your condo.”
She looked past him toward the porch. Audrey stood with the carrier’s handle in one hand, her other arm curled around herself. Lenora’s expression changed—not softened, exactly, but rearranged into the polished concern she wore when other people were watching.
“You brought the baby into this?” she said.
Grant’s voice came out low. “Don’t.”
“I’m asking why you’ve made a family disagreement into a spectacle.”
“You had a party in my house without telling me. Then you kept my wife upstairs.”
Lenora’s eyes flicked to the movers. One man lowered a box onto the truck bed, suddenly fascinated by the tape across its top.
“Not here,” she said.
“You were perfectly comfortable doing it here last night.”
“I was trying to keep the evening from being ruined.”
“By Caleb crying?”
“By a baby behaving like a baby, yes.” Her mouth tightened. “It was a formal event, Grant. People had paid to be there.”
The words seemed to land between them with a weight neither could politely lift. Grant glanced at the brass stands and the glassware cases. Lenora’s parties had always been grand, but he’d thought of them as family gatherings with a guest list. He hadn’t known strangers were paying to stand in his home.
“How many people paid?” he asked.
“You don’t understand what you’re looking at.”
“Then explain it.”
Lenora looked toward the porch again. Audrey hadn’t moved. Caleb made a small, sleepy sound from beneath the blanket, and Audrey bent to check him. The tenderness in that simple motion sharpened something in Grant: Lenora had turned the baby’s needs into an inconvenience, and he had once helped her call that normal.
Lenora reached for the clipboard resting on the movers’ dolly. “Give me that.”
A young woman near the open doorway moved first. “It’s mine,” she said, lifting the clipboard out of reach.
Lenora’s eyes settled on her. “Tessa. Don’t make this harder.”
Tessa Mills had worked for Lenora for years, setting tables and greeting guests with a calm smile while Lenora commanded the room. At fifty-eight, she was small and neat, with silver threaded through her dark hair. Now she looked as if she wished the porch boards would open beneath her shoes.
Grant recognized the clipboard’s neat columns. Names, perhaps, or inventory. Lenora had been reaching for it as if it were something she couldn’t afford to let him see.
“Put it down, Tessa,” Lenora said.
Tessa held it against her chest. “I’m keeping track of what goes.”
“Since when?”
“Since this morning.”
Lenora’s stare went cold. “You work for me.”
Tessa didn’t answer.
For a moment, the only sounds were the truck’s diesel engine and a box scraping against wood. Grant stepped toward the front hall. “Mom. The deed is in my name.”
Lenora gave a sharp laugh. “Your name is on paperwork. That doesn’t make this house yours.”
“It does.”
“You signed what your father put in front of you three years ago. You don’t even know what it meant.”
“I know exactly what it meant.”
Grant went inside and returned with the document folder he’d brought from the hotel. He held it out, open to the deed. His name sat in black type beneath the property description, the paper crisp against his fingers.
Lenora stared at it.
For the first time since he’d come home, she seemed to lose her place in the room. Her gaze moved from the deed to the trucks and back to Grant, searching for the rule that would let her make the whole scene stop.
“You said it was for safekeeping,” she murmured.
“I said I would keep the paperwork safe.”
“You were supposed to hold the house for the family.”
“I am family.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. Behind her, two movers carried another case from the guest wing. Lenora turned toward them.
“Stop loading.”
The men paused.
Grant lowered the deed. “Keep going.”
“You are not throwing your mother out.”
“I’m moving your things to a place that belongs to you.”
“You owe me more than this.” The words came out quieter than her command had, but they cut deeper. “After everything I did for this family.”
Grant felt the old pull to soften it, to promise a conversation later, to turn the hurt into a debt he could pay. On the porch, Audrey watched him without asking him to choose. He thought of how often he’d made her wait while he protected Lenora from consequences.
“No,” he said. “Not this.”
Lenora’s face flushed. She turned away from the deed and faced Tessa. “Give me the guest list.”
Tessa’s fingers tightened around the clipboard. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know exactly what I mean. The list from last night.”
“It’s with the event things.”
“Then bring it here.”
Lenora strode toward the dolly. Tessa shifted to block her, too late to stop Lenora’s hand from closing around the clipboard’s edge. Paper rustled. Tessa’s gaze darted to Grant, then dropped.
As Lenora tugged, Tessa’s free hand slipped beneath her cardigan. Something thin disappeared into the pocket.
A second copy, Grant realized—or something close enough that Lenora couldn’t be allowed to find it.
Lenora wrenched the clipboard away.
Tessa stepped back, empty-handed now, her face carefully blank.
Grant looked from her to the papers in Lenora’s grasp. Whatever the list contained, Tessa had decided it mattered more than keeping her job.
May you like
Lenora held it against her coat and stared at Grant. “You have no idea what you’ve just done.”
Behind her, Tessa’s pocket rustled as the hidden pages folded against her hip.
