Chapter 3 - The Three-Year Secret
Chloe’s eyelashes fluttered against her bruised, dirty skin, opening slowly, cautiously, as if expecting the gentle voice to be a cruel trick.
She studied him through the tangled brown curtain of her hair. She saw the charcoal-gray polo shirt, the tired lines etched around his eyes, the dark stubble on his jaw. But more than that, she saw the sheer, unadulterated agony in his gaze—an expression she had never seen on the faces of the people who inhabited the big house. There was no disgust in his eyes. There was no cold, aristocratic contempt for her filthy clothes or the garbage pizza clutched in her fists. There was only a profound, bleeding love that reached across the shadows.
A tiny, shuddering breath escaped her throat. Her fingers, which had been clutching the cold pizza against her sternum, loosened fractionally.
Richard did not reach for the food. He did not tell her to throw it away. He simply remained kneeling, his hands resting open on his knees, his breath slow and rhythmic, anchoring her to the floorboards.
“Where is Mommy, Chloe?” Richard asked softly, his heart pounding an erratic, terrified rhythm against his ribs. “Why aren't you at home with Mommy?”
Chloe didn't answer immediately.
Her small, bird-like head turned slowly, her wide hazel eyes darting past Richard’s shoulder, looking toward the center of the illuminated ballroom.
Thirty yards away, seated at Table One beneath the grand central chandelier, sat Beatrice Sterling.
The matriarch was resplendent. At seventy years old, Beatrice was an image of unyielding, imperial society power. Her short white hair was coiffed with mathematical precision, framing an aristocratic face untouched by manual labor, adorned with diamond chandelier earrings and a heavy platinum collar. She wore an expensive evening gown of glittering silver sequins that caught the light like fish scales, a crystal flute of vintage Dom Pérignon balanced effortlessly between her manicured, ruby-tipped fingers. She was holding court with the president of the civic board, throwing her head back in cultivated, melodic laughter that signaled her absolute dominion over Chicago high society.
Chloe looked at the shimmering silver woman, and her small body went rigid with ancient, visceral dread.
She turned her face back to Richard, her chin dropping toward her chest, her gaze locking onto the frayed hems of her beige trousers. When she spoke, her voice was barely louder than the hum of the air vents, carrying the terrifying cadence of a child confessing a crime she had been threatened never to utter.
“Grandma kicked Mommy out,” Chloe whispered.
The marble floor beneath Richard’s knees seemed to drop into an infinite, freezing abyss.
“What did you say?” Richard choked out, his vocal cords straining against the suffocating pressure in his chest.
May you like
Chloe wiped her nose with the dirty sleeve of her oversized T-shirt, her small voice trembling with the fragile courage of someone who had nothing left to lose.
“Grandma kicked Mommy out,” she repeated, her words falling like lead stones onto the marble. “Three years ago. Right after you got on the big airplane to Germany.”
