Chapter 5 - THE WORDS A FRIGHTENED BOY NEVER FORGOT
“Did I kill my father?”
Nicholas asked the question before his mother had even finished coming downstairs.
It was Sunday morning.
Teresa Romano stood at the bottom of the staircase, wearing the same faded brown coat she'd arrived in two nights earlier.
Her suitcase rested beside her.
I'd been carrying fresh towels toward the guest rooms when I heard his voice.
She looked at the hospital note in his hand.
And immediately began crying.
“Nicky, please don't do this to yourself.”
“Just answer me.”
“You were fourteen.”
“That's not an answer.”
She approached him cautiously.
“Your father was angry that night.”
“I know.”
“He grabbed you.”
Nicholas went completely still.
Teresa looked toward the scar on his temple.
“You told him you wouldn't leave with him. He said sons didn't refuse their fathers. Then he took hold of your wrist.”
Nicholas looked down at his left arm.
There was a pale mark just above his wrist.
I'd seen it countless times while serving dinner.
I'd assumed it was an old injury from his dangerous life.
“That's where this came from?”
His mother nodded.
“You were trying to pull away.”
Nicholas closed his eyes.
For a moment, he seemed to be listening to something nobody else could hear.
“The clock,” he whispered.
Teresa frowned.
“What?”
“There was a grandfather clock near the staircase.”
“Yes.”
“I remember hearing it strike.”
He opened his eyes.
“And I remember someone shouting.”
Teresa gripped the banister.
Nicholas moved closer.
“Did I push him?”
She looked at him for a long time.
“You were trying to protect yourself.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
“I know.”
The pain in her face was terrible.
“Nicky, I won't tell you something I can't be certain of. Everything happened so quickly.”
Nicholas stepped backward.
“Then you don't know whether I killed him.”
“I know you weren't trying to hurt him.”
He stared at her.
For twenty years, he'd blamed her.
Now he was beginning to believe he'd been the reason she disappeared.
Teresa bent to pick up her suitcase.
“I shouldn't have come.”
Nicholas caught the handle.
“Don't.”
“Your aunt was right about one thing. Remembering that night has hurt you.”
“My aunt had twenty years to tell me the truth.”
He gently took the suitcase from her.
“You're not leaving because I'm asking questions.”
Teresa touched his cheek.
“You sound so much like the little boy I remember.”
Nicholas looked down.
“I don't know how to be that boy anymore.”
“You don't have to be.”
Her voice softened.
“I want to know the man you became.”
I turned away before they could see my tears.
Later that morning, Nicholas asked me to help sort through the birthday cards from Celia's office.
There were thirty-seven envelopes.
Some contained photographs.
Others held simple handwritten letters.
One included a pressed autumn leaf.
Another contained a small drawing of a blue scarf.
On Nicholas's twenty-first birthday, Teresa had written:
I don't know whether you're happy or angry or lonely. I hope somebody makes you your favorite chocolate cake today. I still remember how you used to steal the frosting.
Nicholas read the letter twice.
Then he sat silently for several minutes.
“Emma, how old were you when your father died?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Was your mother alone afterward?”
“Mostly. I visit whenever I can.”
He looked at the letters.
“Did she ever have to ask whether you still loved her?”
“No.”
Nicholas nodded.
“My mother asked that question in almost every letter.”
He folded the page carefully.
“She thought I didn't want her.”
I sat across from him.
“She kept writing anyway.”
He looked toward the window.
“That's what I can't understand. Why would Celia keep these instead of destroying them?”
“Maybe she couldn't.”
“Why not?”
“Maybe keeping them made her feel like she still had a choice.”
Nicholas considered that.
“Or maybe she needed proof she was keeping my mother away.”
Both possibilities frightened me.
That afternoon, I found Celia standing outside the library.
She was looking through the open doorway at the birthday cards.
“You're enjoying this, aren't you?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“No, ma'am.”
“A housekeeper who suddenly has the master's attention.”
Her words made my face burn.
“This isn't about me.”
Celia stepped closer.
“You think Nicholas is a good man because he speaks gently to you. You don't know what he's capable of.”
“I know what I saw when his mother arrived.”
“You saw one moment.”
“I saw you hurt an elderly woman.”
Celia's expression tightened.
“I gave twenty years of my life to raising that boy.”
“That doesn't mean you had the right to take his mother away.”
For a moment, she seemed ready to strike me.
Instead, her shoulders dropped.
“Anthony wanted Nicholas to become just like him.”
Her voice was unexpectedly quiet.
“I watched my brother teach that child to hide fear because fear was weakness. I promised myself Nicholas would never grow into that kind of man.”
“Then why teach him to hate his mother?”
Celia looked toward the library.
“Because I was afraid that if she came back, everything I'd done would come apart.”
She seemed startled by her own words.
Then she straightened.
“You're dismissed from household duties, Emma. Collect your things.”
I felt cold all over.
“My position?”
“Terminated.”
I thought about my mother's mortgage.
About the bills waiting on her kitchen table.
For one second, I almost apologized.
Then I remembered Teresa being pushed toward the dining-room doors.
“No,” I said quietly.
Celia blinked.
“What?”
“I won't apologize for helping her.”
Nicholas appeared behind us.
“Emma's employment isn't yours to terminate.”
Celia spun around.
“Nicholas, this girl is deliberately turning you against me.”
“No. Your decisions are doing that.”
He took the dismissal notice from her hand.
Then he looked at me.
“Emma, your position and wages remain unchanged. You don't have to work in this house while this is being investigated if you don't feel comfortable.”
I nodded, struggling to speak.
Celia stared at us.
“Everyone in this house is choosing sides.”
Nicholas answered quietly.
“You made them choose when you punished people for telling the truth.”
That evening, Nicholas received a message from the company's financial controller.
Celia had requested an emergency board meeting for Monday morning.
The stated purpose was to discuss Nicholas's fitness to continue directing Romano Holdings.
Nicholas gave a short, bitter laugh.
“She's trying to remove me.”
I looked at him.
“Can she?”
“With enough votes, she can suspend my authority over the company accounts.”
He glanced toward his mother's room.
“And she's spent twenty years building those votes.”
Before he could say more, Daniel entered the library.
He'd been summoned to provide the remaining security records.
He wasn't wearing his usual earpiece.
Without it, he looked smaller.
“I found the old hospital file in the security archive,” Daniel said.
He handed Nicholas a folder.
Inside was the original medication record from St. Catherine's.
Nicholas had been given treatment for his head injury before the supposed witness statement was signed.
A nurse's note described him as confused and unable to provide a reliable account.
Celia had known.
Daniel had known.
The forged statement was never meant to record what Nicholas had seen.
It was meant to make his mother believe the police had her son's testimony against her.
Nicholas slowly closed the folder.
“I want this reviewed by someone outside the family.”
Daniel nodded.
“I'll cooperate.”
But he looked frightened again.
“There's one more thing.”
He glanced at Teresa, who had just entered the library.
“Your aunt requested a copy of the statement yesterday.”
Nicholas frowned.
“Why?”
Daniel swallowed.
“She's submitted it as new evidence in your father's death.”
Teresa gripped the doorway.
Nicholas stared at him.
“You mean to the police?”
Daniel nodded.
“She asked them to reopen the investigation.”
Nicholas rushed toward his mother.
May you like
But before he reached her, she whispered something that made him stop.
“Nicky, if they ask me who made your father fall, I don't know whether I can protect you again.”
