“I could bring her downstairs in the chair.”
“You could bring fresh towels.”
Elena lowered her eyes.
She needed the job. Her adoptive father’s final illness had left debts that seemed to reproduce whenever she paid one off. The staff room beneath the eastern staircase was small, but it was warm. The wages arrived on time.
Still, as she lifted the dustpan, she heard herself ask, “Does Mr. Anderson know she wants to come?”
Vanessa rose.
Up close, she smelled of roses and something sharp.
“Maxwell has spent his entire life managing his mother’s delusions. Today, he deserves one pleasant memory.”
She took the pearl earrings from the box.
Then she shut the door.
Elena remained in the corridor, holding broken glass.
At the far end, Julian Anderson was speaking quietly to Vanessa’s mother, Caroline.
His charcoal suit was immaculate, his silver pocket square folded into three precise points. Unlike his nephew, Julian never hurried. People hurried for him.
Caroline stood with both hands around a champagne glass she had not touched.
“The papers must be signed before they leave,” Julian said.
“And Eleanor?”
“Will sleep.”
He noticed Elena.
His smile arrived before his eyes changed.
“Careful with that glass, Miss Marlowe.”
Eleanor’s bedroom smelled of lavender water and untouched food.
A silver tea tray stood beside her bed. Next to it lay two tablets in a porcelain dish.
“Did they forget?” she asked.
Elena set the dustpan outside.
“No, ma’am.”
An unkind lie would have been easier to endure than the kindness in that one. Eleanor looked down at her shawl.
“I heard the music.”
“The ceremony hasn’t started.”
“They played that piece when Arthur married me.”
Arthur Anderson had been dead for twenty-six years. His portrait hung above the main staircase: handsome, broad-shouldered, one hand resting on the back of a chair as if the house itself needed steadying.
People spoke of him carefully.
A tragic accident. A terrible storm. A fire at the lakeside lodge.
Afterward, Eleanor had never recovered.
That was the version Elena had heard.
Eleanor glanced at the tea.
“Would you take that away?”
“Is it cold?”
“It makes the room go away.”
Elena looked at her.
For months, she had noticed the same pattern. Eleanor would be clear and alert before breakfast, confused after tea, almost unreachable by afternoon. Dr. Pierce called it the progression of her condition.
Today, with the wedding occupying the household, the tray had arrived late.
Today, Eleanor’s eyes were steady.
“Have you told Maxwell?”
“My letters go through Julian.”
“Then tell him yourself.”
A sad little smile touched Eleanor’s mouth.
“They tell him I’ve forgotten who he is.”
Elena felt something cold settle beneath her ribs.
