Chapter 5: What George Had Kept Quiet
Caleb stood in the kitchen doorway and watched his father feed a baby he had never met.
George had found the formula in the back of the pantry — left over from when Caleb's sister had visited with her newborn the previous Christmas.
He had warmed it without being asked, tested it on his wrist the old way, and was now sitting at the kitchen island with the smallest infant propped against his forearm, the bottle held at exactly the right angle.
Olivia sat across from him with the other two, one on each knee, both eating.
Her eyes were dry but her hands were shaking.
"You're good at that," she said to George.
"Four children of my own," he said.
"You don't forget."
Caleb came in and closed the door behind him.
Olivia looked up.
"Is everything all right?"
"It will be." He pulled out a stool and sat down.
"I need to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me even if you think the answer will cause trouble."
"Everything I've said tonight has caused trouble."
"I know.
I'm asking anyway." He folded his hands on the counter.
"Did Diana ever speak to you before March?
Before the apartment?"
Olivia was quiet for a moment.
"She spoke to me the first week I started," she said.
"She told me the rules.
What to clean, what not to touch, which rooms were off-limits." A pause.
"She told me not to speak to you directly unless you spoke first.
She said you preferred it that way."
Caleb said nothing.
"I assumed it was true," Olivia said.
"You were always very — you were busy.
You never seemed to want conversation."
"I didn't know that rule existed."
Olivia looked at him steadily.
"There were others."
"Tell me."
"She told me not to be in the main rooms when you were home.
To use the service entrance, not the front door.
To finish before you returned from the office." She shifted the baby on her knee.
"I thought it was standard for a household like this."
George set the empty bottle on the counter.
He lifted the baby to his shoulder and began to pat its back with the slow certainty of long practice.
"It wasn't standard," Caleb said.
"No," George said quietly.
"It wasn't."
Caleb looked at his father.
"You knew something was wrong."
"I suspected." George didn't look up from the baby.
"Last Christmas, when I stayed for the week.
I noticed she was always gone before you came home.
I mentioned it to you."
"You said the apartment felt managed."
"You said Diana liked things a certain way."
"I did say that."
"Yes." George patted the baby's back.
"You did."
Olivia watched the two men.
She had the careful stillness of someone who had learned to take up as little space as possible.
"There's something else," she said.
Both men looked at her.
"In April.
About a month after I lost the apartment." She adjusted her grip on the baby.
"A woman came to find me at the shelter.
She said she was from a domestic staffing agency.
She said she had a new position for me — live-in, good salary, outside the city."
"Did you take it?" Caleb asked.
"She told me the condition." Olivia's voice was even.
"I had to sign a document saying I had never worked for the Hart family.
That I had no knowledge of the Hart household.
That I would not contact anyone connected to the Hart name."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"I didn't sign it," Olivia said.
"I didn't understand why it existed.
But I was frightened enough that I kept quiet."
Caleb stood up from the stool.
"Do you still have the document?"
"I kept a photograph of it.
On my phone." She hesitated.
"I thought — I didn't know why, but I thought I might need it someday."
"I need to see it."
She handed him her phone.
He looked at the image for a long time.
The document was on agency letterhead.
But at the bottom, in the signature block for the commissioning party, was a name he recognized.
May you like
Not Diana's name.
His business partner's.
