Chapter 5: What Lily Asked in the Dark
Lily's room was at the end of the hall, past the framed photographs and the small table with the nightlight that had been there since she was three.
The door was half open.
Darius pushed it gently and stepped inside.
She was sitting up in bed with her knees pulled to her chest, still in the purple princess dress.
Nora had found a soft scarf somewhere and wrapped it loosely around Lily's head, the way you'd tuck a child in against the cold.
Lily looked at him when he came in and didn't say anything right away.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
The mattress dipped.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"Does it hurt?" he asked finally.
She shook her head.
Then reconsidered.
"A little.
Where she pressed too hard."
Darius nodded.
He reached out and very gently adjusted the scarf so it sat more comfortably above her ear.
"I'm sorry I didn't get there sooner," he said.
Lily looked at her hands in her lap.
"She said my hair was wild." A pause.
"Is it?"
"No."
"She said Mommy let me run wild.
That Mommy didn't—" She stopped.
Her throat worked.
"She said Mommy didn't care about how I looked."
"Lily." He waited until she looked at him.
"Your mother spent forty-five minutes every single morning doing your hair.
Do you remember that?"
Her chin trembled.
She nodded.
"She had a whole basket of things.
The detangler spray.
The little clips with the daisies.
She used to sing while she did it, even when you wiggled." He paused.
"She cared about everything.
Especially you."
Lily was quiet for a long moment.
Outside, a door closed somewhere in the house — distant, final.
"Is Renata going away?" she asked.
"Yes."
"For good?"
"Yes."
She absorbed this.
"Are you sad?"
The question surprised him.
He thought about giving her the easy answer, the parental answer, the one that protected her from the complicated truth.
Instead he said, "I'm sad that I didn't see it sooner.
That I let someone into our house who hurt you." He paused.
"That part I'm sad about."
Lily looked at him very seriously.
"Grandma Nora says you were lonely."
"Grandma Nora talks too much," he said.
A small, brief, real smile crossed Lily's face.
It lasted only a second, but it was there.
Then she said, quietly, "Daddy.
Do you think Mommy can still see my hair?
Even now?"
The question landed in the center of his chest and stayed there.
"I think," he said carefully, "that your mother sees everything important.
And I think she knows that what's on the outside of your head doesn't have anything to do with who you are."
Lily thought about this.
"She used to say beauty is what you do, not what you look like."
"She was right."
"She was right about most things."
"She was."
Lily shifted and leaned very slightly against his arm.
He put his arm around her, carefully, the way you hold something you are afraid of breaking and more afraid of losing.
They sat like that for a while.
He didn't know how long.
Long enough that Lily's breathing slowed and deepened, and the hand she'd had pressed to her knee uncurled and went still.
He didn't move until he was certain she was asleep.
When he finally stood and turned toward the door, Nora was in the hallway, leaning against the wall with her arms folded.
She'd been there long enough to have heard most of it.
She didn't say anything.
He pulled Lily's door to, leaving it open just an inch the way she liked.
"The housekeeper says Renata left," Nora said.
"Good."
"She took more than just her clothes."
Darius looked at her.
"The safe in the east wing study," Nora said.
May you like
"It's open.
And empty."
