Chapter 7: What Fiona Came to Say
She arrived exactly on time.
Reeves brought her into the small sitting room off the main hall — not the formal study, not the dining room.
A room with two chairs and a window and no particular authority to it.
She sat down.
I sat across from her.
She looked like she hadn't slept.
The careful presentation that had always been part of Fiona — the hair, the posture, the way she entered a room — was still there, but it was held together more deliberately than usual.
Like something underneath it had shifted and she was working to keep the surface intact.
"Thank you for seeing me," she said.
"You said you had something to tell me."
"Yes." She looked at her hands.
"I need to tell you that I knew the engagement wasn't entirely — that my father had reasons for wanting it to happen.
I told myself it didn't matter because my feelings were real.
I told myself the two things could coexist."
"Could they?"
She looked up.
"No.
I know that now.
I think I knew it before, and I chose not to look at it."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you asked me last night if any of it was real." She held my gaze.
"And I gave you a coward's answer.
I said I cared about you.
That's true, but it's not the whole truth." She paused.
"The whole truth is that I loved you.
I do love you.
And I still stood in that ballroom and laughed at your father."
The fire in the small grate had burned low.
Neither of us moved to add to it.
"Why?" I asked.
"Why did you laugh?"
"Because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn't." Her voice was steady but thin.
"My mother's approval is — it's not something I've ever been able to live without.
I've been performing for her since I was six years old.
When she said what she said and the room laughed, I laughed because that's what I've always done.
I followed her lead.
I've been following her lead my entire life." She stopped.
"That's not an excuse.
I know it's not.
I'm just trying to tell you the truth."
I looked at her for a long moment.
"Your father used your name on a legal filing to try to take my father's company."
"I know." Her jaw tightened.
"I found out last night, after you left.
He told me it was a standard procedure.
I told him I would be speaking to my own attorney."
"You have your own attorney?"
"I do now." Something shifted in her expression — not quite hardness, but the beginning of a spine.
"I'm not going to let him use me as a legal instrument.
Whatever happens between you and me, that's separate from what he did."
"Fiona." I leaned forward slightly.
"Your father owes my family nine million dollars.
His company is about to face a very public legal claim.
Your mother is leaving voicemails calling my father an old man with a grudge.
Your family is in serious trouble."
"I know."
"And you came here to tell me you loved me."
"I came here to tell you the truth.
What you do with it is up to you."
I stood up and walked to the window.
The grounds of Henderson House stretched out in the grey morning light — old trees, a long gravel path, the iron gates at the far end still closed.
"I can't come back from last night," I said.
"Not because of what your parents did.
Because of what you did.
Because you saw my father's face and you laughed anyway."
She didn't argue.
"I know," she said quietly.
"I believe that you loved me.
I believe that you're telling me the truth right now.
And I believe that none of that changes what happened."
She stood.
She straightened her jacket.
She looked at me with an expression I hadn't seen on her before — not the polished Fiona, not the frightened Fiona.
Something rawer and more honest than either.
"I'm going to spend a long time thinking about that ballroom," she said.
"About what I did and why.
I think I need to do that." She picked up her bag.
"I hope you find someone who deserves you, Blake.
I mean that."
She walked to the door.
She stopped with her hand on the frame.
"Your father," she said, without turning around.
"The way he looked at you when you walked toward him.
I've never seen anyone look at another person like that." She paused.
"You're lucky."
Then she walked out.
I stood at the window for a long time after that.
Outside, the iron gates opened.
Her car moved slowly down the drive and disappeared between the oak trees.
I heard footsteps in the hall.
My father appeared in the doorway.
He didn't ask how it went.
He just looked at me.
"She's gone," I said.
He nodded.
"Are you all right?"
I thought about it honestly.
"I will be."
He came and stood beside me at the window.
"I owe you an apology," he said.
"For keeping all of this from you.
For thinking I could protect you from it indefinitely."
"You were trying to give me a normal life."
"I was trying to give you my version of a normal life.
That wasn't fair to you."
I looked at him — the old suit, the grandfather's tie, the hands that had packed my lunches before sunrise and helped with homework after midnight.
"Dad," I said.
"You gave me everything that mattered."
He put his hand on my shoulder.
May you like
The same way I had put mine on his the night before, in a ballroom full of people who thought he was nothing.
We stood there together until the morning light shifted and the grounds outside turned from grey to gold.
