Chapter 8
Elise had always hated Anna.
Not openly.
Family women learn subtler weapons.
Comments.
Comparisons.
Little jokes about who Father loved most.
Anna ignored most of them.
That irritated Elise more.
After Anna died, Elise became Caleb’s closest ally because resentment finally had someone willing to listen.
“She controlled Milo’s future from the grave,” Elise told me.
I stared.
“She was his mother.”
“She was your daughter.”
There.
Same competition again.
Everyone measuring love like territory.
Elise continued.
“She gave him your name. Your house. Your people.”
“She gave her son what she believed would keep him stable.”
“She gave Caleb leftovers.”
Caleb flinched.
Interesting.
Maybe that was Elise’s story more than his.
I turned to him.
“Do you believe that?”
Long pause.
“Sometimes.”
Good.
Not total.
“Did Anna love you?”
He looked at the floor.
“Yes.”
“Did she trust you?”
Another pause.
“At first.”
There.
History.
Caleb had been impulsive with money.
Aggressive in family arguments.
Nothing monstrous.
Enough that Anna worried.
Toward the end of her illness, she trusted me more with structure.
Caleb experienced that as betrayal.
Instead of becoming steadier, he resented the person she chose.
Me.
The saddle was not born last week.
It began when a dying woman made arrangements based on the men she believed we already were.
I looked at Caleb.
“You’ve spent two years trying to prove Anna misjudged you.”
His eyes lifted.
“Yes.”
“And today you endangered her son to do it.”
That destroyed him.
He sat down hard.
Good.
Not because pain repairs anything.
Because contradiction needs to become impossible to avoid.
May you like
Elise looked away.
For the first time, she had nothing cruel to add.
