Chapter 9
When I returned before breakfast, Milo was awake.
Waiting.
He saw me enter and ran.
No hesitation.
I picked him up.
“You came back.”
“Yes.”
“Van gone?”
“Yes.”
“Nora and Tess stay?”
“Yes.”
“All forever?”
That question was harder.
“Stay with me as long as you should and want to.”
He frowned because five-year-olds hate philosophical answers.
“You not send?”
“No.”
Better.
Nora appeared next.
Then Tess.
Three bodies clinging to me.
Miranda watched from the hallway under guard.
The kids saw her.
Tess reached toward her.
That hurt.
Stepmother.
Betrayer.
Still someone who braided her hair.
Children do not organize love according to adult guilt.
I set Tess down.
She took one step toward Miranda.
Then stopped.
Looked at me.
I said nothing.
Her choice.
She went back to me instead.
Miranda started crying.
I did not use the moment against her.
Later, I met Miranda alone.
No Gavin.
No Vincent.
“What did ‘remember your new names’ mean?”
She looked destroyed.
The plan required them to practice because staff at St. Catherine’s were supposed to call them Vale immediately.
Miranda had told them it was a game.
Milo kept forgetting.
So she tightened the strap and repeated the names until he could answer.
My hands clenched.
“Did they ask for me?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
Her eyes filled.
“That you arranged it.”
There.
That was the wound.
Not the van.
Not the fake names.
She used me as the author of their abandonment.
“Why?”
“Because if they believed you wanted it, they’d stop fighting.”
I turned away.
Control always seeks the shortest path through love.
She whispered:
“I’m sorry.”
“Not enough.”
“I know.”
Good.
Then she told me something I did not know.
Gavin planned to replace Miranda after the children disappeared.
I turned.
“What?”
Vincent had promised Gavin that once I stepped down, Miranda’s usefulness ended.
The marriage would be pressured apart.
Gavin knew.
Miranda did not.
May you like
She had betrayed my children to secure her place in my family.
The conspirators planned to remove her from it anyway.
