Chapter 12
The guardianship compact did not survive.
I gathered every living person named in it.
Five originally.
Marina had already forced two to withdraw years earlier.
Three remained.
Nadine.
Ashton.
Thomas Vale.
Thomas was seventy-three.
He admitted he had forgotten the compact existed.
I believed him.
Then he read his own signature and looked ashamed.
“We thought we were protecting continuity.”
“From what?”
He thought.
“From grief.”
Interesting.
They feared if Marina died, I might become unstable.
Then she did die.
I became colder.
More isolated.
Yet they never activated the council.
Why?
Thomas answered:
“You frightened us.”
I almost laughed.
So the plan designed to protect Vale from my instability was abandoned because my grief made me intimidating enough that nobody dared use it.
Absurd.
Useful lesson.
Secret structures rarely operate according to the noble logic used to justify creating them.
They become tools waiting for opportunity.
I destroyed the authority behind the compact.
Not the pages.
The pages stayed in the archive.
History.
Not permission.
No future family council could claim it as precedent.
If anything happened to me, Elsie would not automatically become anyone’s project.
Trusted adults would protect her.
But no secret throne around a child.
No branch control.
No preassigned husband someday.
No inheritance of command because her surname demanded it.
Thomas objected mildly.
“Then what happens to Vale?”
I answered:
“Adults decide when they’re adults.”
He frowned.
Radical concept.
Elsie was four.
May you like
Her responsibility was crayons.
I intended to keep it that way.
