Chapter 4
Margaret found me afterward.
Tobin had fallen asleep in the upstairs sitting room.
Good.
Sleep first.
Questions tomorrow.
She carried one of the loose coins.
“Recognize this?”
Ordinary quarter.
I frowned.
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
Typical Margaret.
Then she said:
“The coin doesn’t matter.”
I stared at her.
She smiled.
“Wanted to see if you were still listening.”
Infuriating old woman.
Then:
“Jessamine used a phrase tonight.”
Which?
“People like him should be grateful someone chose them.”
My stomach tightened.
“She said that?”
“To me last month.”
Interesting.
Context.
Margaret had asked whether Jessamine was excited to become Tobin’s mother.
Jessamine answered:
“He already has more than most children like him. He should be grateful.”
Margaret disliked it.
But assumed insecurity.
Did not tell me.
Why?
Because people near powerful men constantly decide which discomfort is worth bringing them.
Another pattern.
“What do you know about Jessamine’s family?”
I asked.
“Less than she wants people to think.”
That was not unusual.
Her parents, Henry and Clarice Vane, were old money.
At least socially.
Both dead now.
One brother overseas.
No major secrets I knew.
Margaret looked at me.
“Ask how old she was when they became her parents.”
I stopped.
“What?”
Margaret had known Clarice Vane decades earlier.
Not well.
Enough.
Clarice once mentioned adopting a little girl from a children’s home in Connecticut.
Six years old.
Different first name.
Margaret never connected the child with Jessamine until years later.
Why?
Because the Vanes never spoke about adoption publicly.
Not even inside elite circles where lineage was treated like currency.
“Jessamine was adopted?”
Margaret nodded.
I leaned back.
Everything rearranged.
Not absolved.
Rearranged.
Jessamine had stood in my garden telling an adopted child love did not make him family—
while hiding that she herself had entered her family the same way.
“Does she know you know?”
“No.”
“Why tell me now?”
Margaret looked upstairs.
“Because she just did to Tobin what people did to her with prettier language.”
There.
I did not confront Jessamine immediately.
I went upstairs.
Tobin was awake.
He sat beneath a blanket holding his shoes.
“Why shoes?”
“Ready.”
“For what?”
His eyes lowered.
“If I gotta go.”
I sat beside him.
“No.”
“Jessamine said money.”
“No.”
“Guests want.”
“I don’t care.”
He looked at me carefully.
“Can dads change mind?”
The question destroyed every other priority.
May you like
I took his shoes from his hands.
“Not this dad.”
