Chapter 4
I searched the kitchen myself.
Not because I expected evidence.
Because Sienna kept pointing.
“Mommy’s food.”
She led me to a lower storage cabinet behind stacks of folded towels.
Inside were crackers.
Two protein bars.
Three apples.
A bottle of prenatal vitamins.
Hidden.
I looked at Maren.
“Why are these here?”
She looked ashamed.
I hated that.
“Because Agatha started checking what I took upstairs.”
I felt my hands curl.
“Why?”
“She said food belongs to the family before it belongs to guests.”
“Guests?”
Maren laughed weakly.
“That’s what she calls me.”
Sienna hugged her mother’s leg.
“She calls me little dog.”
I froze.
“What?”
Agatha spoke from the doorway.
“Children repeat everything dramatically.”
I turned.
“You called my daughter a dog?”
She rolled her eyes.
“It is an expression.”
“No.”
My voice became quiet.
“It is how you think.”
Her face hardened.
I opened the cabinet again.
The hidden food told me something important.
Maren had not accepted Agatha’s rules.
She had adapted around them.
That difference mattered.
“What else did she control?”
Maren said nothing.
Agatha smiled faintly.
I saw it.
Confidence.
She believed the worst thing I would find was hunger.
Then Sienna tugged my hand.
“Mommy sleeps downstairs sometimes.”
Maren’s face drained.
I looked at her.
“Where?”
Silence.
Sienna pointed toward the service corridor.
“The little room.”
I knew every room in my estate.
May you like
At least I thought I did.
Apparently my daughter knew one I didn’t.
