Chapter 5
The “little room” was beside the laundry.
Technically, it was a storage room.
Someone had put a narrow cot inside.
One blanket.
No window.
A plastic cup.
Nothing else.
I stood in the doorway and could not speak.
Maren remained behind me.
“How many nights?”
“Ronan…”
“How many?”
Her voice broke.
“Seven.”
Agatha laughed from farther down the hall.
“You make it sound like imprisonment.”
I turned.
“She slept in a storage room.”
“She chose to.”
Maren finally raised her voice.
“No.”
Everyone stopped.
She looked at Agatha.
“You locked the bedroom.”
My chest tightened.
Agatha’s face changed.
Maren continued.
“You took my key because I disagreed with you at dinner.”
Agatha shrugged.
“You were hysterical.”
There it was.
A woman objects.
Call her unstable.
“What did they argue about?” I asked.
Maren looked at me.
“Our baby.”
I felt cold.
“What about our baby?”
Agatha answered.
“The name.”
I almost laughed from disbelief.
“You locked my wife out of her bedroom because she disagreed with a baby name?”
“It wasn’t a name.”
Her voice hardened.
“It was continuity.”
There.
Old-family obsession.
Agatha wanted our unborn child named after my father.
Maren and I had chosen something else.
That apparently became rebellion.
Sienna looked at the cot.
“Mommy cried here.”
I closed my eyes.
My daughter had seen that too.
I thought the worst thing Agatha had done was make Maren wash dishes.
May you like
Sienna had been right.
There was worse.
