Chapter 16
A year after the portrait dinner, Maisie asked to see the photographs from that night.
Not all.
“Before eye.”
Adrian showed her.
Maisie near the staircase.
Smiling.
No glasses.
Then she asked:
“After?”
I hesitated.
Adrian looked at me.
Her choice.
We showed one.
The first photograph after the injury.
Maisie sitting beside Lorraine.
Oversized sunglasses covering half her face.
Gauze above the eyebrow.
My mother’s hand on her shoulder.
Maisie stared.
“That me?”
“Yes.”
“I look silly.”
I laughed despite myself.
“You were very fashionable.”
She smiled.
Then pointed at Lorraine.
“Grandma scared?”
Interesting.
“Yes.”
“Because Daddy mad?”
“Partly.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“Before Daddy.”
I looked closer.
She was right.
Lorraine’s expression in the photograph was already frightened.
Not of me.
Of the memory card.
A four-year-old noticed what I missed.
Adrian enlarged the background.
Gavin stood near the old portrait.
His hand inside his jacket.
Holding something.
Another memory card?
No.
A black ring.
The old council ring.
I had never found his.
He still possessed it that night.
Symbolic loyalty to the dead structure.
Not evidence of another conspiracy.
Enough to clarify one thing.
Gavin had not reacted spontaneously.
He came to the dinner expecting old council business.
Maisie found the card during a gathering where they intended to discuss Evelyn.
I looked at Adrian.
“Keep this image.”
Maisie interrupted.
“Why?”
Good question.
I thought.
Then:
“Actually, give it to Evelyn.”
Her history.
Her decision.
Evelyn later chose to destroy the photograph.
She said she did not need Gavin’s ring to know what happened.
Another object denied a shrine.
May you like
I approved.
Quietly.
