Chapter 2
Marco spent ten minutes examining the hidden room before he touched anything else.
Every Bennett package had been separated by sender. James’s gifts were together. Marco’s were together. Gifts from Emily’s cousins and old family friends had their own stacks. Even two birthday cards from Bennett household staff had been placed in a separate basket.
“This wasn’t Linda hiding things when she got angry,” Marco said.
James already knew.
It was too organized.
Emily stood in the doorway and watched him open a long garment box. Inside was the maternity coat James had sent before winter, still wrapped in tissue paper.
“I bought one because Ryan said yours never arrived,” Emily said.
Ryan looked away.
That tiny reaction hurt more than denial.
James turned to him. “How long?”
Ryan frowned. “How long what?”
“How long have you been intercepting things sent to my daughter?”
Linda answered first.
“We were protecting our household.”
Emily stared at her. “From baby clothes?”
“From interference.”
Linda straightened against the bench, recovering some of her arrogance now that no one was hitting anyone. “Every gift came with a reminder that Emily was still a Bennett. Every visit became another excuse for James to decide how our home should run.”
James looked at Emily.
“Did I do that?”
She hesitated.
That mattered.
“Sometimes,” she admitted.
James nodded once.
He did not defend himself.
Linda smiled as though she had won something.
Then Emily continued.
“But I never asked you to make him disappear.”
The smile vanished.
Marco opened another package. Inside was a small phone still in its factory wrapping.
James recognized it immediately.
“I sent that after Emily said hers kept losing service.”
Emily looked at Ryan.
“You told me Dad changed his mind.”
Ryan said nothing.
James picked up the phone.
A note was taped beneath it.
If you need me at three in the morning, call. I don’t care what we argued about the day before.
Emily covered her mouth.
May you like
For months she had believed silence meant rejection.
Now she was standing inside a room filled with evidence that silence had been manufactured.
