Chapter 2 #2
Rosie had fallen asleep on her cardigan by the garden door, her drawing pad open to the horse-duck hybrid she'd been perfecting.
I watched her for a moment—her dark hair fanned across the red fabric, her small chest rising and falling with the particular rhythm of a child who trusted her environment completely.
She had his coloring. His dark hair, his jaw that would be sharp when she grew into it. She walked with his gait—that had been clear since she was eighteen months old, that particular way of moving through a space like she'd already decided it belonged to her.
He hadn't seen her up close yet. The dining room was too far from the kitchen; the terrace hadn't been in use when she was in the garden.
But the estate was only so large, and six weeks was a very long time, and I couldn't keep her invisible forever without turning both of our lives into a prison of logistics.
I catalogued what I knew while I portioned the reduced stock into containers.
Whitfield was watching. He'd filed Rosie as a potential lever, had a preferred vendor already positioned.
Whatever challenge he was planning to mount against my contract, he was building his case.
Ethan had not spoken to me directly—he'd come to the kitchen pass and asked a professional question and left, which was exactly the correct dynamic for the next six weeks.
Rosie had not been on the main terrace. The garden was fenced. The arrangement was manageable.
I said this to myself with the specific repetition of a woman who knew the difference between a thing being true and a thing being made true by being said enough times.
The repetition had gotten me through Ethan disappearing.
Through the positive pregnancy test three weeks into his silence.
Through the first trimester when I was too tired to cook and too stubborn to stop.
Through labor and recovery and the first six months of single parenthood when sleep was a rumor I'd heard about from other people.
I could make this true too. I just had to keep saying it until the reality caught up with the words.
By the time the afternoon light went flat across the counter, I'd almost closed the distance between those two versions.
I woke Rosie gently, fed her dinner in the cottage—pasta with the sauce I'd made three days ago and frozen because I'd known I wouldn't have time to cook for us during the first week.
She ate with the dedicated focus of a child who'd spent the day drawing horses and exploring gardens, and she told me about the leaf shaped like a duck and about a beetle she'd seen near the fence and about the big window in the big house that had "too many squares in it. "
I agreed about the window. Too many squares. Excessive.
She was asleep by seven, her stuffed rabbit tucked under her arm, her small body curled into the position she'd adopted since infancy—one arm flung out, the other clutching something soft, her face turned toward the door like she wanted to be ready to see me when I came to check on her.
I stood in her doorway for a long moment, watching her breathe.
Three years and four months since he'd stopped calling.
Three years and four months since I'd understood that the architecture of dependence I'd built around him was exactly the mistake I'd sworn I would never make again.
My father had left when I was six. I'd had the data. I should have known better.
But I'd been twenty-nine and in love with a man who looked at me like I was the most interesting thing in any room, and I'd let myself believe that the pattern wouldn't repeat. That he was different. That I was different.
I was different now. I'd made sure of that.
The knock at the cottage door came at seven thirty.
Not Ethan—the knock was too light, too apologetic. I opened it to find an envelope on the mat and Priya's assistant already retreating down the path toward the main house.
Inside, I expected the revised dietary forms I'd requested for the late-arriving investor whose file had mentioned a shellfish allergy.
Instead, I found the updated full attendee list for the retreat.
Priya's handwriting in the margin: *Amended following late addition confirmed this afternoon.
* I scanned the names. Most of them meant nothing to me—titles like "Managing Partner" and "Senior Advisor" attached to surnames I didn't recognize.
Whitfield near the top. Ethan's name, of course, listed as lead strategic advisor.
Four lines from the bottom, a new entry.
*Marcus Webb. Former Hayes Capital partner. Independent observer status.
Arrival: Friday.* I didn't know who Marcus Webb was.
I set the list on the kitchen table beside Rosie's drawings and looked at it for a long moment.
The cottage was quiet. The estate grounds outside the window were dark except for the lights in the main house, visible through the vineyard rows.
Former Hayes Capital partner. Independent observer status.
The particular quality of that silence told me I should find out exactly who Marcus Webb was before Friday, and exactly what his presence at Rosewood meant for the careful architecture I was trying to build.
I pulled out my phone and typed his name into the search bar. The results loaded slowly over the estate's wifi, and I read the first three headlines with the focused attention of a woman who understood that information was the only defense she had.
Whatever was coming, I would see it before it arrived.
That was all I could do. That, and make sure Rosie stayed inside the fence.