Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Charity
The grandfather clock in the main hallway chimes ten times as I make my way through the mansion, carrying my breakfast tray back to the kitchen.
Mother and Father finished eating an hour ago—they’re early risers, unlike me—and I can hear the murmur of Father’s voice from his study as he takes his first business call of the day.
Twenty-seven years, and the hallway outside Grace’s room still feels like a museum corridor — untouched, waiting, air heavy with a life interrupted.
When I push the door open, the stillness is absolute.
Her room isn’t frozen so much as curated: the neat canopy bed dressed in its white eyelet coverlet, the books aligned with impossible precision, everything arranged the way my mother decided it should stay.
Not a shrine. A story. One I was expected to finish.
Sometimes I wonder what she’d think of me. Whether we would have been friends, or if the years between us would have made us strangers sharing the same parents.
Don’t be morbid, Charity, I can hear Mother’s voice saying. Dwelling on such things isn’t healthy.
I continue toward the kitchen, my footsteps echoing against the marble floors. All these rooms were designed for entertaining dozens of guests, but they house only three people who barely speak to each other unless it’s about charity events or business obligations.
In the kitchen, I rinse my dishes in the enormous farmhouse sink.
It’s one of the few domestic skills I’ve actually mastered.
The kitchen staff would handle this if I asked, but sometimes I like the freedom of doing things myself.
I told Mother and Father I wanted to spend some time in my cottage while I figure out the new piece that’s been giving me such a hard time.
That isn’t exactly a lie. I’ve been stuck on my latest sculpture for weeks.
The cottage. Grace’s cottage, originally.
Father had it built for her eighth birthday, a perfect fairy-tale playhouse where she could host tea parties or read in private.
After she died, it sat empty for years until I discovered it during one of my wandering phases as a teenager.
Now it’s become my retreat when the mansion feels too suffocating, which is most of the time.
I gather supplies from the pantry—coffee, some fruit, a loaf of bread that’s probably too artisanal for its own good—and load everything into a wicker basket. The October air is crisp as I step out the back door, and I pull my cardigan tighter around my shoulders.
The grounds stretch for nearly three acres, most of it wooded to provide privacy from our neighbors.
Father’s great-grandfather designed the landscaping himself, creating winding paths through old-growth trees that make you forget you’re in Manhattan.
It’s one of the few things about this place that doesn’t feel like a museum.
As I walk the familiar path to the cottage, I try not to think about the conversation I overheard last night between my parents. They were in Father’s study with the door closed, but voices carry in this house.
"The Birches are hosting a fundraiser next month for literacy programs," Mother had said. "They specifically requested Charity’s attendance."
"Of course they did." Father’s tone held a familiar note of resignation. "She photographs well."
"She needs to be more… engaged. The Whitman girl just announced her betrothal to that young man from the Robeson family. Charity is twenty-five, Robert. People notice these things."
I’d stopped listening after that and gone to my room, but their words followed me.
I’m not na?ve—I know my parents see me as a project that needs managing rather than a daughter.
They had a perfect, tragic child who died young, and then me: the replacement baby who’s never quite measured up to a ghost.
The cottage comes into view through the trees, and some of the tension leaves my shoulders.
It really does look like something from a fairy tale with its stone walls, arched wooden door, and climbing roses that have gone wild over the past decade.
The roses are dormant now, just brown vines clinging to the walls, but in spring they’ll bloom pink and white and smell like heaven.
When I open the door, I stop dead.
Something’s wrong.
The kitchen area looks… different. Not drastically, but enough that I pick up on it immediately.
The fruit bowl has been moved slightly to the left.
One of the dishtowels is folded differently than I remember.
And there’s a faint scent in the air that doesn’t belong—something masculine and outdoorsy that cuts through the cottage’s usual smell of old roses and lemon oil.
My heart beats faster, that familiar anxiety response that’s been my companion since childhood. Every sound becomes amplified: the tick of the mantle clock, the whisper of wind through the trees outside, the creak of old wood settling.
Someone’s been here.
I set the basket down carefully and move through the cottage like a detective, cataloging every small change. In the living area, one of the throw pillows on the sofa bears a slight indentation. The bedroom door, which I always keep closed, stands slightly ajar.
When I peek inside, I see the quilt has been disturbed. Someone actually slept in my bed!
Panic flutters in my chest—sharp, cold. I should call Security.
Call Father. Call someone. But then logic fights its way through the fear: whoever was here is gone now.
Nothing’s missing. Nothing’s broken. And honestly?
It’s my own fault. I never lock the cottage.
It never occurred to me that someone might actually… use it.
A vagrant, probably. Someone cold, desperate, someone who saw an unlocked cottage and took their chance.
The idea should terrify me more than it does. But fear is quickly smothered by something else—something painfully familiar.
No one would believe me. Not about a moved pillow. Not about a rumpled quilt. They’d give me that look, the one that says You’re imagining things, Charity.
I’ve had a lifetime of that look.
I blow out a breath, make coffee in the French press, and settle into the window seat overlooking the garden, cradling the warm mug between my palms. The cottage feels unsettled, like someone exhaled in a room meant to stay untouched.
I add a mental note to ask housekeeping to change the sheets.
Fresh linens might make this place feel like mine again.
Across the garden, my workshop crouches in the converted carriage house, its windows dark and uninviting.
I should go over there and try to wrestle with the sculpture that’s been fighting me for months, but the thought fills me with the same dread I woke up with this morning.
The piece is different—darker, heavier, like it’s dragging something ancient out of me every time I pick up my tools.
I should call Security. That’s what a rational person would do. But I can already imagine the conversation—how it would end with Father being informed.
"Nothing’s actually missing, Charity. You’re being overly sensitive."
I swallow hard. I can’t face that today.
As I finish my coffee, I make a mental note—lock the cottage from now on. That’s reasonable. Even Father couldn’t argue with that.
My phone buzzes with a text from Mother. Lunch at the club today. Wear the blue dress.
I gather my basket and head back toward the mansion, my brief moment of independence already fading. The blue dress is hanging in my closet—the one that makes me look like a porcelain doll, which is exactly why Mother likes it.
Twenty minutes later, I’m dressed and sitting in the passenger seat of Mother’s Mercedes, looking like the sweet, unthreatening Charity Pembroke everyone expects me to be.