So I told him.
Not only what Celeste said while leaving.
The photographers.
The seating arrangement.
The instruction to make June use the service entrance.
Adrian listened.
Then he looked toward the empty doorway.
“Did you know about the house?”
“No.”
“Did anyone?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded.
“Thank you, Mara.”
He remembered my name.
That should not have felt remarkable.
It did.
In the breakfast room, June sat beneath the small painting Adrian’s mother had chosen decades earlier.
I brought tea.
Neither of them touched it.
“You had a child with my father,” Adrian said.
“Yes.”
“While my mother was alive.”
June closed her eyes briefly.
“Yes.”
There was no excuse tucked behind the answer.
No claim that love made it harmless.
Adrian turned the photograph over.
“How long?”
“The relationship ended before Noah was born.”
“Did my mother know?”
“Yes.”
He looked up sharply.
“When?”
“When I told her.”
The clock ticked.
I set down the milk jug too carefully.
June looked at me.
“Mara, you don’t have to stay.”
“Would you like me to go?”
Her fingers tightened around the cup.
“I don’t know.”
I pulled out the chair nearest the door.
“Then I’ll wait here.”
Adrian looked at June again.
“What happened?”
“I expected to lose my position. I expected her to hate me.”
“Did she?”
“She was angry.”
June swallowed.
“She had every right to be.”
