Chapter 14 - The House With Empty RoomsEthan brought Lucy to his house three days later.
Not to live permanently. Not yet. Olivia was still alive, still fighting, and Lucy refused to be anywhere far from the hospital. But the child advocate suggested Lucy needed a safe place with a bed, clothes, food, and some corner of the world not smelling like medicine.
So Ethan opened the doors of his home and realized he had no idea how cold it looked.
The Pierce house sat behind iron gates on a quiet street lined with old trees. It was beautiful in the way magazine homes were beautiful — curated, quiet, and emotionally useless.
Lucy stepped into the foyer and looked up at the chandelier.
“You live here alone?”
“Yes.”
“That’s weird.”
Ethan almost laughed. “I’m beginning to see that.”
She walked through the rooms cautiously. Library. Dining room. Kitchen. Guest suites. Everything polished. Nothing personal except old photographs on one hallway table.
Lucy stopped at one.
Ethan and his father on a fishing dock.
“How old were you?”
“Ten.”
“You looked happier.”
“I was.”
She looked at him, then back at the photo.
“Did your dad love you?”
The question hit him unexpectedly.
“Yes.”
“Even though he kept secrets?”
Ethan considered lying gently.
Then he decided not to.
“Yes. But secrets still hurt people, even when love is real.”
Lucy nodded like she was filing that away.
Grace had prepared a bedroom.
Ethan had warned her not to make it too much. Grace, naturally, had made it too much and then removed half of it after Nora threatened to prosecute her for grandmother enthusiasm.
The room had pale yellow walls, a desk, bookshelves, soft blankets, and a window overlooking the garden. On the bed sat one stuffed fox, not a mountain of toys.
Lucy stood in the doorway.
“This is mine?”
“When you’re here.”
“I don’t have to stay?”
“No.”
She looked suspicious. “Adults say that, then get mad when you choose wrong.”
“There’s no wrong choice here.”
She entered slowly and touched the desk.
“There are pencils.”
“I was told children use those.”
“By who?”
“Nora.”
Lucy snorted.
On the bookshelf were books Ethan had chosen badly and Grace had chosen better. Mystery novels, horse stories, science books, a dictionary of weird facts. Lucy ran her fingers along the spines.
Then she saw the framed space on the desk.
Empty.
“What goes there?”
“Whatever picture you want.”
Her face changed.
Not sadness exactly.
Memory.
“I don’t have many printed pictures.”
“We can print some.”
“She won’t be in new ones soon.”
Ethan’s chest tightened.
Lucy sat on the edge of the bed.
For a while, neither spoke.
Then she said, “I don’t want Mom to die in the hospital.”
Ethan sat beside her, leaving space.
“Where does she want to be?”
“Near flowers.” Lucy stared at the floor. “She used to say when she got better, we’d get a little house with a porch and plant rosemary because it doesn’t die easily.”
Ethan knew then what he would do.
Not because money could fix grief.
But because sometimes money could remove one cruelty from it.
Within twenty-four hours, Ethan arranged for Olivia’s transfer to a private hospice cottage connected to St. Agnes but away from the main hospital. It had windows, a small garden, and raised beds where late summer herbs grew wild.
Lucy walked in and burst into tears.
Olivia did too.
“You did this?” Olivia asked Ethan.
He stood by the door, suddenly embarrassed by the inadequacy of beautiful rooms.
“Lucy told me about rosemary.”
Olivia covered her mouth.
Grace arrived later with groceries and asked permission before entering. That mattered to Lucy. Nora came with legal files and somehow ended up assembling a lamp. Ethan’s housekeeper brought soup. The hospice nurse showed Lucy how to adjust pillows.
For one fragile afternoon, the war waited outside.
Olivia sat near the window in a soft chair, blanket over her knees. Lucy curled at her feet. Ethan read through school enrollment forms on the sofa. Grace quietly washed cups in the kitchenette though she had not washed a cup herself in twenty years.
Olivia watched them.
“This is strange,” she said.
Ethan looked up. “Bad strange?”
“No.” Her eyes softened. “The other kind.”
Lucy fell asleep against the chair.
Olivia touched her hair.
“She’s going to be angry for a long time.”
“She should be.”
“She’ll test you.”
“I know.”
“She’ll say awful things.”
“I probably deserve some of them.”
Olivia smiled faintly.
“Don’t vanish when she does.”
Ethan’s throat tightened.
“I won’t.”
Olivia looked out at the rosemary moving in the wind.
“I used to imagine you finding us when she was little. I imagined being furious. Then relieved. Then furious again.”
“That sounds accurate.”
“I don’t know what we are now, Ethan.”
He looked at her.
“Parents.”
Her eyes filled.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Parents.”
That evening, after Lucy was asleep in the small adjoining room, Ethan stepped outside to take Nora’s call.
Her voice was sharp.
“We got the first review from Raymond’s drives.”
“And?”
“Hale Capital used White Rose Children’s Fund to move restricted money. But that is not the worst part.”
Ethan looked through the window at Olivia and Lucy.
“What is?”
Nora paused.
“Some of the missing funds were connected to guardianship accounts. Children’s settlements. Trusts. Insurance payouts.”
Ethan’s blood went cold.
“Children?”
“Yes.”
May you like
Victoria’s charity had not protected vulnerable children.
It had fed on them.
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