Chapter 3 - THE RULES
Thomas took the napkin from Jacob’s tiny hand like it was made of glass.
The handwriting was uneven, but the list was clear.
Do not sit until guests sit.
Do not eat cake unless given permission.
Do not speak unless spoken to.
Do not touch the silver room.
Do not cry where guests can see.
Do not call Grandma mean.
Do not say Mom’s name.
Thomas read the last line twice.
Do not say Mom’s name.
The garden blurred at the edges.
He heard Claire’s laugh in his memory, bright as bells in the kitchen. He saw her kneeling to tie Jacob’s shoes. He remembered Rebecca asleep against her shoulder, Samuel tucked beneath her arm.
And these people had forbidden her children from saying her name.
Thomas turned the napkin around so the nearest guests could see it.
“Who wrote this?”
Nobody answered.
The cousin who had been recording, a seventeen-year-old girl named Madison, suddenly lowered her eyes.
Thomas noticed.
“Madison.”
She swallowed.
Her mother, Elaine, stepped forward. “Don’t you dare question my daughter like that.”
Thomas did not even look at Elaine.
“Madison,” he repeated. “Who wrote this?”
Madison’s face crumpled.
“Grandma dictated it,” she whispered. “Aunt Elaine wrote it first. Then she told Rebecca to copy it so she’d remember.”
Elaine’s face twisted. “You little idiot.”
Thomas’s eyes snapped to her.
Elaine stepped back.
Robert climbed fully to his feet, frosting dripping from one sleeve.
“That’s enough,” he growled. “You’ve lost control of yourself.”
Thomas smiled, but there was no warmth in it.
“No,” he said. “I lost control when I believed my children were safe with family.”
Helen’s voice turned icy. “They were fed, clothed, and housed here whenever you dumped them on us.”
“Dumped?” Thomas repeated.
The word hit harder than the cake, harder than Robert’s insult.
He looked toward Rebecca.
“How many times did you ask me not to bring you here?”
Rebecca pressed her lips together.
“Every time,” she whispered.
Thomas closed his eyes.
He remembered. Of course he remembered.
Rebecca had said she felt sick before visits. Samuel had hidden one shoe. Jacob had cried when the car turned onto the estate road.
Thomas had thought they missed their mother.
They had been begging him.
When he opened his eyes again, the man who looked at Helen and Robert was not a wounded son.
He was a father.
“From this moment,” Thomas said, “none of you will ever be alone with my children again.”
Helen scoffed. “You cannot cut us off. This is our family.”
Thomas took one step closer.
“No,” he said. “This was Claire’s family the second I chose her.”
Robert’s jaw tightened.
Then Thomas lifted his phone again.
“Daniel,” he said into the call, “bring the documents to the garden.”
Helen’s eyes widened.
Robert’s face hardened.
May you like
Because this time, the secret was not about children.
It was about everything the Davenports had left.
