A Boy Who Counted the Days
Chapter 02 - A Boy Who Counted the Days
The banquet had been planned to announce Dominic and Celeste's wedding date. By midnight the musicians had gone, guests had fled to their cars, and the long table gleamed with untouched dessert. Dominic cancelled the announcement without offering an explanation. Celeste called him theatrical. He didn't answer.
Instead he found Leo sitting beside Nora in a small sitting room, clutching a paper napkin covered with crooked drawings. A piano, a blue square, and a woman with dark hair. Dominic recognized Amelia's smile in the crude little face and felt his throat close.
"Nora, you should have told me," he said.
She touched her swollen cheek. "I've tried to speak to your office three times. Your assistant told me that family concerns went through Miss Armand."
"They won't anymore."
"Please don't say that if you don't mean it." Her voice was careful, not disrespectful. "I believed somebody who made promises here once before."
The words stung because he deserved them. For months he had worked twenty-hour days, moving between international meetings and difficult private dealings he kept away from Leo. Amelia had always been the one who knew which stories Leo liked and what frightened him at night. After the accident, Dominic paid for everything a child could need, then mistook the expensive nursery for evidence that he had done enough.
Leo rested his head against Nora's arm. "Can I tell Daddy about Tuesday?"
"You decide," Nora answered. "He can listen."
Dominic heard the difference. Nora didn't demand that the boy talk; she gave him a choice.
"Tuesday," Leo said, "Celeste found me playing Mommy's song. She said crying was making you sick."
Dominic sat down heavily. "Leo, that's not true."
"She said it made you want to leave."
"That is never why I travel. And I'm sorry I haven't been home enough." Dominic reached out, stopping short of the boy's face. "May I hold your hand?"
Leo nodded. His fingers were cold.
Nora explained that she'd started in the mansion seven months before, as a replacement for an older housekeeper dismissed without notice. The child seemed quiet but not content. He memorized the sound of Celeste's heels; he hid his own drawings beneath his mattress; he asked permission before eating a cookie. One evening he heard Nora humming a song as she polished the library windows and began crying because it was Amelia's favorite.
Nora hadn't known the melody's history. Her mother had sung it to her and her younger sister, Claire, when they lived in a cramped apartment above a bakery. She let Leo finish humming it with her. Over the next several weeks he began to smile. Then he showed her the blue music box.
"I didn't open any private drawers," she said. "Leo brought it himself. A piece of paper had slipped between the wooden lining and the hinge. It looked like a letter written for him. I asked if he wanted his father to see it."
"And Celeste?"
"She overheard us. She told me not to upset the child with memories. Then she said she could have Claire dismissed from the scholarship program your foundation finances."
Dominic stiffened. The Russo Foundation had funded dozens of scholarships. It was meant to help people like Nora's sister, not to silence them.
"Who manages that scholarship?" he asked.
"The committee chair is Celeste."
The hallway clock struck one. Downstairs, the guest flowers were being dismantled. Dominic watched his son fall asleep beside Nora, still holding the napkin drawing, and realized he'd let the most important parts of his household become a country he no longer knew.
He called his attorney, Miriam Shaw, and asked for an independent review of the foundation. Then he called the pediatrician who'd known Leo since birth, requesting guidance for helping the child without pressing him for details. Finally, he took Amelia's photograph from the mantel and set it beside the drawing.
"Nobody is going to ask him to forget his mother," he told Nora.
May you like
"Then prove it in the morning," she answered.
At dawn, Daniel returned from the music room carrying a sealed evidence sleeve. He had not opened the piano. He had found something that changed the plan. The lock wasn't damaged. But fresh tool marks scored the panel beside the instrument, and the hallway camera showed Celeste's personal assistant entering with a toolkit thirty minutes before the banquet.
