Chapter 9: What Callan Came to Say
He looked smaller than I remembered.
That was the first thing I noticed.
He was wearing a plain gray shirt and jeans, not the pressed clothes he always wore around his family.
The left side of his face was covered by a bandage that ran from his cheekbone toward his ear.
He stood at the end of my parents' front path and didn't move until I opened the door.
My mother appeared in the hallway behind me.
"Mom," I said quietly.
"Can you give us a few minutes?"
She looked at Callan for a long moment.
Then she went back into the kitchen without a word, and I heard the deliberate sound of the kettle being filled.
I stepped onto the porch and pulled the door mostly closed behind me.
Callan looked at me.
He looked at the door.
He looked at his own hands.
"I talked to Griffin," he said.
"I know."
"And I talked to my mother." He exhaled slowly.
"She didn't deny it.
The will.
The plan.
Any of it." He looked up.
"She said she was protecting the family.
She said my father's condition was unreasonable and she was just managing the situation."
"Managing me."
"Yes." His jaw tightened.
"That's the word she used."
I waited.
"She told me Brooklyn was helping.
That it was all coordinated.
That the lunch was — designed." He stopped on that word like it had a weight he wasn't ready to put down.
"She told me Brooklyn's job was to provoke a reaction from you that would give them grounds to have you removed from the marriage quietly.
Something they could use." His voice dropped.
"She didn't expect the oil.
That was — that went further than the plan."
"And you?" I asked.
"What was your job?"
He flinched.
"To sl@p you," he said.
"She told me before the lunch.
She said if things escalated, I needed to be decisive.
That it would show the family I wasn't weak." He looked at the ground.
"I told myself I wouldn't.
And then it happened and I did it anyway."
Something cold moved through me.
"You knew," I said.
"Before the lunch.
You knew something was planned."
"I knew she wanted to pressure you.
I didn't know the details.
I told myself it wouldn't go that far." He looked up.
"That's not an excuse.
I know that."
"No," I said.
"It's not."
"Anastasia." He took a half-step forward and stopped himself.
"I'm not here to ask you to come back.
I don't have the right to ask you that.
I'm here because my attorney told me I need to give a formal statement and I wanted you to hear from me first what that statement is going to say."
I looked at him.
"I'm going to tell the truth," he said.
"About the plan.
About what my mother told me before the lunch.
About what I did." He swallowed.
"About Brooklyn."
"That will hurt your family."
"My family hjt my wife in the face three days after our wedding." His voice broke on the last word and he didn't try to recover it.
"Whatever happens to them because of the truth is because of what they did.
Not because of what I say about it."
We stood on the porch in the quiet.
"Your mother is going to fight this," I said.
"I know."
"She'll say you're confused.
That the medication affected your memory.
That Griffin manipulated you."
"Probably." He looked at me steadily.
"I've spent my whole life letting her decide what I did next.
I'm done with that." A pause.
"I should have been done with it before I ever let her anywhere near our marriage."
The kettle clicked off inside the house.
"What do you want, Callan?" I asked.
"Not from me.
Not from the case.
What do you actually want?"
He thought about it for a long moment.
"I want to be someone my father would recognize," he said.
"He left that condition in the will because he knew what my mother was.
He knew what she'd do.
He was trying to protect me from her, and I spent four years letting her convince me he was wrong about everything." His voice was quiet.
"I want to stop doing that."
I looked at him for a long time.
"Go give your statement," I said.
"Tell the truth.
All of it."
He nodded.
He turned to go.
At the end of the path he stopped.
"The bracelet," he said.
"Your grandmother's bracelet.
I'll get it back."
I didn't answer.
He got into the car and drove away.
May you like
I stood on the porch until the sound of the engine faded.
Then I went back inside, and my mother was standing in the kitchen doorway holding two cups of tea, and she didn't ask me anything, and I sat down at the kitchen table and she sat across from me, and we drank the tea in silence, and that was enough.
