Chapter 10: The Sound of a House That Is Safe
Six months later, the Blackwood mansion felt like a different place.
Not because anything had been renovated or redecorated — the marble foyer was still marble, the grand staircase still swept upward in the same arc.
But the light seemed to land differently.
Or perhaps it was only that Lily no longer flinched when she walked through the front door.
Ethan was twenty months old and had strong opinions about everything.
He had opinions about which cup was correct, which book came first at bedtime, and whether the dog that belonged to the neighbor two houses down deserved to be greeted every single morning through the front gate.
He had recently begun saying "No" with great conviction and "More" with even greater conviction, and he said "Ee" and "Ba" and occasionally, in quiet moments, something that sounded very close to "Mama" — which he directed at Lily without apparent confusion about what it meant.
She never corrected him.
Victor heard it for the first time on a Sunday morning in November.
He was standing in the kitchen doorway with his coffee, and Ethan was in his high chair, and Lily was cutting toast into small pieces, and Ethan looked at her and said it, clear as anything: "Mama."
Victor went very still.
Lily looked up and found him watching her.
Neither of them spoke.
Then Ethan banged his cup on the tray and said, "More.
More.
More."
Lily turned back to the toast.
"One moment, your highness."
Victor came into the kitchen and set his coffee down and stood beside her at the counter.
"Lily," he said.
"I know," she said.
"I should probably—"
"Don't," he said.
"Don't correct him."
She looked up at him.
His expression was open in a way she had only seen a handful of times — in the foyer the night everything changed, in the kitchen at midnight when he'd told her to wait until the gratitude got louder than the fear.
"He knows what he means," Victor said.
"Children usually do."
Lily looked at Ethan, who was now trying to hand a piece of toast to an imaginary recipient to his left.
"He's going to be a generous person," she said.
"He already is." Victor paused.
"He learned it from somewhere."
The trial date for Falcone had been set.
Serena had entered her plea.
The trust was secured.
Claire had filed the final paperwork on Lily's permanent residency three weeks ago, and it had been approved without complication.
None of that was what made the kitchen feel the way it did on that November morning.
What made it feel that way was the toast, and the coffee, and the small boy handing invisible food to invisible friends, and the fact that Lily had stopped counting the days since she'd last been afraid.
She hadn't noticed when it happened.
She only noticed now, standing in the warm kitchen with the light coming through the window, that the counting had stopped.
Victor reached past her for his coffee.
His hand brushed hers.
He didn't move it away.
Neither did she.
Ethan looked up at both of them with the serene authority of a child who has decided that everything is exactly as it should be.
"More," he said.
Lily smiled and gave him more.
---
*Some people protect children out of duty.
Lily protected Ethan out of love — and that love changed everything for both of them.*
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