Chapter 3 - The Empty Chair
Lily’s seat had also been removed from the family table.
Her name card was found beside the staff entrance.
Not among cousins.
Not beside Ethan.
Beside the vendor meals in the service corridor.
Victoria called it a seating adjustment.
Ethan called it what it was.
Humiliation.
“You expected her to eat with employees while every other relative sat beneath the chandeliers?”
“The staff would have watched her.”
“They were working.”
“They like her.”
Ethan stared at Victoria.
“That does not make them unpaid childcare.”
Rosa stepped forward from the back of the hallway.
She still wore her black service dress and white collar.
“I would have watched Lily.”
Victoria looked relieved.
“See?”
Rosa continued:
“But no one asked me.”
The relief vanished.
Rosa had cared for Sarah and Ethan when they were children. Yet Victoria still spoke about her as though kindness from an employee belonged automatically to the family purchasing her time.
Rosa handed Ethan a sealed envelope found beneath Lily’s abandoned place setting.
Inside was an enrollment agreement for Hawthorne Residential Academy.
A year-round boarding school in another state.
The student named on the first page was Lily Mercer Reed.
Ethan’s signature appeared at the bottom.
He stared at it.
“I never signed this.”
Victoria said nothing.
The enrollment date began the following Monday.
Lily would not merely be absent from the wedding photographs.
She would be gone before Ethan returned from the honeymoon.
May you like
Then Ethan found the attached guardianship surrender.
His electronic approval had already been filed.
