Chapter 16 - The First Dinner Back
The first dinner back at Ashcombe was smaller.
Eighty guests.
No society press.
No Lucinda Vail.
No family VIP corridor.
Staff security rules applied to everyone.
Including Gideon.
He discovered that when he forgot his badge.
Owen refused to open the east-wing office for him.
Gideon stared.
"Seriously?"
"You wrote the policy."
"I hate the policy."
"Good policy."
Gideon walked back for his badge.
Sage thought this was hilarious.
At the dinner, she wore a green dress and sneakers.
Nobody poured anything on her.
More importantly, nobody watched her as if she represented a scandal.
She sat beside Bernadette for dessert because Gideon's table was boring.
The scholarship program no longer carried the Kessler name.
It funded legal and social-work education for students who had experienced care systems.
One recipient gave a speech about growing up in foster care.
She did not thank Gideon personally.
Excellent.
After dinner, Gideon found Sage in the marble corridor where Lucinda had once approached her.
She was balancing on the black tiles.
"What are you doing?"
"Floor lava."
"Naturally."
"You stepped in it."
"I'm dead?"
"Very."
He stood still, obediently deceased.
Then Marianne approached.
She stopped a respectful distance away.
"May I interrupt the lava?"
Sage considered.
"You have five seconds."
Marianne laughed.
She handed Sage a small envelope.
"This is not from Corinne."
Sage looked at Gideon.
He did not take it.
"Your choice."
Sage opened it.
A photograph of Mara at twenty-one.
Standing beside Gideon at a university picnic.
Gideon had forgotten the picture existed.
On the back Marianne had written nothing.
Good.
Sage smiled.
"Mom had weird hair."
Gideon laughed.
"It was fashionable."
"No."
Marianne said, "She's right."
For one minute, they were three people looking at a photograph.
Not a grandmother seeking absolution.
Not a father recovering lost years.
Not a child carrying history.
Then Sage returned to the lava game.
That night Gideon asked Marianne why she had kept the photograph.
"Because I liked Mara."
He looked at her.
"Then why—"
Marianne raised a hand.
"Don't make me answer the same question until you get an answer that hurts less."
He stopped.
She was right.
She liked Mara.
She still failed her.
Humans were allowed contradictions.
Consequences remained.
Then Owen called Gideon into the security office.
"You should see this."
For one second, Gideon's body remembered the first night.
Log.
Suitcase.
Threat.
Owen turned the monitor.
A child in a green dress had used Gideon's badge to enter the pantry after midnight.
Sage.
Holding a spoon.
Gideon stared.
"What did she take?"
Owen zoomed in.
Chocolate pudding.
Gideon exhaled.
Normal crime.
He smiled.
"Archive it."
Owen raised an eyebrow.
"Evidence?"
"Absolutely."
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