Chapter 3 - Keep the Cameras On
Dominic did not sleep.
At four in the morning, he sat alone in his father’s old study with a glass of bourbon he never drank.
Charles Blackwell stared back at him from a photograph above the fireplace.
Dark suit.
Dark hair.
One hand resting on eleven-year-old Dominic’s shoulder.
The photograph had always looked powerful to him.
Now the hand looked heavy.
Dominic stood and took the frame from the wall.
He studied his mother’s face in the picture.
Evelyn stood beside Charles.
Beautiful.
Elegant.
Smiling.
But not with her eyes.
He hated that he noticed it now.
By seven, he had called Julia.
His younger sister answered on the sixth ring.
“Someone better be dead.”
“No one is dead.”
“Then why are you calling me before sunrise?”
Dominic looked at the photograph on his desk.
“When was the last time Dad hit Mom?”
Silence.
Not confusion.
Silence.
That was worse.
“Julia.”
She exhaled.
“Jesus, Dominic.”
“When?”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Don’t.”
“Twenty-seven years, and this is when you decide to ask?”
His grip tightened around the phone.
“You knew?”
“I was seven. I knew enough.”
“I didn’t.”
“That’s not my fault.”
He stood.
“I never saw him hit her.”
“No. You saw him punch walls. You saw him throw plates. You saw Mom wearing sunglasses inside.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
Julia laughed once.
It held no humor.
“You still do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn the truth into a legal argument until you can survive it.”
Dominic stared at the floor.
His sister continued.
“Why are you asking?”
He told her about the previous night.
About Evelyn seeing Charles when she looked at him.
Julia did not speak for a while.
Then she asked, “What were you doing?”
“What?”
“When she thought you were him.”
“I was trying to get closer.”
“How?”
“She was upset.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Dominic remembered his own voice.
Mom.
Dominic.
The hard edge.
The assumption that saying his name should have been enough.
“I told her who I was.”
Julia sighed.
“You probably sounded exactly like him.”
The words landed harder than Dominic wanted to admit.
“Come see her.”
Another silence.
“I have work.”
“You own the gallery.”
“Which means I have work.”
“Julia.”
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
“She asked about you last week.”
“That doesn’t make twenty years of you controlling every visit disappear.”
“I never stopped you from seeing her.”
“You scheduled me.”
“I needed to know who was in the house.”
“I’m your sister.”
“Which doesn’t mean security procedures vanish.”
“There. That.”
Dominic said nothing.
Julia’s voice softened, but only slightly.
“I’ll come Sunday.”
“Today.”
“Sunday.”
He nearly ordered her.
The words were already forming.
Then he stopped.
“Sunday,” he said.
Julia hung up.
Dominic stared at the phone.
The restraint felt absurdly difficult.
At nine thirty, he went to Evelyn’s suite.
Grace was changing the flowers.
She wore yellow rubber gloves and had a spray bottle hooked through one finger.
“You’re early,” she said without looking at him.
“This is my house.”
“Then I guess you’re exactly on time.”
Evelyn sat near the window sorting buttons into small bowls.
Blue.
Red.
White.
The occupational therapist had suggested it months earlier.
Evelyn had refused to touch them.
Now she was lining them up while Grace wiped the dresser.
Dominic watched.
“Why is she doing that?”
Grace sprayed the mirror.
“Because she wants to.”
“She refused before.”
“Maybe nobody asked when she felt like doing it.”
Dominic looked toward the camera in the corner.
Grace followed his eyes.
“You really watch these all day?”
“When necessary.”
“Who decides necessary?”
“I do.”
Grace wiped the mirror.
“Convenient.”
Evelyn held up a blue button.
“This one came off Charles’s navy coat.”
Dominic walked closer.
His father had never owned a navy coat.
At least not one Dominic remembered.
Grace did not correct her.
Evelyn placed the button in the red bowl.
“Wrong bowl,” Dominic said automatically.
Grace looked at him.
Evelyn’s fingers stopped.
Dominic wished he could pull the words back.
Grace crossed the room, picked up another blue button, and dropped it into the red bowl.
“There,” she said. “Now it has company.”
Evelyn smiled.
Dominic frowned.
“That defeats the exercise.”
“What exercise?”
“Sorting by color.”
Grace leaned against the dresser.
“Did she agree to take a test?”
“It’s cognitive stimulation.”
“It’s buttons.”
Evelyn picked up a white one.
“My mother had a dress with these.”
Grace sat beside her.
“What color?”
“Green.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“It was.”
Evelyn laughed.
Dominic watched the two of them.
The buttons no longer looked like therapy.
They looked like a conversation.
He hated how often Grace made obvious things feel newly obvious.
Later that afternoon, Marcus found him in the kitchen.
“You missed lunch.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Marcus opened the refrigerator.
“That’s usually when normal people eat.”
“Why are you in my refrigerator?”
“Because I’m hungry.”
Dominic ignored him.
“Find out what my father was like with my mother.”
Marcus slowly closed the refrigerator.
“No.”
Dominic looked at him.
Marcus held up both hands.
“Not refusing. Just asking you to hear what you said.”
“I heard it.”
“You want me to investigate a man who died twenty-seven years ago because your mother, who has Alzheimer’s, confused you with him.”
“And my sister confirmed he was violent.”
Marcus’s expression changed.
“That part you left out.”
“I’m telling you now.”
Marcus pulled a chair from the kitchen island.
“Sit down.”
“I don’t need to sit down.”
“Fine. I do.”
He sat.
Dominic remained standing.
Marcus had known Charles Blackwell.
Not well.
He had been nineteen when Charles died.
His father had worked security for the family then.
“You want the clean version or the version people said when you weren’t in the room?”
“The second.”
Marcus rubbed his jaw.
“Your father scared people.”
“That isn’t news.”
“He scared people inside the house too.”
Dominic looked toward the windows.
“Did he hit her?”
“I never saw it.”
“But?”
“My father told my mother not to leave Mrs. Blackwell alone after parties.”
“Why?”
“He never said.”
Dominic’s mouth went dry.
Marcus leaned forward.
“Boss, there are things families decide not to tell children. Sometimes those things stay unspoken so long everyone forgets the children grew up.”
Dominic looked at him.
“You knew this and never told me?”
“I knew rumors.”
“You tell me rumors about everything.”
“Not about your mother.”
“Why not?”
“Because you didn’t ask.”
The answer angered him because it was true.
That evening, Julia arrived three days early.
No warning.
No driver.
She walked through the front entrance wearing jeans, boots, and a raincoat, carrying a paper bag from a bakery in Brooklyn.
Dominic met her in the foyer.
“I thought you said Sunday.”
“I changed my mind.”
“You could have called.”
“You would have scheduled me.”
She walked past him.
“Where is she?”
“East wing.”
Julia stopped.
“Same suite?”
“Yes.”
“Same cameras?”
Dominic looked at her.
She shook her head.
“Of course.”
They found Evelyn asleep.
Grace sat in the corner reading a paperback while the nurse filled out medication notes.
Julia looked at Grace.
“You must be the housekeeper.”
Grace closed the book.
“You must be the sister who wasn’t coming until Sunday.”
Julia glanced at Dominic.
“He talks about me?”
“No. Your mother does.”
That stopped her.
Julia crossed to the bed.
“Mom?”
Evelyn did not wake.
Julia sat beside her.
For almost ten minutes, nobody spoke.
Then Evelyn’s eyes opened.
She looked at Julia.
Her face remained blank.
Julia smiled anyway.
“Hi, Mom.”
Evelyn stared.
Then her nose wrinkled.
“That perfume.”
Julia laughed through tears.
“You always hated it.”
“Smells like department store.”
“It is department store.”
Recognition appeared slowly.
“Julia?”
Dominic turned away.
Julia gripped their mother’s hand.
“Yes.”
Evelyn looked between her children.
“How long have you two been angry?”
Neither answered.
Grace stood.
“I should finish the hall.”
Evelyn tightened her fingers around Julia’s hand.
“Don’t go.”
Grace sat again.
Dominic almost told her this was family.
He stopped himself.
Julia looked at him.
“I stopped coming because every visit became an inspection.”
Evelyn blinked.
Julia continued.
“Security searched my bag. A nurse stayed in the room. Dominic asked how long I planned to stay.”
“I needed consistency.”
“You needed control.”
“I needed her safe.”
“You needed yourself comfortable.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
Grace stared at her book.
Evelyn looked toward Dominic.
“You always hated mess.”
The sentence was quiet.
Almost affectionate.
Then her face changed.
“You were just a boy.”
Dominic stopped breathing.
Evelyn’s eyes focused somewhere far behind him.
“You heard us fighting.”
Julia’s hand tightened around hers.
“Mom?”
Evelyn looked directly at Dominic.
“You tried to stand between us.”
His stomach dropped.
A memory flashed.
A broken lamp.
His father shouting.
His mother kneeling in the hallway.
Dominic had always remembered the lamp.
Never why it broke.
Evelyn lifted one trembling hand.
“You were eleven.”
Dominic could barely speak.
“What happened?”
She touched his cheek.
Then fear crossed her face again.
Not of him.
For him.
“You don’t need to remember.”
“Mom.”
“You were a child.”
“What happened?”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, the moment was gone.
“Where’s Charles?”
Julia covered her mouth.
Dominic stepped backward.
Grace rose.
He looked at her.
For once, he had no order to give.
No investigation to demand.
No security procedure to hide behind.
Grace spoke quietly.
“Maybe stop asking what she remembers.”
Dominic’s eyes burned.
“What am I supposed to ask?”
Grace looked at Evelyn.
“What she needs right now.”
Dominic followed her gaze.
His mother was frightened again.
Julia was crying.
And Dominic realized he had spent years collecting information about every person who entered his world while knowing almost nothing about the two women who had grown up inside it with him.
He reached toward the camera control panel mounted near the door.
Then stopped.
Grace noticed.
“So?”
He stared at the small green recording light.
“Keep the cameras on.”
Grace’s expression hardened.
Dominic added, “But no audio.”
Julia looked at him.
It was not enough.
He knew that.
May you like
But it was the first rule he had ever loosened without being forced.
And for Dominic Blackwell, that made it feel more dangerous than any gun he had ever faced.
