Chương 2
“What is that?” Theodore asked.
Mercer did not answer.
Eleanor lowered her gloved hand. “It may have been part of the lining.”
“It was in her mouth.”
“I can see where it was.”
“Why was it there?”
Sirens rose beyond the conservatory windows, at first distant, then close enough to scatter the estate’s peacocks from the south lawn. The birds’ harsh calls cut through the room. Theodore had always disliked them. Rosalie used to say they sounded like rich people discovering consequences.
Two paramedics arrived through the rear entrance with a rolling stretcher, followed by a county police officer and a second medical crew. The conservatory became cramped with equipment, questions, and people insisting they were immediate family. The paramedics lifted Rosalie from the coffin without removing her pale gray dress. One of them cut through fabric at her shoulder to place monitoring leads. Another fitted an oxygen mask over her face.
Theodore tried to stay beside her.
A paramedic blocked him gently. “We need room, bud.”
“She woke up.”
“I heard you.”
“She said my name.”
“That’s good. Let us work.”
Her heart rhythm appeared on a portable screen as a sequence of slow green peaks. Theodore stared at them. Each one seemed too far from the next.
The police officer asked who had broken the glass.
“I did,” Theodore said.
Sebastian said, “That is not the concern at present.”
“I still need to know.”
“He heard movement,” Sebastian replied. “We all witnessed it.”
Theodore looked at him. All? Sebastian had not heard the first taps. Eleanor had not seen the satin move until after he raised the mallet. Dr. Mercer had declared Rosalie dead before dawn. Already the story was smoothing itself into something safer.
The stretcher wheels rattled over the marble. Rosalie’s hand slipped from beneath the blanket. Theodore caught it for two steps before a paramedic guided him away. The silver locket remained at her throat.
Eleanor followed them toward the doors.
Theodore pointed at her. “Don’t go with her.”
She stopped.
The words sounded childish once they were outside him, but he did not take them back.
Sebastian’s controlled eyes settled on his nephew. “Why would you say that?”
Theodore pulled his phone from his coat pocket. The screen was smeared with fingerprints and the corner had cracked the night before when he dropped it in the east corridor.
“Because Rosalie called me Tuesday,” he said. “And she told me not to trust either of you.”
No one spoke.
Theodore unlocked the phone. His thumb shook so badly that he entered the code incorrectly twice. He opened his voicemail and held the device between them.
Rosalie’s voice came through thinly, covered by the hiss of bad reception.
“Theo, listen. I don’t have time to explain this properly. If they tell you I did something to myself, don’t believe them. And don’t let them close anything before you see me. Promise me. Call me back from somewhere private.”
The message ended.
Theodore had not called back.
He had listened to it while sitting behind the school gym after a disciplinary meeting, angry because Rosalie had missed the meeting and embarrassed because the assistant principal had described him as “emotionally volatile” in front of Sebastian’s attorney. He had sent her a text instead.
You always say things like this. I can’t do another crisis today.
She had never replied.
The officer took the phone carefully. “I’m going to need to preserve this.”
“No.”
“Theodore.”
“I’ll send it.”
“We need the original device.”
Sebastian stepped closer. “Give it to him.”
Theodore looked from his uncle to Eleanor. Her face had regained some of its composure, but the glove covering her left hand had begun to twist at the wrist. She noticed him watching and stopped.
He gave the officer the phone.
The ambulance left with Rosalie eleven minutes after Theodore broke the glass. Sebastian followed in his own car because the paramedics refused to take him. Eleanor said she felt faint and remained at the estate with Dr. Mercer. Theodore climbed into the back of the police cruiser only after the officer told him that, as a minor, he could not drive himself and no one was willing to let him ride with Sebastian.
From the cruiser window, he watched the conservatory recede behind rows of bare ornamental pear trees. The open coffin remained visible through the arched glass doors. Its lid stood upright, the cracked viewing panel catching daylight. The black mallet lay beside it.
He pressed his injured knuckle into his palm until it hurt enough to organize his thoughts.
The hospital placed Rosalie in intensive care and Theodore in a family waiting room with blue vinyl chairs, a coffee machine that made a burning smell, and a television tuned to a home renovation program. Sebastian stood at the window making calls. He spoke quietly, but Theodore heard the words foundation, legal exposure, security footage, and no comment.
A nurse cleaned Theodore’s knuckle. The cut did not require stitches. She wrapped it with a narrow white bandage and asked whether he felt safe going home.
He looked at Sebastian.
“Yes,” he said, because he did not know what happened to seventeen-year-olds who answered no.
The nurse’s eyes stayed on him a moment longer. “I’m going to write down the name of the social worker on duty.”
“I don’t need one.”
“Most people don’t until they do.”
She placed the paper beside him anyway.
At ten seventeen that morning, a critical-care physician named Dr. Nisha Shah came into the room. She was small, direct, and still wearing a plastic face shield pushed above her forehead.
“Rosalie is alive,” she said. “She is receiving breathing support. Her temperature was low, her oxygen level was dangerously low, and there are signs she had been under the effects of a strong sedating substance.”
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Sebastian lowered his phone. “What substance?”
“We will know more after toxicology. At the moment, what matters is that prolonged oxygen deprivation can cause injury. We are monitoring her brain, heart, kidneys, everything.”
