Chapter 2 - CELIA HOLLOWAY’S NAME
Marin did not sleep.
At six the next morning, she was sitting in Edith’s room when the old woman opened her eyes.
“Celia?”
Again.
Marin felt cold.
“My name is Marin.”
Edith studied her.
Then touched Marin’s cheek.
“Her eyes.”
“What about them?”
“You have her eyes.”
Before Marin could ask more, Edith’s attention drifted toward the lake.
Gone again.
At nine, Sylvio found Marin in the conservatory.
“You should have told me.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I wasn’t certain.”
“Certain about what?”
He sat opposite her.
“I knew your grandmother.”
Marin laughed once in disbelief.
“Apparently everybody did except me.”
Sylvio accepted that.
“Celia worked in this house from 1987 to 1992.”
“As a cook?”
“At first.”
“Then?”
He hesitated.
“She became Mrs. Vain’s companion.”
Marin frowned.
“My grandmother told me she spent those years working at a hotel.”
“She did afterward.”
“Why would she lie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did she leave?”
Sylvio looked toward the door.
“That is the secret.”
Of course.
Everything in this house was a secret.
Marin stood.
“I’m not interested.”
Sylvio blinked.
“I need this job.”
“My sister needs surgery.”
“Mrs. Vain needs help.”
“That’s enough.”
Then a voice came from the doorway.
“Your sister?”
Cassius.
Marin turned.
He sat in his wheelchair alone.
No guard.
No attendant.
For the first time, she could see him clearly.
Forty-one.
Dark hair touched with premature gray at the temples.
A scar near his jaw.
Eyes that seemed trained to notice every movement in a room.
Marin lowered her gaze instinctively.
Not toward the floor.
Just away from his legs.
Cassius noticed.
“Sylvio told you not to look at the chair.”
Marin became embarrassed.
“He said—”
“I know what he said.”
Then Cassius looked at Sylvio.
“Stop telling people that.”
Sylvio nodded.
“Yes, sir.”
Cassius turned back to Marin.
“My legs are not contagious.”
Her face warmed.
“I didn’t think—”
“I know.”
Then:
“What surgery does your sister need?”
Marin’s defenses rose instantly.
“That’s private.”
His eyebrow lifted.
“Everything is private with you.”
“Some things should be.”
To her surprise, Cassius smiled.
Barely.
Then:
“Fair.”
He left.
No offer.
No dramatic check.
Good.
Later, Marin learned more from Edith.
Fragments.
Not a clean story.
“Celia hated roses.”
“Celia sang badly.”
“Celia made Cassius eat carrots.”
“Celia knew.”
Knew what?
Edith could not hold the thread long enough.
The breakthrough came through the recipe notebook.
Marin found a page she had never noticed because two pages had stuck together.
Inside was a photograph.
Three women.
One was young Celia Holloway.
One was Edith.
The third Marin did not recognize.
Pregnant.
Beautiful.
Written behind it:
Edith, Celia, and Sofia — summer before the fire.
Marin showed Sylvio.
He closed his eyes.
“Where did you find this?”
“In the notebook.”
“Who is Sofia?”
Sylvio sat.
“Sofia Vain.”
“Cassius’s sister?”
“No.”
His aunt.
Edith’s younger sister.
Then:
“She died in 1992.”
“The year my grandmother left.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“House fire.”
Marin’s stomach tightened.
Sylvio continued carefully.
“Officially, an electrical fire destroyed one of the older guest houses on the property.”
“And Sofia?”
“She was inside.”
“Pregnant?”
Sylvio nodded.
“The baby died too.”
Marin looked at the photograph.
“Why would my grandmother leave after that?”
“We believed grief.”
“You don’t believe that anymore.”
Sylvio said nothing.
Then Cassius appeared behind them.
He had heard enough.
“My mother believed Sofia’s death was an accident.”
Marin looked at him.
“And you?”
“I was eight.”
He stared at the photograph.
“I believed whatever adults told me.”
“Now?”
Cassius’s face hardened.
“Now I know Celia disappeared the day after she told my father she had seen someone leaving the guest house before the fire.”
Marin’s fingers went cold.
“Who?”
Cassius looked at the notebook.
“She never said.”
“Then how do you know?”
“She told my mother she needed one night to be certain.”
“And then?”
“She vanished.”
Marin shook her head.
“My grandmother wasn't the kind of person who abandoned people.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Cassius stared at her.
“Because for five years, Celia Holloway practically raised me.”
That stopped her.
“My grandmother?”
“She taught me to tie my shoes.”
He almost smiled.
“She also hit my father with a wooden spoon once.”
Marin blinked.
“Why?”
“I said a word at dinner I apparently shouldn't have known.”
Marin laughed despite herself.
Cassius stared.
The sound did something strange to the room.
Then his expression shifted.
“And she made that chicken.”
There it was.
Not merely taste.
Childhood.
Before fear.
Before the empire.
Before the wheelchair.
Marin asked quietly:
“Why did you stop eating?”
Cassius’s face closed.
Wrong question.
She knew immediately.
But he answered.
“My wife died two years ago.”
Marin said nothing.
“The car accident that put me in this chair killed her.”
Now she understood the house.
The silence.
Edith’s collapse.
Cassius’s empty plates.
Loss had happened twice in this family.
Decades apart.
And somehow her grandmother stood at the center of the first one.
Then Cassius said:
“If Celia left evidence, it may be in that notebook.”
Marin pulled it toward herself.
“You may read it with me.”
Not:
Take it.
Not:
Confiscate it.
Cassius nodded.
“Agreed.”
They spent the next hour turning pages.
Nothing.
Until Marin reached the back cover.
The leather felt thicker on one side.
She pressed.
Something crackled.
Cassius looked up.
Marin carefully loosened an old seam.
A folded paper slid onto the table.
One line.
Celia’s handwriting.
If Edith ever remembers the blue room, believe her.
Cassius went completely still.
Marin whispered:
“What is the blue room?”
He looked toward the east wing.
May you like
“The room my father sealed shut after Sofia died.”
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