Page 55 of Devotion
She looked between us. Christopher’s rigid posture, my crossed arms. Two people who looked less like newlyweds and more like opposing counsel.
“So!” she said, bright and cheerful. “Who’s ready to pretend to be in love?”
Christopher and I looked at each other across the kitchen.
Neither of us answered.
Trisha’s smile held. Barely.
“Great,” she said. “This is going to be so much fun.”
CHAPTER 14
Miley
Eleanor was looking at photographs when I found her.
Something had been off for two days. She ate less. Her color had faded from the warm, rosy glow I was used to into something paler, thinner, like someone had turned down her brightness. The doctor had come by the morning before, a quiet visit that Eleanor dismissed as routine, but Gloria, the housekeeper, told me the truth when I cornered her in the pantry.
“Blood pressure,” Gloria said, with one of her rare full sentences. “Rising again. She worries too much.”
I found Eleanor in the sunroom, settled into the armchair by the window with a leather photo album open across her lap. The afternoon light came through the glass and fell across the pages, illuminating faces I didn’t recognize and one I did.
Christopher, around seven or eight, stood in a garden with his hands at his sides, not smiling. Every other child in the photo, there were four of them, was grinning at the camera. Christopher was looking at something off-frame with an expression that didn’t belong on a child’s face—one that was watchful and careful.
“He was never really a part of them,” Eleanor said. She didn’t look up when I sat down beside her. Her fingers traced the edge of the photo. “Even at that age. Patrick wouldn’t let him sit with the family at dinner. He ate in the kitchen with the staff. When the other family members had birthday parties, Christopher wasn’t invited. He’d watch from the upstairs window.”
She turned the page. Another photo. Christopher slightly older, maybe nine. Standing beside Eleanor in a garden, holding her hand. He was smiling in this one.
“Patrick locked him in the basement once,” Eleanor said, and her voice didn’t waver but her hands did. “He’d accidentally broken a vase in the foyer, and Patrick decided the appropriate punishment was three hours in the dark. By the time I found out and got there, the boy hadn’t cried. He’d just sat in the corner and waited. Eight years old and he’d already learned that crying didn’t bring help,” she whispered.
My eyes burned as she exhaled shakily.
“I should have done more." Her hands trembled against the album pages. "I fought Patrick. I did. I threatened him. I told him that boy was his blood and he had a responsibility." Her expression went somewhere far away.
“But Patrick was a hard man, and Esmeralda was worse. She saw Christopher as proof of her husband's betrayal, and she made sure he knew it. Every day. In small ways that a child couldn't defend against.” Her eyes dropped to the photographs in her lap.
“Excluding him from family photos. Introducing Dominic as 'my son' and Christopher as 'Patrick's other child.' Little cruelties that add up over years until a boy learns that love is conditional. That it can be taken away. That he has to earn it, and even then, it might not be enough.”
She turned the page. Another photo: Christopher, older now, maybe twelve, sitting on a step outside a building that lookedlike a school. Alone. His bag beside him. No one else in the frame.
“He learned not to trust anyone because the people who should have loved him were the ones who hurt him most.” She looked up at me, and her eyes were wet but her voice was firm. “I’m not telling you this so you’ll forgive him. I heard everything. What he did to your restaurant was wrong. But I need you to understand that the man you’re angry with is also the boy in this photograph. And that boy has never had someone stay.”
I looked at the photo. The twelve-year-old on the step with nobody beside him. I thought about the man who preferred being behind closed doors in his own house, chose to eat breakfast alone, and told me I wasn’t his real wife. Thefood thiefwho ate every meal I made and never once said thank you or never once sat at the table while I was there.
None of this excused the kiwi. None of it erased the lies. But it added context, the way light adds dimension to a photograph, and the flat, two-dimensional villain I’d been carrying in my head since the medical report started to look more complicated.
I took Eleanor’s hand. Her fingers were cool and thin.
“I’ll try,” I said. “I can’t promise anything. I’m still angry that he manipulated me. If he truly regrets it, I will… try.”
She squeezed my hand. “That’s all I’m asking.”
“And the public outings,” I added. “I’ll do them. I’ll be convincing.”
Eleanor smiled—it trembled at the edges. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
I sat with her until she fell asleep in the armchair, the photo album still open on her lap, the picture of that twelve-year-old boy watching me from the page like he already knew I’d be here someday, sitting beside his grandmother, agreeing to try.
